Nojukusha (Japan)

Nojukusha 🇯🇵
Location: Japan
Definition: Lit. "rough sleepers", are people living in the streets
Keywords: Japan – East Asia – Informal economy – Informal employment – Migration – Payment – Money – Employment – Recycling
Clusters: Informal entrepreneurship
Author: Hideo Aoki
Affiliation: Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics, Japan

By Hideo Aoki, Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics, Japan

Nojukusha, rough sleepers in Japan, are demographically interesting, even if statistically insignificant phenomenon. According to the government's national survey, the number of homeless was 3,824 in 2021. Most homeless are single, have no children, and consist predominantly of elderly men. 46.3 percent have never been married, and 53.0 percent have been married but separated from their families. 34.4 percent are over 70 years old, with an average age of 63.6. 95.8 percent were male, and 4.2 percent were female.

Nojukusha live off informal jobs, such as day jobs, street jobs or contract jobs in construction sites and factories. During the ‘Archipelago Remodeling’, the period of high economic growth in the 1960s, the day workers took part in the construction of highways, bullet trains, etc. Followed by government-led public investment during the period of economic stability and bubble economy in the 1970s-80s, the needs of large-scale construction projects and the expanding manufacturing industry were satisfied by young workers from agriculture, coal industry and small-scale commerce rather than migrant labour. These workers moved from job to job as day- and contract workers in construction sites and factories. When no jobs were available, the jobless assembled in yoseba districts in large cities (San’ya in Tokyo, Kamagasaki in Osaka, etc.), where day- and contract workers co-habited in flophouses (doya), obtained jobs from brokers, and commuted from yoseba to worksites.

The long recession in the 1990s brought the reduction in public investment and construction and civil engineering jobs. The number of unemployed day- and contract workers camping out on the streets, in parks, and on riverbanks increased. These workers were at the root of Japan’s homelessness problem. In 2003, when the government's national survey began, the average age of the homeless was 57.5 years old, so the majority were still in their pre-retirement years. Since then, the prolonged recession, continued unemployment, and further aging made it difficult for them to escape from homelessness. No longer capable of heavy labor, they became homeless, and eked out a living by doing odd jobs collecting empty cans and old newspapers on the streets.　In 2021, 40.4 percent of the homeless had been living on the streets for over 10 years.

On the other hand, the economy became oriented on services that made employment even more precarious. Many single middle-aged and young men lost jobs and were forced to going to the streets. They became temporarily homeless. Middle-aged men went to job centres and agencies to look for jobs, while young men registered with online staffing agencies, spent the night in late-night cafes, and went to the worksites using their cellphones to get jobs. Thus, the homeless population in Japan came to consist of single middle-aged, single young men, as well as elderly people. Before they became homeless, 36.3 percent of them had worked in construction and civil engineering, 12.9 percent at factories, and nearly 50 percent in service industry. With the transformation of the economic structure, the origins of the homeless became more diverse.

The homeless are informal itinerant dwellers who move from live-in bunkhouses and company dormitories to the streets and shelters. In 2003, there were 25,296 homeless in Japan: 7,757 in Osaka Prefecture, home to the largest yoseba, Kamagasaki, and 6,361 in Tokyo, home to the second largest yoseba, San’ya. These are the rough sleepers, but the actual number of practically homeless far exceeded this number. There arose a phenomenon of the blue-sheet tents and camping in public spaces such as streets, parks, riverbeds, and train stations in large cities, resulting in the informalization of formal spaces. Tent villages became a symbol of homelessness and a poignant social issue. Newspapers and television repeatedly reported on homelessness, increasing citizens' interest in it, and the complaints about the homeless camping out in public spaces have raised issues, once being unrecognised because of the social invisibility of homelessness. Moreover, the gentrification of urban spaces increased with the services-oriented economy. The government and administration, at the behest of capital and citizens, began to regulate encampments out of public space, pseudo-criminalizing encampments under the pretext of beautifying the city, thus re-establishing formal control over the space. This resulted in a clash between the police, exercising social exclusion of the homeless, and the homeless/supporters who resisted the exclusion. Media reports helped to articulate homelessness as a serious social issue.

The government launched a full-scale homelessness policy in 2002. They adopted the first homeless law, the Law on Special Measures concerning Assistance in Self-Support of Homeless, and initiated a housing project to accommodate the homeless, camping out in parks in shelters, and help them find work. (Inclusion of the homeless). However, this law could not address the actual situation of the homeless, who became unable to find work due to aging. Hence, the government began a policy of providing welfare to the homeless and putting them into low-rent flophouses and apartments. Many non-profit organizations participated in this project. As a result, the number of homeless on the streets decreased drastically: in 2021, there remained 3,824 homeless in Japan, 6.6 times fewer than in 2003: 990 in Osaka Prefecture and 889 in Tokyo. The homeless issue disappeared en masse from the streets of Japan's cities, and thus became invisible again. Government’s welfare policy was aimed at alleviating poverty, preventing social exclusion, and bringing them back into social life (re-inclusion into formal space). However, in Japanese welfare system, formality and informality intersect, and people are assigned to and move back and forth between these spaces. Thus, as the number of homeless who became unable to work increased with age, homelessness became a serious welfare issue. Now, the following situation is going on: a gray spatialization of formal space, whereby some homeless do not wish to work and refuse the rules of the shelter. They cannot enter shelters, and even if admitted, they are evicted from the shelters when they violate the rules. Some homeless cannot adapt to group living. Others do not want to be taken care of by the government and refuse to receive welfare. Even if they get welfare and get into flophouses or apartments, they do not fit in there. It is a lonely life because there is no one to talk to. Gentrification has caused low-rent apartments to become suburban. In suburbs, there are no jobs, no living facilities for single persons, and no social networks. Hence, tenants are returning to the city center and living on the streets. In the end, they go into shelters, flophouses, and apartments again, where they grow old, sick, and die lonely. Or they die lonely in the hospital beds. Or they leave the shelters, flophouses, and apartments and die lonely on the streets. In this way, shelters, flophouses, apartments, and streets become human dumping sites for the homeless, who are discarded by society. This is the final stage for the homeless excluded from labor and residence, and pseudo-included by welfare. To build human relationships, support each other, and die being cared for by friends and peers is only a dream for the homeless in Japan.

References

Aoki, Hideo. 2003. “Homelessness in Osaka: Globalisation, Yoseba, and Disemployment,” Urban Studies, 40(2): 361-378

Aoki, Hideo. 2000. Japan’s Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless, Trans Pacific Press

Kitagawa, Yukihiko. 2021. “Homeless Policy as a Policy for Controlling Poverty in Tokyo: Considering the Relationship between Welfare Measures and Punitive Measures,” Critical Sociology, 47(1): 91-110

Mcfarlane, Colin, and Waibel, Michael (eds). 2012. Urban Informalities: Reflections on the Formal and Informal, Routledge

Roy, Ananya, and AlSayyad, Nezar. 2004. Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia, Lanham: Lexington Books