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Scenes From Tokyo's Skid Row
As we wait with bated breath for the BoJ news this evening, and while the world stares in jealous amazement at the Japanese stock market's gains and infers that things must be economically awesome in the island nation, the sad depressing truth is - things are worse, much worse, as this series of images from Sanya (or Tokyo's skid row) indicates. The Sanya district in the north-east of Tokyo was taken off the map 40 years ago, but if you can find it you'll discover many of the city's 15,000 homeless people.
Homeless In Tokyo
TOKYO CITY SERIES - HOMELESS IN TOKYO from Spine TV on Vimeo.
Via Japan Sub-culture Research blog,
Scenes From A Tokyo Skid Row Clinic
You’ve probably never heard of Sanya. The Tokyo City Government doesn’t acknowledge its existence, and you won’t find it on any official maps. Sanya is more or less Tokyo’s skid row, where people, mostly men, end up when the other parts of this immense, gleaming city have stopped offering comfort and opportunity.
Sanya is where the Japanese outcasts, food animal butchers, leather tanners, and other professions considered “unclean” by Japan’s traditionally Buddhist ruling class, aka the burakumin, or dowa, plied their trades for centuries. These tradesmen may mostly be gone, and the smell of the blood they spilled long-since drifted away, but the stigma of what Sanya once was remains, and it clings to the many of the people who live and work here.
Sanya is a blue-collar place, where an aging population of day laborers lingers on the fringe of Tokyo society. Many laborers have drinking problems, and they’ve ended up in Sanya to hide their abuses from their families. Sights like this fellow are pretty common, except in rainy weather.
And even then Sanya has a sh?tengai dotted with little bars and liquor stores.
xxx
For many men in Sanya, government welfare assistance is available but is a problematic thing. Applying for it requires identity verification by contacting an applicant’s family. Most Sanya men who have fallen on hard times and taken to excessive drinking don’t want this. They would rather their families not know where they are or how they live. Revealing this would mean bringing unbearable shame upon their loved ones.
So when you’re down in Sanya and public assistance isn’t an option for some reason, what do you do? You go private, to a small outfit like Sany?kai NPO, a non-religious non-profit organization. The Sany?kai NPO and the free medical clinic within it is run by a couple of foreign missionaries who have been doing charity work in Sanya since the early ‘80s.
xxx
Deacon Jean LeBeau, the director of Sany?kai NPO, is a French-Canadian Catholic with the Quebec Foreign Mission Society. Deacon Jean has been in Japan for 41 years, including 28 years in Sanya. He’s a humble, affable man, who would rather speak Japanese than either English or his native French.
Sister Rita Burdzy, head nurse of Sany?kai clinic, is an American from St. Louis, Missouri who came to Japan in 1981. She is a nun with the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic of Ossining, New York, a Roman Catholic order whose members devote their lives to service overseas in specialties such as medicine and agriculture. Sister Rita holds a Japanese nursing license and is the nurse in charge of most of the activities at the clinic.
It’s a small facility, with only two beds in the examination room. Hundreds of ailing men have passed through this place since it opened in 1984. And somehow it manages to keep doing the job.
In addition to Sister Rita, medical services are supplied by a volunteer roster of over 30 medical doctors and registered nurses. Doctor Kanade Hagiwara, an urologist at a general hospital in Tokyo, is one of those volunteers. She treats patients at the clinic on the fourth Saturday of each month. The NPO is not a religious organization, and therefore does not insist that either volunteers or clients adhere to any one faith, or have any religious faith at all.
Within the clinic, the one concession to spiritual matters is this hand-made banner and the shrine beside it, which is dedicated to recently-departed clients and patients of the clinic.
Since Sanya does not officially exist, Sany?kai clinic has an address in Kiyokawa, in Taito-ku ward, on a small street that could easily pass for an alleyway. Outside the clinic, unless it is raining or bitterly cold, men in need of clinic services sit on benches and wait, often with Sister Rita and Deacon Jean (whose back is shown) somewhere nearby.
But the men who gather outside Sany?kai clinic tend to make it more of a social venue than the dreary medical waiting-room scene you might expect. They’re a diverse group, even though most are older day laborers who get less and less work as they age. The men in the middle and the right fall into that category. The guy on the left is a transplant from nearby Asakusa, whose reasons for ending up in Sanya are not entirely clear.
But this man, who died of a brain hemorrhage in June 2012, used to own a bar next to the clinic.
While this fellow is a professional cook who does not always get daily work.
