The Hidden Homeless of Tokyo

When imagining a Japanese urban scene in one’s head, one pictures clean streets, narrow alleyways, bright neon lights, beautiful modern architecture, and immaculate public transit. Tokyo, Japan’s main urban center, is seen by some as the ideal, modern mega-city. The Map 1 to the left geographically locates the city. Movies such as Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), and The Wolverine (2013) idealize Tokyo in this fashion, reinforcing this common “clean” and “sci-fi-esque” imagery. Seen as a model modern city to strive for, its urban issues are often overlooked and hidden below the ideal Japanese urban scene that we often fantasize. One of these issues is its homelessness. In contrast to cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, one does not usually think of Tokyo as being associated with homelessness. Japan’s uniqueness in this matter, is that its homelessness is not as thought of amongst the general and international population.

For this Story Map, I will dive into the experience of homeless people and their communities, the struggles they face, the government and societal treatment of homeless, and their more severe vulnerabilities due to their treatment as “informal” people (i.e. not treated as Japanese citizens living a proper life). I will touch upon how homeless find shelter in the small urban Tokyo space, how they are threatened by natural disaster, and how they have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main goal of this Story Map is for it to be a look into a people who are marginalized by society. I believe it is critical to open a look into these marginalized people who in the public eye are not given a voice or spotlight. It is important to rework our assumptions and understanding of Japanese urban society in order to not sideline these people and their struggles.

As the images above showed, many homeless individuals take shelter in parks where they build tents and other structures and also take shelter in within train stations. Map 2 below outlines Shinjuku Ward, one of the wards with a larger population of homeless. It also points out the Shinjuku Station, which is where many homeless spend the night.

In Tokyo, being homeless is stigmatized as being a failure. More often than not, people refer to homeless as a consequence of being “lazy” about finding a job (Elvrum 2012). They see being homeless as a matter of choice rather than a condition. This adds negative associations of stigma to homeless people, marginalizing them. This also leads to the problem of homeless individuals wanting to be self-sufficient as to not reverberate this stereotype. The consequence of wanting to be self-sufficient leads to homeless individuals rejecting social support in order to uphold their dignity as “men” (Tsumaki, 2004; Gill, 2011). It is also important to note that a majority of homeless are men, specifically older men over the age of 50. With older men being a large majority of the homeless population, they are seen, through a gendered lens, as those lazy failures who don’t want to work and are not “man” enough to be self-reliant. In this context, they are seemingly systematically alienated from Japanese society.

The term vulnerability in the context of this Story Map is meant to describe dangers that homeless in Japan are more susceptible to because they are without a home, and with Japan being more vulnerable to natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and typhoons, homeless are not as privy to some of the disaster preparedness and safety plans. During Typhoon Hagibis in 2019, which caused over 60 deaths, two homeless men were denied refuge in a shelter as they were not residents of the Taito ward the shelter was located in. One of these men were found dead near a river after drowning in the floods. It was suspected that he was living near the river (The Guardian, 2019). With homeless having informal living accommodations, they are more invulnerable to natural disasters. Homeless are concentrated in city parks, river banks, and railway stations which makes them more susceptible to the dangers caused by earthquakes and are usually the last people in the city to recover (Takahashi, 1998). This leads to a higher mortality rate due to not having safer accommodations (Wisner, 1998). Overall, homeless are not privileged to the same accommodations as they do not have the proper access to resources needed for preparedness and evacuation (Every, 2014). Additionally, homeless are seemingly excluded from disaster preparations and planning by public services and disaster mitigation policies. It has been seen that they do not have a plan to locate homeless in the case of emergency and because they are stigmatized, they are often excluded from community evacuation and shelters (Yamakita, 2007).

Another vulnerability homeless face is disease and deteriorated mental health. With not having adequate access to medical facilities and not having safer living accommodations, they face a lot of disease and malnutrition, especially during the winter (Ohsaka, 2003). Mental health has also become a larger problem amongst the homeless population. In a survey done amongst 423 homeless individuals in Tokyo by Tsuyoshi Okamura, 51 individuals had a “recurring wish to die”, 29 had “frequents thoughts of suicide”, and 74 had stated that they have attempted suicide at one point (Okamura, 2013). This showcases the poor mental well-being many homeless individuals are in and displays the vulnerability they face due to it. This calls back on the previous section of stigmatization of homeless as "failures", as that idea of being "failures" feeds into to their poor mental health state as the homeless feel the need to blame themselves for their circumstance and strive to be self-reliant. This results in them not seeking help for their mental health, resorting to suicidal thoughts and plans because they believe they have "failed".

