Interesting article in today's Daily Telegraph. Note that former politicians are not among the homeless. They (like politicians in most countries) are able to line their pockets before being chucked out.
Full marks to them for keeping their dignity! <<<< Former bosses join Japan's homeless army By Colin Joyce in Tokyo TOKYO'S Ueno Park was once famed for its springtime cherry blossom. Nowadays, it is more familiar as the home of a swelling tent city housing part of Japan's growing army of homeless. Homelessness Japanese-style is different from the Western experience. Despite the profusion of tents, the park area occupied by them is impeccably tidy. Fallen leaves are swept into little piles and the hoards of aluminium cans that the homeless collect to sell for recycling are covered and neatly stacked. The residents, mostly men in their forties and fifties, build their dwellings with care from tarpaulin and cardboard. The broken handles of discarded umbrellas are used as tent pegs, and as with Japanese homes, people take off their shoes before entering. They do not beg for money. The practice is unknown and would be unlikely to reap any rewards from the conservative Japanese. Besides, they have their pride. Instead, they earn small sums reselling discarded comics to office workers near train stations, or wearing sandwich boards advertising loan sharks and gambling parlours. And while many homeless drink beer or sake, alcoholism or drug abuse are comparatively unusual. There are a few who appear mentally disturbed, but most have simply fallen victim to a recession in a society ill-prepared for long-term unemployment. A small number of unemployed labourers have lived in the fringes of Ueno Park for years, but a study recently revealed that they are being joined by an increasing number of former salarymen. According to some estimates around 10 per cent of Japanese homeless were once company managers, the men who provided the engine room of Japan's post-war boom. Although many are former employees of small manufacturing firms rather than elite corporations, their new status underlines the gravity of the country's decade-long recession. As unemployment has risen to record levels, so has homelessness, and notoriously cautious government estimates put the numbers at around 24,000 -- a rise of almost 20 per cent in two years. For many years after the bursting of Japan's economic bubble in 1990, the downturn was called a "golden recession" because the impact was not immediately visible. The problem has been hidden to some extent because Japanese homeless people overwhelmingly keep themselves to themselves, with tent cities growing up mostly in unobtrusive spots under bridges and in park corners. During four decades of almost continuous economic growth, Japan had near to zero unemployment. When people did lose their jobs it was usually temporary. But unemployment is now at a post-war high of 5.4 per cent, an official figure that does not include those who have given up the search for work. Now Japan has at last begun to deal with the issue of homelessness. Local authorities have built temporary shelters and the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has put money into a better safety net for the unemployed. Tokyo Metropolitan government this year said homelessness was a problem of society, not an individual failure. Some Japanese still have a revulsion for the homeless and in recent years there has been a series of unprovoked attacks on them. However, Makoto Yuasa, an activist for the homeless, says such attitudes are becoming rarer and that the rise in homelessness has paradoxically given him hope. "Government has begun to deal with the problem and media often debate the issue," he said. "Homelessness has become so common that it can't be ignored." �Daily Telegraph 2001 >>>> __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
