This Is How Japan Hides Its Homeless from the World

This Is How Japan Hides Its Homeless from the World

japan says there are no homeless people in the country zero reports show nothing the streets are clear on paper the problem is solved but that’s just an illusion there are homeless people in Japan you just don’t see them they’re hidden from sight off the streets erased from the stats in Tokyo there are no tent cities and you won’t even run into beggars but it’s not because they don’t exist japan just made sure the homeless stay out of sight [Music] in Kotabuki a dozen drunk old men fill up an illegal gambling den tucked in a dimly lit alley they’re betting on motorboat races and other competitions but even though they’re sipping beer and watching rows of TVs barely anyone has money to actually place a bet there’s just nowhere else for people to be the truth is they’re all homeless but Japan doesn’t admit it kotabuki is one of the three traditional day labor neighborhoods also known as a doya guy people live here in rooms that resemble flop houses and find odd jobs nearby the other two such areas are Sonia in Tokyo and Kamagasaki in Osaka despite being places where people live and work they’ve historically also drawn in the homeless and the poor volunteers call these neighborhoods towns where people in hardship live within a civilized society mostly it’s men who live here and they tend to have more health issues than anywhere else there’s also a common belief that this day labor district is completely turned into a welfare area and that’s partly true kamagasaki and Kotabuki came about when people from the slums were moved there in 1911 in Osaka and in the mid 1950s in Yokohama a typical place to live in Kotabuki looks like a tiny room that fits three tatami mats that’s around 54 square ft usually this room is crammed with kitchen stuff a TV a fridge a mattress clothes shoes and all the other things a person needs to get by back in 2016 someone living in a room like that was getting about 146,000 yen in government aid that was around $1,253 at the time people would split that more or less evenly between rent and daily expenses but really none of them have ever had a place of their own and the conditions they’re stuck living in are honestly pretty bad so why aren’t these people called homeless well actually the term homelessness is pretty specific japan’s Homeless Self-support Act from 2002 defines homelessness as living in public places like streets and parks excluding people who stay in shelters or temporary housing this narrow definition means that many homeless people simply don’t get counted in the official stats even people who struggle with housing and live in tough conditions still technically aren’t considered homeless real homelessness is measured by the number of people you can see in parks and along river banks during the day they pretty much don’t count anyone at night plus there are a few tried andrue ways not to end up in the homeless stats and the Japanese make good use of them by the way speaking of stats as of January 2025 the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare reported 2591 homeless people across the country Japan’s population is about 124 million so yeah the number of homeless is pretty much zero way less than 1% in fact Japan’s considered the country with the lowest rate of homelessness in the world it shares that title with Finland but in reality of course things are quite different the first trick to not ending up in Japan’s homeless statistics is to stay hidden in US cities like LA New York or San Francisco massive homeless camps are a visible sign of the crisis these tent towns are both proof of the systems failure and a trigger for public anger people who were forced to live on the street pitch their tents close together for safety and to form community camps in some cities like Seattle Washington these tent camps are even approved by local authorities in 2017 the National Law Center on Homelessness recorded a 1342% rise in the number of such unique camps reported by the media in 2007 19 camps were documented while by mid 2017 the media had reported 255 and that number keeps growing but in Japan you’d never see anything like that every night in the city hundreds of people unpack their cardboard boxes to sleep in them and in the morning these boxes are folded up and hidden from prying eyes during the day Japanese homeless people try to blend in with the rest of society and avoid drawing attention these people don’t beg don’t ask for spare change and don’t look dirty if you meet them on the street you’d never guess they spent the night without a roof over their heads but why is that it’s all about cultural norms in Japan people don’t approve of showing struggles in public geographically Japanese homeless folks usually gather in city parks along roads and by riverbanks which helps them stay out of sight and since being homeless in Japan is shameful it only makes them less visible asking for help is seen as a personal failure and homeless people often get so marginalized that society just ignores them this problem’s especially relevant for men who make up more than 90% of the homeless as a result many of them avoid public places and look for shelter in internet cafes keep this idea in mind i’ll come back to it a bit later most homeless people get by with odd jobs and don’t keep in touch with their families because of the shame tied to being homeless public toilets and washing spots are widespread all over Japan so most homeless folks stay clean enough not to stand out