/ 30 June 2003

Homeless in Tokyo

If David Beckham had peered down from the 38th-floor window of his swanky Tokyo hotel last week, he might have wondered why the vast green park opposite was flecked with blue tarpaulins.

The world’s richest footballer would have been amazed to see under those sheets the growing legion of the city’s homeless eking out a desperately poor but astonishingly disciplined life.

Shinjuku Central Park was intended as the recreational centre of one of the capital’s most ambitious developments, but it is now a giant outdoor dormitory for labourers and salarymen pushed out of work by recession.

This symbol of the city’s optimism a decade ago has become one of the few visible signs of the drawn-out decline since then, with several hundred temporary residences of cardboard and tarpaulin squeezed behind bushes and alongside the park’s temple.

The orderly behaviour of its residents also helps to explain why Japan has been able to suffer a 12-year slump without the social disturbance that might be expected elsewhere.

In the past seven years government statistics say the homeless population in Japan has more than doubled to 25 200, of whom 5 700 live in the capital.

Many of those in Shinjuku Central Park appear so ashamed of their lowly status that they would rather not be noticed at all. Most are ultra-polite, even apologetic, are rarely implicated in crimes and do not usually beg, preferring to work whenever possible by recycling cans or labouring.

Not only are the park’s lawns, paths and toilets kept spotless, but the inside of the tarpaulin homes are regularly swept and tidied. As for any Japanese house, visitors must remove their shoes before stepping on to the cardboard floor and the futons are aired on the railings outside.

It may be the bottom of the social heap, but hierarchical values seem as strong here as anywhere. Far from the survival of the fittest, the pecking order is at least partly determined by seniority: those who have stayed in the park the longest live in homes of stout hardboard near the outer railings. Further inside are rows of tarpaulin tents and, finally, there are the newcomers who must make do with benches and cardboard.

Drugs and alcohol are remarkable by their absence. The only empty cans (all carefully collected) are of a soft drink distributed by a Christian charity.

The residents — mostly men in their late 50s, the generation worst hit by the economic slump — seem accustomed to gaman (endurance), the teeth-gritting habit of a lifetime, inculcated by a conformist education and driven home by decades of corporate loyalty.

That system may have failed them, but usually there is little protest.

For the most part, the mood is one of resignation. ”I get cold and hungry, but there is no point complaining. It’s just the recession,” said one of the park’s newest residents.

”I just have to keep looking for work and hoping that things pick up.” — Â