JAPAN: Homeless Still Outcasts, but Their Numbers Are Growing

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 2 2002 (IPS) - After living three long, lonely years in a cardboard box, 51-year-old Koya Aoki finally found a job last month as an assistant at a day care service provider for seniors.

“You cannot imagine how grateful I am for the opportunity to start life again,” says the thin, tall man who looks much older than his age. “I never want to experience the pain of being a homeless person, again.”

Aoki began to live on the streets after his employer, a large food products company, went bankrupt. “When I suddenly lost my job, my life turned into a nightmarish downward spiral,” he says. ” My wife asked me for a divorce and my friends and close relatives didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”

Shunned in a society that puts a premium on work and growing desperate by the day, Aoki searched for a new job but with little success. “I couldn’t believe I would be abandoned by everybody. There were several times I contemplated suicide,” he says.

Aoki belongs to the growing number of homeless people in affluent Japan, where the average GDP per capita hovers at 24,898 U.S. dollars a year.

The number of homeless people has in fact increased by 24,000 or 15 percent from 2000, according to a government survey. The survey also reveals one in three of that number has diseases that range from high blood pressure to mental instability.

Ninety percent of people living on the streets are middle-aged men who have lost their jobs as a result of corporate restructuring. The rest are day labourers who work on construction sites and get paid for the day, but do not have the benefits that other workers have.

But the overwhelming majority do not have a home to return to, either because they have been abandoned by their families or have lost their property as a result of financial hardship. Unemployment allowance lasts for six months, after which they have to manage on their own.

These middle-aged men live in vinyl tents or cardboard boxes pitched in parks or on the streets of Japan’s big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, and depend on volunteer groups or local municipalities for food, clothing and daily necessities.

In winter, many live in subway stations or underground stations.

Given this trend, Japanese activists, say that it is clear that growing unemployment, especially among men in their late forties and fifties, will make homelessless a huge problem in Japan.

“The numbers will tripple rapidly as long as corporations continue firing people to beat the economic recession,” says Wahei Kasai, who runs the Yamatani Labour Welfare Office, a citizens’ group helping the homeless in Tokyo.

Kasei says the growing number of homeless is an apt illustration of the breakdown of Japan’s famed social order, based on a relatively egalitarian society.

“Japan’s post-war economic success was based on developing a large middle-income society, but rapid globalisation has changed that. The loss of jobs has created a growing gap between the rich and the poor,” he explains.

Unemployment in Japan as of March was 5.2 percent, a slight reduction from the record 5.3 percent in February. Fiscal year 2001, which ended in March, saw the second highest number of corporate bankruptcies on record — 20,052 or up 5.9 percent from the previous year.

As of March, the number of jobless men between 45 to 64 years of age stood at 860,000, compared to the 280,000 males between the ages of 35 to 44 years of age, according to the Ministry of Public Management and Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.

Given the years of recession, Japan’s government has finally acknowledged the severity of the problem and is now debating a new bill aimed at addressing the needs of the homeless.

The bill provides for the use of public funds for new housing and care for the homeless. On Apr. 26, groups of homeless demonstrated in front of Parliament in Tokyo.

Says Kasai, “While the bill does not guarantee employment opportunities for these people, it is a landmark as it is the first time the government has recognised the homeless population and its needs.”

Meanwhile stories of discrimination, hostility and even murder against the homeless keep growing in Japan.

In January, three 14-year-old boys were arrested for allegedly beating a 55-year-old homeless man to death after dragging him out from a tent that had been his home for a year.

That same month, a 53-year-old man was the victim of a homemade bomb that exploded after being placed in a garbage can in a park. He was rushed to hospital after his arm was torn off after he touched a spring that detonated the explosive in the garbage can.

A government survey indicated 40 percent of the men living in parks say they have experienced harassment from people passing by them on the streets.

“Despite their growing number, the homeless in Japan continue to be treated as outcasts. The public only hopes these people would just disappear,” says Keigo Takano, a volunteer for the past six years with the Yamato Friendship Association, one of Japan’s oldest private organisations offering medical and other support to the jobless.

The organisation runs a clinic for the homeless, who seek free treatment for minor ailments such as colds or fever. More than a thousand visit the clinc each month. Meantime, a counselling programme offers advice and offers a hot meal.

“Most people see the homeless as lazy and a threat to social order. Moreover, there is very little spirit of volunteerism in modern Japan, where people are too busy. This combination is very hard on people who are not socially successful,” says Takano.