The old man under the bridge
Once a week, I go visit a client in Tochomae, which is located next to the bustling neon of Shinjuku. After following a long, impressionless underground walkway to exit A5, I emerge into the greenery of a small park. I turn left, and walk under a footbridge, and hat's where I see him.
He's maybe 50 years old, short and haggard. There's a kid of concrete shelf just under one of the bridge supports, which he has converted into a kind of open plan home, but without the walls or roof (well, the bridge is the roof in that it keeps the rain of him). There's a sprawl of "stuff" that he must have collected over the course of years, such as a gore-tex sleeping bag, warm blankets, half a dozen plastic umbrellas, a cooking stove, some dirty looking pots for cooking, a neatly stacked collection of manga (which a lot of homeless people re-sell after being discarded by salarymen), a fairly new radio which is turned down low but seems to be always on, as well as every other material object that a person needs to survive living under a bridge.
Sometimes, if it's cold like today, he'll be sleeping in his arctic sleeping bag, which he has zipped over his head, and piled about five blankets on top. All of his possessions are seemingly scattered around him in disarray, although maybe there is some chaotic order to them which I'm not picking up on. I've seen a policeman walk straight past him without even glancing at him, and this is the same reaction of everybody else who walks under that bridge. It's like he's invisible, or at least if people keep looking straight ahead and ignore him, then there's no need to think about it. It being the rising problem of urban homelessness which has been steadily increasing since Japan's bubble economy meltdown of the early 90s.
In turn, the homeless keep themselves to themselves. They set up little communities in parks, using blue tarpaulin and cardboard to construct a new subdivision in urban living. Depending on how long they have lived in one particular location, their homes can be very sophisticated "buildings", with entrance for taking off your shoes, with a kitchen, living room and bedroom (I kid you not). Some have even been able to find local electric power outlets, so that they have televisions and microwave ovens. The parks are popular because it gives easy access to toilets and washing facilities.
Occasionally, you'll see a news report about police trying to "evict" whole tarp villages, as happened a couple of years ago in Osaka. In that particular case, the homeless took the case to court, and the judge ruled that in fact the police were in the wrong. The tarp constructs could be viewed as homes, taking into account how long the people occupying them had been living there, so they could stay and continue living there. I'm not too sure of the technicalities, but in effect that was what was decided.
This all seems very different from the behaviour and attitude to the homeless in London. Here, the homeless don't beg. Instead, they scavenge and set up make shift stalls selling manga in Shibuya. They walk around with big resin sacks filled with crushed cans which they can take to the government recycling depot, and get some cash. They form communities in parks around the city, so that the blue tarp of their homes blend in seamlessly with the everyday of living in this contradictory city.
He's maybe 50 years old, short and haggard. There's a kid of concrete shelf just under one of the bridge supports, which he has converted into a kind of open plan home, but without the walls or roof (well, the bridge is the roof in that it keeps the rain of him). There's a sprawl of "stuff" that he must have collected over the course of years, such as a gore-tex sleeping bag, warm blankets, half a dozen plastic umbrellas, a cooking stove, some dirty looking pots for cooking, a neatly stacked collection of manga (which a lot of homeless people re-sell after being discarded by salarymen), a fairly new radio which is turned down low but seems to be always on, as well as every other material object that a person needs to survive living under a bridge.
Sometimes, if it's cold like today, he'll be sleeping in his arctic sleeping bag, which he has zipped over his head, and piled about five blankets on top. All of his possessions are seemingly scattered around him in disarray, although maybe there is some chaotic order to them which I'm not picking up on. I've seen a policeman walk straight past him without even glancing at him, and this is the same reaction of everybody else who walks under that bridge. It's like he's invisible, or at least if people keep looking straight ahead and ignore him, then there's no need to think about it. It being the rising problem of urban homelessness which has been steadily increasing since Japan's bubble economy meltdown of the early 90s.
In turn, the homeless keep themselves to themselves. They set up little communities in parks, using blue tarpaulin and cardboard to construct a new subdivision in urban living. Depending on how long they have lived in one particular location, their homes can be very sophisticated "buildings", with entrance for taking off your shoes, with a kitchen, living room and bedroom (I kid you not). Some have even been able to find local electric power outlets, so that they have televisions and microwave ovens. The parks are popular because it gives easy access to toilets and washing facilities.
Occasionally, you'll see a news report about police trying to "evict" whole tarp villages, as happened a couple of years ago in Osaka. In that particular case, the homeless took the case to court, and the judge ruled that in fact the police were in the wrong. The tarp constructs could be viewed as homes, taking into account how long the people occupying them had been living there, so they could stay and continue living there. I'm not too sure of the technicalities, but in effect that was what was decided.
This all seems very different from the behaviour and attitude to the homeless in London. Here, the homeless don't beg. Instead, they scavenge and set up make shift stalls selling manga in Shibuya. They walk around with big resin sacks filled with crushed cans which they can take to the government recycling depot, and get some cash. They form communities in parks around the city, so that the blue tarp of their homes blend in seamlessly with the everyday of living in this contradictory city.
posted by TOK at 11:19 am
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