Director claims censorship, pulls film set in slum from Osaka festival

Japan's biggest slum is visible just blocks from bustling restaurants and shops in Osaka, the country's second-largest city. But it cannot be found on official maps.

Nor did it appear in the recent Osaka Asian Film Festival, after the director of a new movie that is set in the area pulled it, accusing city organisers of censorship.

Osaka officials asked Shingo Ota to remove scenes and slang that identify the slum, on the grounds that it was insensitive to residents. "To me, what they were asking was a cover-up attempt to make this place non-existent," he said.

This place is Kamagasaki, home to day labourers, the jobless and homeless, where one in three is on welfare. About 25,000 people live there, mostly single men who stay in free shelters or cheap dorms.

At the welfare-employment centre, hundreds of people line up for manual work, mostly with subcontractors of Japan's construction giants. Those not picked stroll the back streets aimlessly, queue for free meals or resort to cheap alcohol. In the evening, the homeless line up to get tickets for the shelters.

"I'm jobless, for months," said a 52-year-old who came to Kamagasaki after losing his home in the 1995 Kobe earthquake. He gambled away his monthly welfare money of 70,000 yen. "Now I'm doomed."