(A country report for Seoul meetings on June, 2004)
Day and Homeless Laborers Committee for Addressing Neo-liberalist Globalization (Japan)
Lower-class laborers at the base of Japan's urban industrial system comprise homeless and day laborers who are forced to alternate living in "hamba" (temporary, dorm-style lodgings) provided by construction companies and, not uncommonly, on the streets. Here, we would like to report on the conditions homeless laborers and day laborers in Japan face, as well as recent developments occurring within our struggle.
For more information on the history of laborers within the urban lower classes of Japan spanning from the post-WWII era, please see "The History of the Urban Lower Class and Homelessness in Japan," by Nasubi and R. Rusenko [1].
1. On the Conditions, and Notable Characteristics Therein, of Day Laborer and Homeless Populations
Urban lower-class has existed historically in Japan. In major urban cities in Japan, there exists the "Yoseba," a city center that de facto supports the bottom ranks of urban industry. It is there that the "Doya," as affordable daily accommodation houses are called, are concentrated and the labor "brokers" came calling to find necessary hands, more often than not, for work in the construction industries. As unemployment grew in other industrial fields, those left without a job made their way to the yoseba knowing it would guarantee them work. Thus, the yoseba functioned as a regulating space for manual labor power itself. However, in the 1990's, with increased "efficiency" in construction practices, in addition to changes within the hiring and employment systems, companies no longer came to the yoseba in search of laborers and, subsequently, that particular function of the yoseba itself broke down. Laborers who lost their income, housing, and other fundamental necessities as a result of unemployment were left with little choice but to take to parks, riverbanks, train stations, and other public spaces to live. Today about 30,000 people are currently estimated as living on the streets in Japan, and 60% of them are former day-laborers relative to Yoseba and 40% are the others. However the ratio of the others have been on the rise.
Of particular note, is the fact that a great majority of homeless persons in Japan are male, with an average elderly age of 56. Owing to unemployment and, in particular, the fact that the pool for labor power is, even to this day, almost exclusively male, as a whole, persons on the street tend to be men getting by alone, without partners or families. They had often worked under unstable employment and living conditions at small and medium sized enterprises, industrial sites, or company-provided dorms, and were effectively tossed aside with the rush of changes to industrial structures as a result of the globalized economy. The fact that women on the street find it incredibly difficult to survive may be thought of as an additional factor contributing, however indirectly, to the low numbers of women.
However, owing to the advancement of globalization along with changes to the services industries, the numbers of women and youth on the street are steadily growing.
2. Living and Labor on the Streets
For the most part, current means of surviving on the streets can be broken down into two "categories".
The first consists of persons who are able to secure space along riverbanks, highways, or in any public area to set up maintainable living quarters usually constructed from vinyl sheets and/or cardboard. These individuals struggle for subsistence by collecting recyclables such as aluminum cans, magazines, and cardboard and selling them to traders. Also, they will stand in line for sports and other events, purchase tickets and sell them for a return, however slight. There are also, at times, opportunities to perform miscellany base labor. However, only the most meager of wages are provided in exchange for any of the above making it nearly impossible for homeless persons to earn enough to escape the streets, or even support a consistent, or minimal, standard for living.
There are numerous homeless communities where individuals with tents located in a certain common park or vicinity support and take care of each other, thereby effectively staving off death to some degree. However, they do remain in constant fear of eviction by the government, as well as ostracism by neighboring residents and the general public.
The second "category" is one of persons forced to live more nomadically; they carry their belongings with them as they wander the streets in daylight hours waiting for the evening where they can find a place to rest by a train station or central shopping street. Those who work find jobs through brokers who come to the parks or stations and, from there, enter construction or cleaning services. However, even if they find employment at a hamba, daily work is not guaranteed. In such cases, they are still charged for room and board thus causing many to return to the streets with little or no actual income gained. Many hamba are actually affiliated with the Yakuza, or Japanese mafia, and restrictions and threats are so severe at the lodgings that employees are, in effect, kept under confinement. A government report estimated 8,000 of these "businesses" to exist across Japan employing upwards of 300,000 laborers. Hard facts concerning what is taking place in this very real black hole of the labor market are to this day ambiguous, not yet confirmable by even activist organizations.
However, there are two specific incidents that may stand as allegories to the confined labor conditions in the hamba. The first was a fire that occurred in May, 2001 at a hamba in Yotsukaido in Chiba prefecture. The doors to the lodgings had been locked from outside in night causing the deaths of four laborers. The second incident took place in June of last year where the murdered bodies of three laborers were found at a camp ground run by Asahi construction in Yamanashi prefecture. The employer was well known for failing to pay wages and covering up accidents and the victims were apparently murdered and buried after protesting conditions. Businesses operating under such attitudes are not uncommon and many homeless laborers have experienced first-hand inhumane confinement and violations themselves. It is also important to note, that under the advancement of globalization and Japan's precarious economic standing, major construction and engineering industries rely heavily on the "free" labor made possible by these practices.
Homeless individuals, whether they possess a living space (tent or other) or not, are unable to forge a path from the streets by the wages they earn owing to current labor environments. Many count on meals provided by support organizations as well as food they find discarded. Also, countless homeless persons are additionally burdened by illness or disease.