If the men who frequent the Sany?kai clinic share one thing, it is a quality Sister Rita calls ningenkusai (?????), which she says “Is a quality of being very human, of smelling comfortably human. Of being full of human traits.” She adds that this is the best English translation she could offer for a concept that she says is uniquely Japanese.
With obvious fondness, Sister Rita goes on to say that despite their backgrounds and personal secrets, “These men have a purity of heart and are very charming. There is no guile in these men.” She sums things up by saying when men come to the clinic off of Sanya’s streets and ask for help “No questions are asked. We’re a family.”
And you can feel the truth of it when she says it.
So, there’s no crime story here, and no breaking scandal. It is surprising, and shameful, that a city like Tokyo has had a problem like this for so long. But at least the phenomenon of homeless and chronically drunk and unemployed street men isn’t being ignored. Good people are on the case. People like Sister Rita and Deacon Jean.
Reporting and photography for this story was done in April, 2012.
Author’s note: This is a condensed, reworked excerpt from my recent Amazon Kindle photo essay book “Ningenkusai: Part One of Tokyo Panic Stories”. You can buy a copy by following the appropriate link at Abiko Free Press.
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Kampai!
Just 15K? Come to California to see some real homeless problem.
I agree. There must be 50,000 homeless in Santa Monica.
Those are the cleanest homeless people I have ever seen.
Amerika wins again!
Slightly off topic, as Abe ordered a few thousand Drones yet, and say, 1.5 Billion Rounds of 9x19 Parabellum for the Minenea PM-9? These folks could well be Tierrist and the state cannot be too careful.
If this is the state of developed Asia...I think I'll stick to my hovel.
David Hale: 10 things you didn't know about Asia
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2013/04/david-hale-whats-next-in-asia-ten....
Agreed. If this guy really wants a challenge, he should tackle the homeless in downtown LA where they lay on the sidewalks at night, surrounded by their shopping carts, meager belongings and dogs. Now there's a sight to behold. Next to them is the bus station which has a fence topped by barbed wire. Downstairs looks like a third world country where the length of time you get to sit at the local eatery depends on what you buy.
the japaneese are worthy of help. not americants.
People are worthy of help. Collective groups are not.
FIFY
THIS IS NOT HOMELESS
This is lesshomed, two different phenomena all together, home"less" is your home taken from you by others with more power, guns, money, war and you have no ability to fight back.
Lesshomed is not having a home by your own actions. Two altogether different conditions and typically confused by those looking to profit from the lesshomed.
disclaimer: not a conservative fucktard instead a first generation immigrant who owned it, yes i know mental illness is a cause too
The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDSdg09df8
Great link. Thank you
Indeed great link. There are angels in this world, those that serve these people are some of them.
I watched that video last summer. It gave the the creeps - big time.
Thanks for the link, Rusty, worthy video.
Can Obama send them some EBT cards?
Then shit like this happens when they can't get booze ...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/deli-clerks-face-slashed-open-refusing-sel...
let's just give them some bitcoins...
binjo-ditch, Bitchez!
The place looks clean enough for Keynes himself to eat off the sidewalks.
kinda embarrasing for the good ol usa.
Is that guy in the first pic sleeping on a Louie Vuitton bag??
He made Japanese Louie Vuitton knock-offs back in the day. Now they're all made in China.
Welcome to the dark side of the force.
Dad?
Quite likely. His smartphone and wallet is probably tucked inside it for safe keeping.
If there were a baseball game on the radio, he'd be awake with the earbuds in.
I would rather live there than live in Detroit or Chicago where armed scum is running wild.
Those men would probably rather live in Detroit or Chicago. You don't carry their cultural baggage.
Being a drunk isn't "cultural baggage." These guys aren't burakumin...those have not quite cushy QE-paid projects to live in and a gov't stipend. These guys are the 15,000 black sheep in Japan (well Tokyo, I should say) who've decided to drown their problems chemically. Interesting they should choose Sanya because it isn't the biggest skid row in Japan. That honor goes to an off-path area of Osaka...but when the only goal is to bash Japan (what's the point of this article being posted here again??) one wouldn't want to devote TOO much time to research. Better just to find the most rancid piece of meat at hand and throw it to the wolves.
Meh, I thought this was a good story. I think much more of Japan after reading it. It is strange where real beauty is found.
Dude! You're back! Where ya been Tmos?
wonderful story,... there is plenty of hope for mankinds' orphans
thankyou tyler
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18
If the screen freezes try rebooting.
Palm VII
Uparrowed both of you for saying the same thing in different ways.
+10
Right on guys.
Prayers needed
Goldman can't make money on prayers, these will need to be securitized......
