[This dialogue on the situation of the growing number of homeless people throughout Japan probes the breakdown of the work ethic and the social ethic in post-bubble Japan. KANEKO Masaru is Professor of public finance at Keio University. KANEKO Masaomi, deputy director, Office of Labor Policy, Tokyo Metropolitan government is the author of a book on the homeless. The article appeared in the February 2003 issue of Sekai (World).]
Back to Back with Death
Kaneko Masaru: I read your book, I’ve Become Homeless. The general image of homeless people is that they’ve chosen that lifestyle themselves. Speaking from reality, that is totally wrong. Homeless people are in much more dire circumstances. That comes across well in your book.
The popular Tora-san movies depict people who enjoy free living rather than being fettered to a company in exchange for security. Homelessness is different, isn’t it? It is no longer a “life choice.” In circumstances where hope is no longer tenable, human relations also become attenuated. Before you know it, you have no choice but to become homeless. And from such a point it is not easy to find the resolve to stand up.
Kaneko Masaomi: Actually, some time after I wrote I’ve Become Homeless, I was approached with an offer to make it into a movie. But in discussing the possibility, I realized that the story they wanted was, as I had guessed, a “Tora-san” (laughter). Our opinions did not match, so, in the end, the movie never happened. Isn’t it true that that’s the way the homeless are seen?
Masaru: Maybe it’s because people experience their own realities as painful, too, that somehow they think, “Being homeless would be easier. I suppose becoming like that is a choice I could make.”
Masaomi: In that sense, the hurdle between the homeless and their observers has dropped extremely low.
The other day, guards stood in front of Tokyo‘s Shinjuku Station to close it off to the homeless. The guards were saying, “Who knows but that I might finish up on that side.”
When I was researching I’ve Become Homeless, I often listened to the stories of homeless people sitting on the Shinjuku streets. About that time, my work on Municipal Assembly policies had me coming home at four am, taking a bath, and then leaving for work again at six am. I started thinking it would be easier to stay overnight on the street somewhere near the municipal offices. I had intended only to gather information, but in turning my back on the Shinjuku commotion and listening to them, I began to feel like I had no idea where I was…
Masaru: Those who become homeless have had their independence and dignity as human beings snapped in two by company “restructuring” or sustained harassment. Of course, a number of cases like that are presented in your book.
Isn’t the situation more severe now than when your book came out in 1994? The number of homeless people is incredible, isn’t it?
Masaomi: The official count for Tokyo is about five thousand people, but I’m afraid there are probably eight thousand. Osaka is even worse. There are probably over ten thousand homeless people.
Masaru: Osaka Castle Park is like a tent village.
Masaomi: And there are about three thousand homeless in Nagoya.
Masaru: I was surprised to hear that even in Sapporo there are homeless in the underground streets—it’s got to be freezing!
Masaomi: Yes. In winter it’s a matter of life or death. They really are back to back with death. Homelessness is hardly a “choice.”
Masaru: In no way a “choice.” I think the general public lacks the vision—the power of imagination—to see what is really happening.
Hope-less People, Homeless People
For example, suicide among managers of middle and small enterprises is increasing. Normally, we think, “That’s nothing to die over.” But if you look at individual cases, you realize how desperate each one is. There are people who commit suicide thinking, “If I die, life insurance will be paid. I can keep my family from being chased by debt collectors. This is the last thing I can do.” Or, there are those who feel no motivation to recover even if told, “We can reschedule your repayment obligations.” Suicides are happening among those who have lost the desire to live.
Shuttered business districts (where the majority of shops always have their shutters closed) are like that. Most of the managers have grown old. They say, “I’ve had enough. I want to quit as soon as possible.” They don’t consider what will happen to the shopping district. It’s all they can do just to look out for themselves.
The reason Tanaka Yasuo [Governor of Nagano prefecture] is popular now is because he speaks about “the value of living” in terms of being able to say “This is how I am going to live my life.” Talk about the “value of living” can easily end up in religion, but my sense is that the problem is not simply a matter of economics but has deeper roots. “Hope-less” People
Masaomi: I think homeless people are “hope-less,” without hope. I have dealt with them extensively in my work, and really feel that to be true.
They don’t think, “How will it be later on if I make a little effort now?” They can’t see a future at all. If someone says, “Why don’t you go to the hospital and let your body recover so that you can make one more go at it?” this is the reply that would come back: “So what if I did go the hospital? Then what would happen? Even if I got a little better, there wouldn’t be any work waiting for me when I got out. So why go through all the trouble of being hospitalized?”
Concerning lack of imagination, I think that it is not enough just to show the macro numbers. “Three million six hundred thousand people are unemployed, you know,” and “So?” is how the conversation ends. It is only when you cut these numbers more finely that you can begin to see the current situation. The areas about which we do not have any macro data are the extremely problematic ones.
