I have become very interested in the image of Japan and trying to understand the reality behind this clean ordered image. I decided therefore to stay in some of the poorer areas of Osaka (in hostels but ones that are used by Japan's poorer sections of society)
Now Japan has crime rates that are so low they are hardly worth talking about and having been to some places generally considered to be dodgy I have learnt to trust my instincts which generally kick in when I should be feeling unsafe. Those instincts have not kicked in here and while I have been cautious I generally feel at ease here.
I hadn't ventured east of my hotel much so I decided I would head that way to see if there were any restaurants. My first impression as I walked along I realised the area was a more local and residential area. It had small bars no bigger than a garage that spilled out onto the street with Japanese people out enjoying themselves dosed up on cheap sake.
The further we went however, the more I began to realise just how poor the area was. Its not just that it did not have the usual Lawsons or 7/11 on every corner, or even that it was a bit dirtier and not so well-lit. It was the feeling of utter hopelessness and the corresponding looks on the faces I saw. Sure, some of them looked to be enjoying themselves but it was apparent that this was the poorer side of town.
We found dinner in a really nice place that while obviously local was still generally welcoming to us and even in an area like this I still did not feel unsafe.
When you first arrive in a city its often a bit of a blank slate with the picture forming slowly overtime until you can eventually form an opinion or comparison with other places, lets face it how was I to know that the rest of Osaka or Japan was not like this? This was the case with the area I was staying in and my hotel. I had begun to realise that this was not simply a backpackers and that many of the people staying in Hotel Toyo were in fact Japanese people living here or at least staying occasionally and often with bags of their belongings, which I took to be their worldly possessions. I did not think much of it because it was very rare and on the whole this place is full of backpackers, being Osaka's main area for hostels. There is no doubt however that there are also numerous hotels around here that do not cater for backpackers at all and are in fact cheap places for Osaka's homeless to spend a night when they have a bit of money or for working men to live in because they are down on their luck.
Having noticed this in Hotel Toyo I have become curious about some of their stories and situations. There is one guy who always looks dressed for manual labour and is only here late at night. On one occasion he opened his door and I couldn't help but notice, because I am naturally nosey, that his room was almost completely full of boxes and bits of paper, so much so that he has to climb over them to get into the room. I can only assume that his life's belongings are in there and he has had to find somewhere to store it all and to live. I imagined how I would cope having to store my life's belongings in a large cupboard and still find space to sleep.
With unemployment rising fast in Japan I could not help but wonder if he is one of the many people whose lives have been burst along with Japan's miracle economic bubble. In a very traditional society like Japans providing for the family is taken extremely seriously and failure to provide can be shameful. As a result many men are disgraced by losing their jobs and evicted from the family home; I get the impression it is to the hotels around here that they flee to.
Further east there is a supermarket that Becca and myself discovered and which I now go to almost daily because it's so cheap. My daily visits have become more and more depressing now because of the state of many of the people who go in there. Many of them are definitely homeless and all of them are working class or unemployed and poor. There are often drunk people asleep outside at all times of the day and it does not matter what time you go in, it's always full. At first I felt extremely self conscious and very out of place and its says something for my situation that I have now simply stopped caring. Whats even more worrying is that I think that they have as well.
One thing I have noticed in all of this is that all the people I see fit into a certain group almost without fail. They are all the same sex (male) and all the same age (over forty). This can not simply be a coincidence I said to myself.
I already knew that Japan had a very ageing population and that it was one of the worst in the world. While this is a problem in many Western countries, due to improved health care which is keeping more people alive for longer and birth rates that cant keep up. Japans demographics however speak for themselves and they are pretty shocking. In 2000 over 21 % of the population was over the age of 65 and a simple walk around this area shows the problems this will cause a nation when the problem is coupled with high unemployment and its clearly the older generation that is paying the price. There are many article and news paper reports on this but here is an example Japans aging population. Furthermore, Japan just does not have a welfare system to cope with the number of unemployed and homeless people that these factors are creating. If the Osaka Government's policies are anything to go by it's a problem they would rather sweep under the carpet by evicting homeless people from areas where they have become established, like Osaka park which was recently the focus of very controversial attention. More can be read about this in the following article about the Governments eviction of homeless people from Osaka Park.
This city has the worst homelessness in japan and while this is a problem that the city has had to contend with for many years its a problem that is getting worse. There is one area further into the city which must have at least a hundred people there at any one time all wearing rags all male and all of roughly the same age.
At present Japan's workforce consists of 25% over the age of 55. As with many other countries, wages in Japan rise with age but this is even more pronounced in Japan meaning that people tend to stay with the same company until they retire. However if people lose their jobs later in life they are likely to find it very hard to find another job because companies are reluctant to pay higher wages and will instead take on younger workers on lower wages.
Japan's strict traditional values also influence the employment policies of its companies and unmarried people are generally considered less trustworthy than married people.
These factors go some way to explain the huge number of single men over forty drinking cheap sake. If you're over forty, single and unemployed in Japan you don't stand much of a chance.
These issues are obviously made harder by the recent worldwide economic downturn and the recession that Japan has been struggling to get out of for the last ten years. Things had improved two years ago and Japan's economic future looked much brighter, but the recent worldwide economic problems have sent Japan straight back into the red. When coupled with the demographic problem it's clear that Japan faces some very severe problems because it has a population to old to work and who cant find employment if they are unlucky enough to lose their jobs and an economy reluctant to expand under intense economic conditions.
People are obviously eager for change in Japan because they have just voted in the first change of government for something like fifty years. It will be interesting to see how they tackle the problem of Japan's ageing population or its economic woes but it is clear that it's going to take more than a national holiday `respect for the old` in their honour. Perhaps they should consider another holiday in Osaka and call it respect for over forty unemployed homeless men.
I have traveled in some of the poorest countries in the world. Countries like Cambodia which had, when I went nearly ten years ago, only just come out of a civil war which had lasted nearly 25 years (this includes the period of rule under the Khmer Rouge). Laos who's isolation from the world following the Vietnam War, meant that its infrastructure had hardly changed since then end of that war. Burma, in a similar situation due to its cruel regime. I have seen poverty so bad that I have wanted to cry at the fact that we as a race can allow this to happen and worse have been its cause.
But at least those countries have the excuse of circumstance, of a history that just would not go there way. I never for the life of me imagined that I would come to the second wealthiest country on the planet and see destitution and poverty that would make me want to weep as much as I did in parts of Southeast Asia. But I have every day I have been here! It is shameful in a country with so much wealth. That shame must fall on the Japanese government and to an extent the Japanese people for allowing it to happen while they play their video games or watch TV on the underground on their way to their comfortable homes. The wealth that this country has and so many of its people are slipping into the cracks of poverty. This may sound melodramatic and of course there are shocking cases in my own country but the shear numbers here and the complete lack of any system to deal with the problem makes it far worse than the UK. I have seen poor areas in cities in the UK from Liverpool to London and Bristol, but in any of those cities you would not see over a hundred people in one small area alone because they have no where else to go. And the problem of tramps having to be evicted from Osaka park would not be a problem if at least at least some of the vast numbers of people sleeping rough had something to fall back on. If this new government really is dedicated to change and to improving the lives of Japanese people and keeping this country great, it needs to start with those that have been forgotten for so long and those that are most vulnerable. I hope when I come back that things have changed!
