Asia Times: Down and out in Tokyo



	July 27, 1999	atimes.com

Japan

Down and out in Tokyo
By Edwin Karmiol

TOKYO - Their cardboard dwellings still stand out amid the posh surroundings of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, but the homeless are no longer strange sights for the residents and visitors in the upscale community.

Indeed, many cities have experienced increasing numbers of homeless people in recent years, a result of the economic downturn and abandonment by some companies of the tradition of lifetime employment.

Until recently, however, local authorities have done little to accommodate the homeless, save for occasionally throwing them out of subway stations and forcing them to go to temporary shelters for a maximum stay of two weeks.

But now the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) says it will build self-help centers where the homeless can stay for up to six months and be provided with counselling and medical treatment.

The centers, which will receive funding from the central government, will also actively help the homeless get jobs, and companies which hire them as day laborers will get subsidies.

In addition, Tokyo's local wards will now provide food and lodgings for those on the streets, with subsidies coming from the Tokyo local government.

Before this latest initiative, local authorities for the most part seemed to be content in letting non-government organizations look after the homeless. Some also gave subsidies to these groups. The Shinjuku local government, for instance, had been giving the Salvation Army some $25 a day for each homeless person given board and meals by the organization.

Naoko Harita, social welfare secretary of the Salvation Army, says, "Some of them receive a monthly pension of $500 to $665, but this is not enough to subsist in Tokyo."

Mamoru Kosaka of the TMG's Welfare Division says that "activists" had opposed proposals to build self-help centers in the past, but now "they . . . are asking authorities to go ahead with such a plan."

To be sure, there has been no objection so far to the TMG's current initiative, but if there is any optimism at all about such efforts, it is decidedly cautious.

After all, the last time the Tokyo government tried to encourage the homeless to find jobs, it was only marginally successful. Of the 135 homeless people it brought to temporary shelters in February last year, only 47 eventually found work.

Seiji, 36, was one of those who landed in a temporary shelter last year. Now, a corner of the Shinjuku Park is his home, although he says, in between inebriated hiccups, that he was brought to its manicured lawns by a flying saucer with "emerald lasers."

In truth, many of the homeless remain that way because they have become alcoholics or mentally unstable, and unable to hold onto steady work.

Sociologists have also noted that continued living on the streets can be psychologically devastating to many people, who as a result may later have extreme difficulty in readjusting. Adds Harita: "Many are sick and too weak to work."

It is difficult to come by accurate figures on how many homeless live in Japan's cities, not least because many sleep in railway stations and move from place to place. A May 1998 survey by the Resource Center for Homeless People's Human Rights showed 4,300 homeless people in Tokyo, most of them male and many older than 50.

Figures by the Asian Coalition on Housing Rights-Japan network show that while Japan's homeless numbers are by no means comparable to those of poor nations, it is much more difficult to be poor in one of the world's most expensive countries.

A 1993 survey put the number of homeless in Tokyo at 1,000, with the number more than doubling by 1994 and rising as the recession continued to deepen after the bubble economy began to deflate in 1992.

But despite their hardship, the homeless in Tokyo are apparently too proud to beg for money or food. Instead, they make do with whatever they find in the garbage bins of nearby restaurants and houses, or line up for the free meals ladled out by charitable groups.

On Sundays at Shinjuku Park, some of the 500 homeless people who listen to the Rev. Shim Won Shuck's three-hour sermon even drop the few coins they found, or earned in exchange for discarded tin cans, into the Christian preacher's collection box. For their patience, they are rewarded with a cup of soup and a giant rice ball.

The park's homeless do not usually bother passersby or make public nuisances of themselves. They have a leader of sorts who makes sure there is a semblance of order in their community and the surroundings are kept clean.

They do not steal from each other, although some of the men do get into fights now and then when they have had too much too drink.

The camaraderie among many of the homeless may be what attracted Daisuke to settle at Shinjuku Park, although he is apparently far from poor. The 56-year-old, talking while washing his undershirt at the park's fountain, still has his Mercedes Benz and a cellular phone.

He also buys his food from the neighborhood supermarket, often treating some of his fellow "campers" to instant feasts.

But Daisuke says he had to "disappear" to escape paying the debts incurred by his failed real estate business, even though it meant leaving behind his wife and nine children.

However, life at the park is far from idyllic. A soft-spoken homeless man says of their leader: "He is a bad man. Sometimes he beats up people to get money, just for 100 to 200 yen. Some yakuza-type people (members of Japan's organized crime gangs) help him."

(Inter Press Service)

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