For example, out of the three million six hundred thousand unemployed, how many are heads of their families, with dependents? And how many of them have been job-hunting for a couple of years and are unable to find work? If you break it down like this, things get very serious.
Say it gets to the point that hundreds of thousands of the unemployed are heads of households, people supporting families, people who really have no way of feeding themselves from tomorrow. With families to care for, what are they going to do? They have to do something, maybe even commit some crime. They are on the edge. On the other hand, there are those who don’t even have the energy to enter the crime scene in order to make do for now. You don’t get this sense of gravity from the big numbers, but if you look at the details of each case, one by one, you can’t help being overcome.
Masaru: “Hope-less” hits it on the mark. And it’s not limited to the homeless. Many people no longer understand why they are alive, while there are increasingly more who do not get enraged at injustice. I believe that not getting angry demonstrates a decline in the will to live.
Canaries in the Coal Mines?
Half of the hope-less become homeless. The other half escape from Japan and travel abroad. As for income, they are worlds apart, but I don’t think they are, in fact, all that different. There has to be a line connecting them.
Masaomi: I think of the homeless as canaries in the coal mines. Canaries were placed in coal mines to warn of gas leakages. When gas began to seep out, the canaries, in their weakness, would die on the spot. Likewise, homelessness has hit the weakest. Gradually, gas is blowing in our direction, yet we laugh, “What are they up to, those guys?”
Masaru: For example, no matter how rotten bank management has gotten, or how mistaken the policies of the Koizumi government, there is nobody else to take their places, so their approval ratings keep rising. Meanwhile, the numbers of unemployed and “freeters” (perpetual part-timers) keep increasing.
People have this sense of security that they won’t become a freeter or a homeless person. I wonder whether that is really so. They feel secure, but if you ask them, “What brings you joy in your life?” they can’t respond.
After World War II, Japan allowed everything, including its responsibility for war, to slide into ambiguity. In any case, it has played the game called “economic growth.” People were lashed to the company. Even their weddings and funerals and such were under surveillance. I don’t think that is the least bit fun (wry laughter.) That was the game. Everyone’s dream was for the company to grow big, for themselves to rise inside it. The dream was for the GNP to increase, to stand among the developed nations. When you think about it, it’s a poor dream. Yet within it, each person held their own little dream.
However, in the shuttered shopping streets, people have lost even the will to suggest, “Let’s revitalize this district,” or “Let’s make this a pleasant commercial area.” Actually, a lot of people have fallen into this hope-less state but aren’t even aware of it. Regarding lifestyle, 70% respond, “If I can make ends meet, that’s good enough.” By “making ends meet” do they mean just living and eating? Is that good enough? Poverty of imagination does not only afflict the homeless.
Masaomi: In a world like that, human connectedness weakens. Of course, in the background lies economic poverty, yet I think in more cases, a direct motive behind the decision to become homeless is rather a poverty of human relationships. Everything—the company, the school, the neighborhood—is losing its function as a community.
Masaru: I don’t like collective ”groupism’ very much, but it’s true that we are losing what might be called basic human relations, or the opportunity to consider oneself in relationship to others.
Masaomi: It seems to me that as that kind of sociability, mutual support, or communication erodes, we confront problems like bullying or ostracism at work and at school.
Recently, I heard something from a homeless person that rather bothers me. “We get attacked more,” he said. More frequently, young people shoot them with air guns or throw rocks at them. If they end up killing someone the media goes crazy, but these kinds of assaults happen over and over on a daily basis. Kids on their way to cram school kick them, muttering, “Lazy bums!” “No sleeping in the daytime!” “Harder!” the girls egg them on. When I hear stories like this I feel that the children must be taking out on the weak their own blocked emotions about their own situations.
In addition, about ten years ago already, I did a survey because I often heard people complaining that work is not enjoyable. I was surprised by the results, which indicated that people were on bad terms with their superiors and that human relationships were just horrible. The recession wasn’t even that serious at that time.
Masaru: Let me preface this by saying I don’t know how universal it is. Once, when bullying was getting worse, I heard from a teacher that, “The school won’t collapse.” It won’t be a case of teachers vs. students. Here, everyone does her or his own thing during class—reading books, walking around, singing.” “Shikato” means to purposefully ignore someone or something, but it is not so much that as that unconsciously, they have stopped communicating with each other.
In that sense, the ability of the “bubble surplus employment generation” to communicate has been drastically reduced. Everyone seems to be worried about decreasing academic ability, but I don’t think that the adults are so wonderfully together and that it is only the children who are going to the pits.
Masaomi: The weakening of human relationships is happening in families, too. These days we find elderly homeless people on the street who are receiving retirement funds. Legally, you need an address to receive retirement stipends. They ask what they should do since their registered address is not where they live, or how they can receive medical treatment in a hospital or as an outpatient.
In cases like these, economic circumstances are not everything. Human relations are a big factor. The other day, I met someone who said, “There was no place left for me since a room was needed for a child.”
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