Transition and Issues in Studies on Urban Poverty in Japan
Kahoruko YAMAMOTO, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Urban Environmental Science
Tokyo Metropolitan University
1. Focus on Poverty as a Specific Area Issue
Similar to the case for other countries, sociological studies on urban poverty inJapan started as an analysis of the present state of specific areas with the primarily aimof imposing a series of measures intended to promote welfare in areas that had been
seen as having high level of poverty, crime, unemployment, family disorganization, andother social ills.
Comprehending the facts and reality of poverty in the urban underclass areas ofJapan started as a way to address the social problems that appeared following the rapid
growth of the population. With the onset of the Meiji Restoration and a civil war, thepopulation in Tokyo fell to about half of that in the Edo Era (580,000 in 1872). It started torecover soon after, hitting the one million mark again within the next 20 years. However,
the housing supply and other aspects of the living environment could not support this
rapidly increasing population. In Tokyo and also in Osaka and other large cities in Japan,
people who made a living by recycling and working other low-income jobs begansquatting and living in slums. Some even lived alone because they were too poor to starta family (Nishizawa 2008). Only a few journalists, such as Gen’nosuke Yokoyama(1871–1915) and Yaso’o Kusama (1875–1945), visited such areas on fact-finding
missions to describe the living conditions of those in poverty. Their findings showed thatsuch individuals were unregistered, meaning that they could not receive the sameeducational opportunities or public welfare benefits as other citizens (Yokoyama 1985,Kusama 1992).
As a modern state, Japan had developed its welfare policies between the Meiji
Era and the beginning of the Shōwa era. These programs were carried out directly to thepoor and/or disabled as ‘beneficence’ or ‘charity’ (Iwata 1995, 2007, 2008). After WorldWar II, the Public Livelihood Protection Act (Seikatsu-hogo-hô) was enacted in 1946 (OldAct) and revised in 1950 (New Act). With this act, poverty was assessed on the basis of aminimum standard of living. On the other hand, during a period of high economic growth(1955–1973), the understanding of poverty had been limited to discussions in the contextof developing countries (Iwata 2008).
At that time, poverty seemed to be found in only specific neighborhoods inJapanese society, and each instance was therefore treated as an exceptional case. One
such case was that of Yoseba, where cheap rooms or lodging houses (flophouses,single-room occupancies) for day-labor male workers were concentrated. Kamagasaki1

(Airin) in Osaka, San’ya in Tokyo, and Kotobuki in Yokohama were known as the big
three Yoseba in Japan. During the rapid economic growth period, many day-laborers
from Yoseba worked in construction sites all over the country at the bottom of the social
pyramid, serving as the invisible backbone of Japanese economic development. During
this period, some social workers and activists recorded their activities and provided
portrayals of how such people lived (Watanabe 1977, Nomoto 1982=1996). Althoughthose writings gave general society a rare glimpse into the underclass areas, they stilltended to view such areas as ‘unusual’, ‘peculiar’, or ‘hard to approach’, and therefore
subjected them to discriminatory treatment.
2. Focus on Poverty as a Homeless Issue
After the end of the so-called ‘bubble economy’ during the 1980s, Japanesesociety began facing long-term economic depression and unemployment. The number ofwelfare recipients had increased, and society started to view poverty as a social as
opposed to an individual issue.
From the perspective of urban and regional sociology, some academics engaged
in social research on Yoseba and other urban underclass areas and viewed Yoseba
residents and day-laborers as survivors who had lived long lives despite facing constant
oppression, discrimination, or exploitation as lower-class laborers. Through his researchon Yoseba, Hideo Aoki revealed how laborers lived as human beings and identified asocial and industrial hierarchy that subjected them to discriminatory treatment (1989,2000). At the same time, several anthropologists from the West engaged in similar
research as a result of that on Japanese Yoseba (Stevens 1997, Fowler 1998, Gill 2001).
In addition, as concrete research had been conducted on people in urban
underclass areas, moving from one place to another to find construction and other jobs
was often seen as the day-laborer lifestyle. Before the word ‘hōmuresu’ (homeless) cameinto widespread use in Japanese society, people had assumed that those sleeping
outside and on the streets were ‘furō-sha’ (vagrants) and viewed them as lazy. With therecession and changes in industrial structures, the actual number of people who lost theirjobs and homes and were forced to live on the street increased, so that their existence
became visible in urban spaces such as station yards, public parks, and commercial
facilities.
In 1991, some people living in and around Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo
grouped together and built their own housing from cardboard (the dan-bōru in public
open spaces in the front of Shinjuku Station was known as ‘Shinjuku dan-bōru mura
(Shinjuku cardboard village)’, and soon became visibly recognizable by many passersby.
At its peak, more than 200 people lived in such housing, and some citizens even joined
as supporters and volunteers. Some young artists produced paintings on the cardboard
houses, and some supporters started broadcasting from the village. Such incidents2helped the word ‘hōmuresu’ (homeless) spread in in popular usage (Inaba 1997)1. The
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan conducted the first nationwide homelesscount in 2003 and publicly disclosed the results: there were, in total, 25,296 homelesspersons in Japan, including 7,603 in Osaka and 5,927 in the 23 special wards of Tokyo.
In 2002, the law to support the homeless becoming financially independent(Homeless-no-jiritsu-no-shien-tō-ni-kansuru-tokubetsu-sochihō) was established.
Regarding the self-support system for the homeless, some sociologists have pointed outthat the system itself has to screen out those who prefer to earn money by recycling andare ill-adapted for so-called ‘regular work’ (Kitagawa 2008). With institutionalization andthe identification of ‘homeless issues,’ study and research observing the attitudes, inner
struggles, and interactions with fellow homeless persons and greater society havedeveloped through describing this population as disadvantaged by social inequalities(Aoki et al. 1999, Watanabe 2010).
3. Aging and Increasing Welfare Needs in Urban Underclass Areas
Because of the rapidly aging population in Japan, the number of welfare
recipients has increased nationwide, and poverty has become the main social issue ofthe country. In recent Japanese society, the number of welfare recipient households,
especially single-person households, has increased, and most urgently, the elderly
comprise the highest percentage of welfare recipients [Ministry of Health, Labor andWelfare 2005–2015].
In March 2016, there were more than 826,000 welfare recipient households over
the age of 65 years, which represented more than 50% of all first-time recipients2. Morethan 90% of them (the over-65-year-old welfare recipient households) were living alone.
The welfare recipient households accounted for 6% of all senior households over65-years-old (1,221,000 households). Both the number and percentage of seniors living
alone in poverty have therefore been increasing.
For the elderly living on welfare, finding housing has become increasingly difficult.
This is mainly because of the lack of affordable barrier-free housing for single-living elders,age discrimination in privately owned rental accommodations, and prejudice anddiscrimination regarding the formerly homeless. Therefore, with limited housing options,
there are many cases in which the needy and formerly homeless choose to live in
lodging houses upon becoming welfare recipients (Yamamoto 2013).

