Ōyama Shirō

Working for some time as a salaryman in the corporate world, Ōyama Shirō quit his white-collar job and moved at the age of forty in 1987 to San’ya, the largest day-laborer quarter in Tokyo. He lived there for twelve years before publishing his memoir in 2000. Ōyama elucidates the meaning of his title, A Man with No Talents, in the book: “I am, in short, a man of no talents who is incapable of relating to women or coping with work.”