Introduction

Rough sleepers first began to appear on the streets of Japan's major cities towards the end of 1992. Since then, the term ‘homelessness’ has been widely used to describe sleeping rough. To begin, this chapter explores the characteristics and production processes of homelessness found in the Tokyo Survey of March 2000 (Iwata, 2000b). It then discusses the meaning of this ‘new homelessness’ and the response of social policies in the context of recent changes in the socioeconomic structure of Japan.

Although no exact number has been put forward of people who sleep out on the streets and public spaces, the official figure of 20,451 was announced as an estimated number at the end of October 1999 (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2000). The figure was based on different counts over different periods in 132 cities, including the five major cities – Tokyo (23 wards), Osaka, Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Nagoya. Social and voluntary workers have warned that there may be, in fact, even more people sleeping rough. It is clear that families, women, and young people who have taken refuge with friends, family, or in welfare homes can not have been included in this figure. In any case, contrary to initial expectations, areas where rough sleepers are evident have increased. Nowadays, homeless people are easily found not only in the major cities but also in many other cities throughout Japan.

Until the late 1990s, rough sleepers had not been fully recognised as a significant social problem in Japanese society. They were often considered ‘odd’ by their visible misery on the streets, or as day labourers who have temporarily lost their jobs due to the recent economic crisis. As their number has increased, however, some cities have begun to confront the difficulties of maintaining public spaces where rough sleepers have settled, and pushed central government into tackling the problem. In 1999, the central and local governments assembled to examine the issue. The term ‘homelessness’ was formally used as an umbrella term, covering various categories of rough sleepers in each city in Japan.

Recent ‘new homelessness’ in many industrial countries has been explored in various Western studies of extreme poverty, unemployment, housing problems, sickness or other deprivations in contemporary society (Rossi, 1989; Robertson and Greenblat, 1992; Jencks, 1994). At the same time, it has been discussed that homelessness derives from many problems other than poverty and deprivation.