3. Policies of the Japanese Government
The government has failed to set up any measures to address issues as outlined above as it has no agency to handle problems of homelessness. However, in 2002 the"Law for Special Measures to Homeless Self-Reliance" was established and an integrated government project centered in the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Unfortunately, sections within this law are in effect being used to justify evictions of homeless persons from public spaces and criticism from rights organizations is now oft resounding.
In conformance with this law, the "General Policy for Handling Homelessness" was released in August of last year (2003). Almost wholly structured following the example of local government measures in Tokyo and Osaka, its very center lies in "Self-Reliance Support Projects" which are designed to return homeless persons to private labor markets through a short-term shelter residence program. However, it is extremely unrealistic to anticipate full re-employment of elderly laborers who had been bumped from the industries in the first place; this is reflected in the programs very poor success rate. The Japanese government is continually refusing to create public labor, its set responsibility, and declines to stray from its path of insisting that the laborers be reinstated in the private markets. As a result, elderly laborers already disadvantaged by their lack of modern skills are left severed from any chance of bounding back into safe, secure living.
Just recently, in Tokyo, a new program designed to provide low-cost apartments for homeless persons who reside in tents in the parks has been announced. However, one has noted the specific target group, it is quite apparent that the real objective of this program is simply to "clean" the parks of the vinyl tents. Furthermore, the city's haste in working to start the program in earnest has caused it to conveniently forget to outline any specifics, such as social benefits or guarantees to be afforded to those that enter housing. This has understandably caused direct criticism of the program as a whole as well as the city's handling of it.
4. Initiatives Being Taken by Activist Organizations
With the rapid growth of homeless populations and an increase in social concern for their plight, the number of organizations established to assist and support the homeless has grown not only in cities, but throughout local areas, since the 1990's. There are organizations composed of activists, concerned residents, and homeless individuals themselves in each region in Japan, and approximately 30 of these groups are member to the national-wide network. Most organizations provide meal services, health services, and consultations and assisted negotiations for those wishing to find out more about governmental services. Also, by incorporating the workings of historical labor movements into their own, a number of groups, starting with the Day-Laborers Union National Council in Japan, have directed a transformation of power into their constituency, the homeless women and men themselves. Members move ahead in their struggles with the enterprises who withhold their wages and cover up accidents and are determined to press for their rights as well as demands for work and social guarantees, all the while assuring survival through their material, as well as emotional, community support for each other.
However, in the face of growing numbers of people living, and dying, on the streets, the reality is that we still remain far from possessing any real, fundamental means to solving the problems of homelessness. Now we see more and more organizations taking on NPO status as regulated by the government and setting out to intake persons from government programs. There are also groups that are taking measures by forming alliances with governmental bodies and local residents.
Recently, the number of officially recognized NPO's and Class 2 social welfare corporations are running resident/accommodation facilities aimed at the current and formerly homeless, not out of a mission to support them, but rather out of a wish to profit. Such facilities connected with Yakuza groups are not uncommon. The government neglects to improve these establishments and, quite actually, chooses to use them, for what they are worth.
5. Anti-Globalization Movements and the Direction of International Unified Action
The homeless population in modern Japan exists as urban lower-class poor borne from an "advanced nation" under neo-liberal global economics. Despite this fact, there are still as of yet few organizations developing initiatives that directly link their brand of homelessness with globalization. However, at the same time, those of us who have come to take part in this gathering in Seoul come with the aim to not just extend common demands for expansion of the safety net, but to strengthen our means to question the actuality of neo-liberalist globalization itself.
More specifically, we have been active in holding exchanges concerning labor struggles that engulf migrant and homeless workers alike, as well as interactions with activists from around the world, such as Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), members of the ATTAC and SUD in France, and members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), battling globalization at home and abroad. With support from the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, we were able to hold an East Asian Exchange Meet with organizations from Korean and Hong Kong active in working with the homeless. In response to a call put out by the "First World Conference of Those Without Voice (NO VOX)" at the 3rd World Social Forum in Port Allegre, we held a demonstration through Tokyo out of our conviction for the international unity of "the have-nots". In January, 2004, we went to Mumbai, India for the 4th World Social Forum with our compatriots from a variety of labor and peace movements.
In Mumbai, we found ourselves listening to the stories of massive forced evictions being carried out in the Philippines and India at the hands of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and its funding and other innumerable occurrences of the oppression of poor classes owing to the actions of Japanese global corporations and banks. From here, as a part of our international united movement, activists addressing homelessness, will direct their gazes at these international enterprises and demand justice-that right be done.
With all this at hand, here for the gathering in Seoul, we have initiated the Day and Homeless Laborers Committee for Addressing Neo-liberalist Globalization (Japan). Seven of our own, including two homeless activists themselves have come from Osaka and Tokyo to participate in the "Poverty and Homelessness" workshop, made possible by the Korean organizing committees and, in particular, the preparatory work we have embarked on with the Korean Council of Religion and Citizens' Movement for the Homeless (KCRCMH)
[1] Nasubi & R. Rusenko, "The History of the Urban Lower Class and Homelessness in Japan" (2003): www.jca.apc.org/~nasubi/archives/2003asf.html