The last vulnerability I would like to discuss is the displacement they face from the government and police. As a lot of homeless individuals often set up shelter in public parks, they face evictions due to the mindset that the homeless are an urban blight. One such example happened in Osaka, where 350 police officers assisted in evicting a homeless community residing in Utsubo Park and Osaka Castle Park (McCurry, 2006). This eviction came due to a convention and event occurring in the area. Today, with the Summer Olympics being planned in Tokyo, these kinds of evictions have been occurring.

Like previous Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, etc., efforts to “clean up” homeless was a priority to uphold a “modern” and “clean” reputation. These evictions are conducted on the idea that homeless are visually unpleasant; these actions are akin to Rio de Janiero evicting families living in the slums and covering up the process in order to build stadiums for the Summer 2016 Olympics (Douglas, 2015; Phillips, 2016). Like Rio, presently in Tokyo, homeless are being forced out of the way for development and preparations for the Olympics. These kinds of evictions had already taken place in 2016, when the construction of the New National Stadium caused the evictions of homeless living in a park near the area. Protests had taken place against these evictions but to no avail. Tokyo city officials deny that they are displacing homeless because of the Olympics and are instead citing that it is for “welfare effort to get them off the streets” (Kageyama, 2020). These evictions showcase how marginalized and stigmatize homeless are in Japan, and how they are seen as an urban blight. The Map 3 below showcases the spatial location of Meiji Park and the New National Stadium.

With homeless Japanese citizens struggling to find a roof over their heads at night in the Tokyo urban space, Internet Cafés offer a temporary haven for shelter. Internet Cafés provide people who are unable to pay rent with a cheaper option. 24-hour Internet Cafés offer small private booths for people to rent out for a fixed amount of time, ranging from 6 to 9 hours for only 1500 yen, (approx. $14 USD) (Hirata, 2011); compared to other living options, this is the cheapest around. And since Internet Cafés offer accommodations like free showers, internet access, food and drink, and other facilities, it makes sense that these would be attractive havens to use. Like Japanese homeless in general, much of the demographic are men. However, there is a larger portion of the of the subsequently titled "net café refugees" that are younger, with ages ranging from 25-35 years of age. This is because rent is very, very expensive in Tokyo, and young workers who make a small amount of money are just unable to

In Tokyo today, it is estimated that there are around 15,000 people who utilize Internet Cafés as places for shelter (Emiko, 2020). These estimations may also be underrepresented, as net café refugees are not always living night to night in these Internet Cafés. The main social issue with utilizing Internet Cafés is that these Japanese people go unnoticed under the eyes of government as many are denied welfare (McCurry, 2007). This feeds into the narrative of how homeless are not offered sufficient assistance and are sidelined.

Here is a great video by Shiho Fukuda that provides an inside look into living in an Internet Café. This video showcases how Fumiya, a 26 year old security guard, is not making enough money to afford high apartment rent, and is forced to spend night to night in an Internet Café.

With Tokyo being one of the most populous cities in the world, it was due to be hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. With Tokyo being the highest hub of COVID-19 cases in the country, stricter measures were placed in terms shutting down areas of populous gathering.

Coming off of the previous section about Internet Café refugees, were impacted the most by COVID-19 and these regulations. With the pandemic, thousands of Japanese people calling Internet Cafés home were evicted and displaced due to pandemic restrictions delegated by the government as Internet Café are places that are packed and close-quarters. The Japanese government had planned to accommodate these evicted net café refugees, stating that they would offer hotels as temporary housing. However, it was reported that only a measly 700 people were actually accommodated in these hotels (Emiko, 2020)

With the pandemic also causing much more unemployment, there has been a surge in more informal community shelters being set up for the newly unemployed who are not able to afford housing. And with the pandemic, homeless vulnerability rates are much higher as they have less urgent access to medical services, public assistance, and health insurance (Fujita, 2020). With the general strategy of combatting the pandemic being “stay at home”, it seems impractical for these individuals without homes or places to stay.

For an audio-visual look into how the pandemic has affect net café refugees, the video below by CNN is a good report that has an inside look on the subject.

With the pandemic still raging on, it remains to be seen how many are still displaced from living within net cafes. And with the Olympics displacing many homeless from their previous gathering hubs, support for them is still not adequate enough. While there are welfare programs that attempt to assist them, the stigmatization of homeless still causes misconceptions that cause homeless not to seek help even though they face so many vulnerabilities such as poor mental health, natural disasters, and displacement.

I hope that with this Story Map, I was able to shine a spotlight on a marginalized people that are often thought of as non-existent within the public eye, both internationally and domestically. I want to reiterate that it is important to acknowledge these people struggles as a way to not ignore a glaring problem that is often swept aside, so that in the future homelessness can be properly addressed in Tokyo and Japan with urgency.