in the crowd but the biggest issue with being invisible and trying to stay invisible is definitely a shame men who don’t have obvious illness or injuries usually get judged and criticized for being homeless whereas Japanese officials tend to be more sympathetic towards women in the same spot and give them more help this is because of the country’s conservative mindset a good example of shame around homelessness is the one I found in a 2016 article when a reporter making a piece about homeless people visited a charity soup kitchen all the needy calmly lined up for food but none of them wanted to be photographed although some were willing to show the media how clean the boxes they lived in were the volunteer helpers were also reluctant to be photographed or give interviews this is because in Japan the idea that society should help the homeless isn’t well-developed in the past homeless people under 65 were seen as lazy and helping them was just wrong even now Japan makes life hard for the homeless for example there’s an official law that forbids begging and it can actually be treated like a crime plus there’s this social bias that being homeless is your own fault even the way cities are built often make sure homeless people can’t sit or sleep on the streets they do their best to push them out of the community judging by surveys from Tokyo Spring Homeless Patrol many homeless people don’t even know about the social welfare programs that exist and those who do know say the application process is unreasonably specific and detailed plus don’t forget being homeless is terribly embarrassing so people often avoid applying some even say the police chase them away or make them hide even when there’s nobody around there’s also a feeling among the homeless that the government’s trying to cover up how bad the homelessness problem really is however hiding from the statistics isn’t the only way to avoid officially being labeled homeless those who live in capsule hotels cheap shared housing or places lacking basic facilities also fall under a broader definition of homelessness this group is hard to count but it might include tens of thousands of people across the country yes homeless shelters in Japan aren’t overcrowded and the media especially like to compare the situation to the US where things are totally the opposite but in many parts of Japan the high cost of living makes housing out of reach for low-income Japanese people besides homeless shelters lots of poor Japanese end up living in doy neighborhoods i mentioned them at the very start of the video as for Tokyo there aren’t any shelters where people can just come and stay overnight like they do in the US and other countries that’s because such an arrangement doesn’t fit Tokyo’s main goal to get people off the streets and into a roof over their head somewhere so the city has about 150 long-term shelters kind of like dorms run by nonprofits that get some indirect support from the government around 4,000 people live in them but these places have a bad reputation some are rundown and most are overcrowded spots with lots of rules and no privacy a lot of homeless people actually prefer the streets to these dorm style shelters because out on the street they feel less stressed there are also internet cafes and that’s definitely a pretty wild thing because people actually live in these cafes using them as real homes a lot of these folks don’t have steady jobs and can’t afford a place to live this has given rise to a whole new term internet cafe refugees yeah there are so many homeless like this that they’ve been put in a category of their own and while these cafes started out just offering internet services some have expanded their range of services now they offer private space internet access and basic amenities like a shower making them a preferred alternative to public shelters for those trying to avoid the stigma of homelessness it’s estimated that in Tokyo alone about 15,000 people were living in internet cafes in 2020 five times the official number of homeless people in Japan activists think that young people affected by homelessness probably bounce between friends places internet cafes late night fast food joints and the streets and that really makes it hard to count how many Japanese people actually don’t have a home most homeless people who crash at internet cafes usually don’t really care much about the internet they just use those places because they’re cheaper than other spots like host or capsule hotels while internet cafes mainly charge by the hour most places offer night packages with discounts prices vary by city but 6 or 9hour packages usually cost about $2,000 yen or about $14 some internet cafes offer not only free showers but also sell underwear and other personal stuff most places also give out free soft drinks and different kinds of soups and in some spots you can even buy a wide range of restaurant quality dishes there are even self-service and most importantly there are separate booths with reclining chairs that you can rent by the hour by the day or overnight so you can catch some sleep there the booths are divided by thin wooden partitions and a long narrow corridor separates one row of boos from the other and since Tokyo has tons of internet cafes almost anyone can find a spot to crash for the night of course not all internet cafe visitors are homeless some of them are tired Japanese businessmen who went out drinking after work and missed the last train home but others really can’t afford a place to live internet cafes give them basic shelter and privacy