Video: Why homelessness in Japan is different than in North America

[Israel_B]

Interesting video. Prof Gill covers most points well but near the end I take some issue with the way he described the issue around begging. He points out that Christian, Muslim (failed to mention Jews from which those two got this) and Hindu cultures have a tradition of giving to beggars but says the Japanese do not have that tradition. In fact giving to beggars is definitely present in Japanese Buddhist traditions. After that where he mentions the shame associated with begging he is correct.

One causal issue that was not covered was the drop in demand for day labor for construction and some other industries after the end of the bubble era. Exploring that topic might be too complex for this type of video.

@anotherone

Do the Japanese police chase them away, abuse them, steal their belongings, or arrest them for “vagrancy”?

At times yes, all of those things though the question of how thats worded “doesn’t translate well”. Used to be that some areas such as Shinjuku Station West Exit, north side of Ueno Park and Shibuya Station South Exit had huge homeless populations with lots of the improvised shelters like @Nelsie showed later in this thread. BTW @Nelsie your whited out icon made it hard to spot the difference between your good comment and that of @BakaNeko right above you.

Back on point, the police did clear out the above areas due to lots of complaints from the public and these days you don’t see quite as many in those areas.

@anon75430791

the police stand watch all night to make sure they stay put.

I’ve been going through Nagoya station often for a long time. The big plaza area by the Bic Camera exit used to have lots of homeless as did the underpass roads which cut through the station complex. Not sure when those got reduced in size. I don’t think the cops are there to keep the remaining homeless people in place, more likely the main stations are just regular patrol zones.

@tekk

On that topic: what’s their mail situation like, does anyone know?

(and @benkyo) Its problematic and causes trouble with getting into the system of support for low/no income citizens. There was a court case a while back which ruled that the flop house type motels & and places like internet cafes could not be used as a address. The issue of having an address is important because of the laws which require residents & citizens to register their addresses for various purposes. Ends up kind of Catch 22.

@manybellsdown

That’s one of the times I find “homeless” to be an inaccurate description. That guy has a home. It’s not a house, so much, and it’s not socially/legally approved, but it’s a home.

He absolutely does not have a home in any actual sense of the word

[waterloonie]

WaPo is my current favourite. It detects that I’m using an ad blocker. But it’s not intelligent enough to figure out when the ad blocker is disabled on the site.

So I disabled all javascript on the site, and the only downside is that the images don’t load with the article. On the rare occasions when the images are absolutely crucial to the reading experience, I load the page in a portable browser with no extensions. Way to go WaPo, I guess?

[Grey_Devil]

Really great movie, haven’t seen that in ages

[manybellsdown]

How is it not a home? He’s got walls, a roof, furniture. It looks fairly permanent. It might not be the home he WANTS, but it’s a home. It’s not less of a home than millions of people around the world inhabit.

[Israel_B]

No permanence there. In fact these shelters are made for mobility since the people who use them know they can be forced to relocate on short notice. Japan is not a nomadic society. People are expected to have a fixed and registered address.

[shmello]

@anon75430791

I bet they were coders, too

One of the devs at my work lived for years out of his minivan. Still does. Amazing what a gym membership and a laptop with a cell modem can provide. He still has expenses, but they’re much reduced.

[anon75430791]

@shmello

One of the devs at my work lived for years out of his minivan. Still does. Amazing what a gym membership and a laptop with a cell modem can provide. He still has expenses, but they’re much reduced.

Well, I get that you can make sacrifices for the sake of cost, and it’s cool when people do that and come out ahead. Personally, I would rather not sacrifice date night.

But it makes sense for some people. My uncle worked for a few years some 4 hours away from his house, and was coming off a stint of unemployment so was in a situation where he really needed so save up as much money as he could with his new gig. So he took his camper up there during the week and rented a space at a nearby campground for something like 200 bucks a month.