While Japan boasts a universal healthcare system and state-of-the-art medical technology, healthcare has often been denied to those who do not conform to moral ideals of a deserving patient. In underclass enclaves known as yoseba (day laborers’ quarter), patients have been frequently turned away or blacklisted on grounds of their abnormality and non-compliance. As much as healthcare was enmeshed in the normative bonds of family and community sanctioned by the state, yoseba men were considered as outsiders who neglected their duties of care, thus, undeserving of any form of care themselves. Focusing on the struggle for healthcare in a yoseba enclave in Yokohama over the past three decades, this paper explores how various practices of care have been improvised in this last refuge for the underclass men. The relentless endeavor pursued by local medical activists reveals how attending to yoseba patients required creative techniques of spatio-temporal attunement to make healthcare a communal project. Here, a form of “embodied belonging” was sought through bodily care coordinated among various agents and things, rather than through claims for membership in a bounded entity.

虽然日本拥有全民医疗体系和最先进的医疗技术，但那些不符合应得患者的道德理想的人往往无法获得医疗保健。在被称为yoseba（短工区）的下层阶级飞地中，患者经常因其异常和不合规而被拒之门外或被列入黑名单。尽管医疗保健与国家认可的家庭和社区的规范纽带密切相关，但yoseba男性被视为忽视了照顾职责的局外人，因此，他们自己不值得任何形式的照顾。专注于yoseba 的医疗保健斗争在过去的三十年中，横滨的飞地，这篇论文探讨了如何在这个为下层阶级男性提供的最后避难所中即兴提供各种护理实践。当地医疗活动家的不懈努力揭示了如何照顾yoseba患者需要时空协调的创造性技术，使医疗保健成为一个公共项目。在这里，通过各种代理人和事物之间协调的身体护理来寻求一种“体现归属感”的形式，而不是通过声称是有界实体的成员资格。