the staff ask few questions and take cash payments privacy is really one of the main perks because no one wants their family or employer to know they’re homeless by now you might have gotten the impression that Japan does nothing about its homeless just hides them away and shames them but that’s not the case the drop in homelessness in the country is largely thanks to a number of government policies and social initiatives rolled out in the late 1990s and early 2000s for example the homeless self-support Act of 2002 which I already mentioned this law was meant to help homeless people find work and become self-sufficient in Tokyo self-help centers were set up and temporary housing was offered to those who could no longer live on the streets they also increased the number of shelters between 1998 and 2010 the number in Tokyo really did go up a lot there the homeless can get not only temporary housing but also rehab services there are also long-term shelters and social support programs these are the very shelters that work more like dorms and offer long-term housing solutions yeah people aren’t thrilled about them but those shelters still exist the government has also expanded its livelihood protection program which gives financial help to homeless people including rent subsidies and living expenses there’s also another reason why Japan has fewer homeless people than elsewhere because far fewer Japanese people are addicted to illegal substances a 2014 study showed that only about 1.6% of Japan’s population had ever tried illegal substances since these substances are strictly against the law the only way to get them is through gangs and that’s why around half of substance abusers in Japan are connected to gangs still many homeless people in Japan suffer from alcoholism as for the US a survey of 67,500 people showed that over 50% of the population have used some kind of illegal substance in their lifetime it’s substance addiction that’s one of the reasons for homelessness in the US and can keep people from getting housing and jobs because of a criminal record according to Homeless Hub 30 to 35% of all people who experience homelessness around the world have a mental illness in Japan someone with a mental illness is usually placed in a psychiatric facility to keep them off the streets there are 269 psychiatric beds per 100,000 people here compared to just 25 in the United States and there just aren’t enough spots for everyone but how many homeless people are there in Japan really if you take into account all the factors I mentioned then the real number of homeless in the country might be anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 you get it that’s way more than the number officially recognized by the ministry it’s believed that Japan’s modern homelessness crisis started after World War II when the bombings left nearly 9 million people without a roof over their heads but the country’s post-war economic miracle with its fast industrial growth and innovation led to a sharp drop in homelessness by the 1960s so what happened next the economy was booming there were plenty of jobs and the number of homeless people was going down as people landed jobs and got paid well for them but then the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s kicking off the lost decade a time of economic stagnation when unemployment rose again followed by a rise in homelessness the first nationwide survey on homelessness in Japan carried out in 2003 found 25,296 homeless people in the country with 23.4% of them living in Tokyo most were older men with an average age of 56 it’s exactly these kinds of people who are hit hardest by homelessness many of them end up as victims of the lost decade people used to count on lifelong jobs but back in the ‘9s a lot of middle-aged men found themselves out of work they had no real social mobility to switch careers and by the time they became unable to work these men were left alone without savings or family support most of them were former builders or unskilled workers who were too old to pick up new skills and got stuck where Japan’s economy left them however quite some time has passed since then and new homeless people have started showing up in the country researchers say clear signs are already showing that the pandemic has pushed more Tokyo residents to the edge of their financial limits charities that have been working in the city for many years report more people coming to their soup kitchens for the homeless in 2022 more than 400 people were lining up for food before the pandemic it was around 100 similar figures were seen elsewhere for example the Moy support cent’s free food distribution was drawing over 400 people a week compared to 60 before co another telling sign is that the number of people seeking public housing support spiked sharply the number of people approved for such assistance has jumped 34fold since the start of the pandemic by the way when the pandemic started in early 2020 and Japan declared a state of emergency a lot of internet cafes had to temporarily shut down to avoid a sudden surge of people on the streets the Tokyo government booked several thousand rooms in business hotels across the city to house them until the state of emergency was over that was probably the clearest though temporary measure the government took to support the homeless during the pandemic without it the number of people living on the streets would have shot up and who knows what that could have led to you owe me a like see you later

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