1This village was demolished by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 1994. Soon
after, the villagers and supporters rebuilt the housing, but faced forcible removal by theMetropolitan Government in 1996. The rest of the residents continued to live in cardboard
housing until a few were killed in a fire in 1998 (Inaba, 2013).
2
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 2016, “Hihogosha-chosa” (approximate figuresfrom March 2016). (Japanese)3

In relation to this, underclass areas, which are generally poverty-ridden, haveundergone changes in their populations, problems, and participants. Since the latter halfof the 1990s, the number of day laborers has dramatically decreased while the homelesspopulation has increased in each area. The number of welfare recipients increased to thepoint where each underclass area began focusing on human rights, life skills of thehomeless, and social and welfare support for the elderly and disabled (Mizuuchi 2007). Inaddition, the increasing number of welfare recipients living in day-laborer lodging caused
local organizations to change their activities and objectives in each underclass area fromthose for laborers to those for single male seniors living alone.
As the number of those who could exit homelessness and settle into rental
accommodations or other supportive housing increased, some academics started giving
attention to the factors behind this and attempted to explain associations with socialchange at the macro level (Marr 2015). In addition, some new approaches focused on
support for homeless people and their relations (Yamakita 2014).
4. Rise in Irregular Employment and Poverty among YouthAt the end of 2008, just after the worldwide recession triggered by the collapse ofLehman Brothers, many irregular dispatched workers who had lost their jobs grouped
together and formed a tent city known as Toshi-koshi-haken-mura (Dispatch Workers'
New Year Village) in front of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in central Tokyo.
All of the country’s attention was focused on this incident and more broadly on theissues of job instability and the housing and living conditions of dispatched workers(Inaba 2009). In addition to urban and regional studies, other academic studies on youth
and families have increasingly focused on poverty issues, especially in regard to seniors,
single mothers, and youth with broken family relationships. For a long time, homelessissues were viewed as specific to male laborers; however, academic fieldwork, intensive
interviews, and other reports have provided understanding of additional phenomena andpeople facing poverty in urban spaces in Japan (Iijima 2011).
5. Remaining Issues to be ConsideredAlthough poverty has become a nationwide social issue in present-day Japan,
there is still room for additional research and considerations in academia. First, homelessissues in Japan have been often viewed as male-oriented, and this gender-based
framework is not an accurate reflection of reality. Some studies have started to focus onpoverty among women, describing it as having a structural basis in relation togender-biased labor, discrimination, and violence (Kosugi & Miyamoto 2015). Though thenumber is small, there are several outstanding studies that focus on homeless women inurban Japan (Maruyama 2013).
In addition, poverty among migrants in Japan has not been adequately examined.
Academic studies on Korean residents in Japan or Japanese Koreans4

(Zainichi-kankoku-chôsen-jin) have described poor living conditions, discrimination, andpoverty, and other studies have focused on older Korean people left behind in regard to
the economic and social successes of their former fellows; the same aspects have beenadopted in terms of poverty issues among elderly outcasts (Buraku) in local cities (Jeon2015). Focusing on so-called ‘newcomer’ migrants, or those who moved to Japan after
the 1980s, some academic and practical approaches have attempted to characterize
their actual living and working conditions and examine their poverty from the viewpoint ofsystematic discrimination in Japanese society (SMJ 2011).
In recent years, the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion have entered thediscussion of poverty in Japan. Moreover, housing and shelters for those who haveexited homelessness have become more multifaceted, and this phenomenon has been
examined academically (Yamada 2016). Nationwide, some nonprofit organizations ineach city have tried to help the vulnerable come out of isolation and start their lives overagain through a variety of welfare programs (Okuda et al. 2014); this kind of practice hasoften been discussed in relation to acceptance of and cooperation among the vulnerable
in local contexts. Further academic studies that combine these local practical programs
into a theoretical framework are expected.
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