Japan’s Skid Row

• Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, February 2003, Glasgow

The canary is but a small bird, yet its condition can herald problems in a huge coal mine. Likewise, Japan’s homelessness problem seems small. The government and social activists dispute whether it’s 25,000 or 50,000 people who "sleep rough," i.e., on the streets or in cardboard shantytowns in the parks, every night. But everyone agrees the numbers are rising substantially. This trend, along with increasing suicides, is yet another indicator that Japan’s long economic malaise is fraying its once-tight social fabric.

Economic, not social, factors are the primary causes of Japanese homelessness, argues Hideo Aoki, a researcher in urban sociology in Hiroshima. Writing in a special issue of the monthly journal Urban Studies devoted to the state and urban development in East Asia, Aoki examines homelessness in Osaka (Japan’s second largest city) and the ways the state, companies, and families are trying to prevent it. Aoki uses data from his own field research and from surveys conducted by Osaka City University researchers during the late 1990s.

Osaka has Japan’s largest population of homeless people. As Aoki writes, most of them are single men over 50 who have no contact with families or relatives. And nearly 60 percent of them are day laborers (mostly in construction) from the city’s biggest yoseba, a skid row district where laborers residing in flophouses "shape up" for jobs each day. By the late 1990s, the typical day laborer in Osaka could only get six to seven days of work per month, making it difficult for such a worker to pay even the yoseba‘s low rents.

Aoki attributes their troubles to globalization, but the actual cause is closer to home: the breakdown of private social safety nets under the pressure of economic stagnation. And the government isn’t able to help via its traditional methods because it can no longer fund all the proverbial "bridges to nowhere" that previously created so many make-work jobs.

For decades, Japan’s political economy was organized to hide the plight of society’s losers — even from themselves. Many viewed this system as a pillar of social stability. Since only half of workers are covered by unemployment compensation, a person’s main social safety net is his current job. Many of the inefficient practices now dragging down growth result from attempts at preserving redundant jobs.

By 1990, nearly 6 million workers (one out of every ten) had jobs in construction — a much higher ratio than in other rich countries. When private-sector growth stumbled, public works took up even more of the slack. From 1990 to 1997, construction provided one out of every three new jobs in the country. Eventually, this strategy became financially unsustainable. Now, public works budgets are being cut even as corporate investment and housing sales are plunging. Seven hundred thousand construction jobs have disappeared since 1997.

Formerly, Japan’s "share the pain" social ethic resulted in less unemployment and homelessness than would a similar downturn elsewhere. As Aoki recounts, companies shifted workers to subsidiaries or subcontractors. Families took in relatives. But with unemployment at such high levels, neither company networks nor extended families can bear the full burden. Officially, the ranks of the unemployed have risen from roughly 2 million in 1990 to 3.6 million today. If discouraged workers (people who have given up looking for work) are counted as well, however, the true figure is closer to 5.5 million.

The lack of overt governmental social safety nets affects the homeless as well, as Aoki shows. Not until 1999 was there even an official attempt to count the homeless, and not until 2000 did the national government fund shelters and provide financial aid. Efforts remain meager, particularly when it comes to helping the homeless find new jobs.

As economic conditions worsen, Aoki points out, homelessness is extending beyond day laborers. Almost 40 percent of the Osaka homeless in 1998 were temporary or part-time workers in the mainstream labor market. Half of these were construction workers, but a third previously worked in manufacturing or services. Nearly a fifth were former white-collar workers, whose firms either dismissed them or went bankrupt.

Continued economic stagnation inevitably means increased joblessness and homelessness, especially among the over-55 set. Who knows how long it will take until someone listens to the canary’s song?