The man in a cap peddled with a carrying pole in the residential area of Jakarta

One of the things I occasionally see in Southeast Asia that I don't often see in Japan is a carrying pole. A container such as a basket is hung from both ends of the pole and is carried at a fulcrum while maintaining balance.

In Japan, many people used to carry a carrying pole to do business. I don't see it at all nowadays. Since they didn't need to pay for the rights to set up a shop, they could easily start a business. Many people who did business with a carrying pole are depicted in the ukiyoe titled "53 Stations of the Tōkaidō Nipponbashi Morning Scene" by Utagawa Hiroshige, as well as in "Shin bandai daidou zui, Odawara-cho" by Katsushika Hokusai. In the Edo period, there were people doing business here and there, carrying poles were seen in many places.

So I met a hawker in Jakarta who was carrying a pole. When I walked around Jakarta, I saw as many people carrying poles as those who were doing business at mobile stalls. The man in this photo was one of them. This man was peddling in a residential area, carrying a yoke. He was dressed in a 21st-century style, but the carrying pole itself was probably the same as the one depicted in the ukiyo-e prints.

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