tenement house with no windows
A historical term for a cheap, dark tenement lacking windows, literally 'blind tenement'. The word contains a discriminatory term and is now rarely used; it appears mainly in historical or literary contexts.
Poor people in the Edo period lived in tenements called mekura-nagaya, which had no windows.
Compound of 盲 (mekura, 'blind', now considered a discriminatory term) and 長屋 (nagaya, 'row house' or 'tenement'). The exact historical origin is uncertain, but it describes a tenement so dark it was likened to being blind.