He is often on the steps of City Hall, wielding electric clippers, administering severe haircuts and beard trims to his troops. He also wants a public works programme to generate jobs while the recession lasts. He points out that even according to official figures, more than 700 men died on Osaka's streets last year, mostly during the winter. He is determined it will not happen again. He adds that TB in Kamagasaki has reached more than thirty times the national average, and approaching Third World levels.
Undernourished men sleeping in the open are especially vulnerable.
Kamagasaki only hit the headlines after the area exploded violently in 1990, in the worst urban rioting in Japan of the last 20 years. More than 200 people were injured in protests over suspected collusion between yakuza gangsters and the police. This public indifference or ignorance means there has been little political incentive for the government to take notice of what is still a small, if embarrassing, minority. Prof Kagami knows Japan must face up to the problem soon More widely, the plight of the poor of Kamagasaki raises questions about public provision for social welfare, which has generally been left to the private sector and to families. Professor Nobimitsu Kagami of Sophia University says that Japan will eventually have to create a better social safety net in the face of the sharp rises in unemployment which he forecasts.