You guys should show the people in Chad and Haiti how bad the Japanese homeless have it. /sarc
yeah, the haitians have more baptists than catholics helping them, but telling then not to drink or dance. Drunk be drunk darnit, catholics won't get on your tail for drinking.
This just couldn't be. Central banks print prosperity for all.
Only if they weren't ZH readers
As a korean convert to catholocism I always wanted to go to Osaka and eat and drink and be forgiven for my sins. God bless the outcasts and those that care for them, amen.
"If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them"
And so I forgive you Mo, and myself as well. We are all in the sinner class. Not all are forgiven.
Bitcoin hacked?
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/04/03/bitcoin-plummets-amid-slowdowns-and-hacking-of-service-sites/
fat finger? better check on the Waddell and Reed folks.
@fonzanoon
FYI, here's another link for the interested:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/in-wake-of-bitcoin-spike-mt-gox-...
looks like someone is hacking gold again right now.
told you to keep plenty of benjamins on hand fonz........
@ fonzannoon:
Why Gold gets nailed:
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/4/3_For...
I've said it a few other times today, in comments on here that:
The fact that the markets have to be dicked with, more and more.....just indicates that something really big, and something really bad is happening......
or perhaps as jim rogers has been concerned about........no asset stays green 11 years in a row.......................
Either gold is just due for a down year despite 85 bil a month, which I actually admit may not be keeping up with money destruction, or the articles about delivery failures and selling paper to buy phyz is taking place because there is a phyz buying frenzy is taking place are accurate. I tend to think it's both.
really, how about oil?
from the article:
"It is designed to gain time for the Federal Reserve to be able to continue financing the federal budget deficit by printing money and also to keep interest rates low and debt prices high in order to support the banks’ balance sheets. "
Gain time implies that they are working on a solution. Buy time would be more accurate.
Not in Yen thery're not!
Sweet Jeebus!
fonz, not a fan of Twitcoin but this smells NSA
At around 6:30 the guy nails it. To paraphrase "There aren't enough jobs. The economy sucks. The govt. spent all the money, it's their fault, they're no good."
Here we blame the squid; over there, they blame the ika.
Yep - squid row
Pork Avenue leads to Squid Row?
so sad
Pisses me off thinking about how so many really good people get fucked by the system each day - and how many more are going to get the same or worse soon. Moral hazard seems know no boundaries.
who are you to call me a good person, you know what I've done?
+1. Guess I'll just have to take that risk!
edit: and "no", I am not watching you, following you, lurking in the shadows... (evil laughter).
you'll know me by my crimpled hands, gravely voice and polite demeanor...better to be alive than a slave, amen.
It makes me really angry and sad, too. I read the BOJ is planning to purchase 5 trillion yen in government bonds EVERY MONTH to weaken yen and cause inflation. That amount translates to something like $500 dollars for each and every Japanese. They should just give the money to everyone. But instead, the money goes to banksters. And inflation will make poor people's lives even harder. We must end central banks, debt money and fractional reserve banking.
In Japan, even the homeless are clean and neat.
Beards shaven, tennis shoes white.
I noticed that too. American bums are awful! I need to carry a tazer with me catch the subway in NY or walk through a park in DC.
http://jeanhudson.com/LivingInLA/2011/01/living-in-las-skid-row/
I am not very knowledgable about the Japanese culture but would risk guessing there is a cultural difference here - pride/honor still has a place for them. The opposite being like an addict losing the care to even look like a human after awhile - no pride, no honor left.
My sentiments exactly.
USA glad to stand in line with paper (long ago) or plastic (now) welfare...to japanese theft is shame, shame, shame.
The thing about the Japanese is that they are Japanese - all brothers and sisters.
Up until about 15 years ago the USA was all about "Out of many, One" - ...
The homeless tent city in Shinjuku park has a building code. Blue tarps only, no public drinking, etc. etc. The park is cleaner than most US cities.
And in America trust fund babies look like they're homeless.
It's going to be a global trend. Simplifing ones life-style, i.e. living on the bare essentials and finding comfort in it.
Most are so fully programmed into mindless consumers, associating basic self-worth with the acquisition of "things," that living as basic as what is forcibly coming will cause them to simply give up or worse, go postal.
I guess we'll see a huge spike in suicides when women can't shop using plastic.
Giving up is worse than going postal. The only thing I hope is that folks go postal on worthwhile targets.
+1. Isn't it ironic that we exchange labor for money to buy what we "need", where in many cases the labor involves stress, fatigue, alcoholism, divorce, etc., when we could use our labor to make and grow the things we really do need and leave all the other bullshit behind. The thought of it gives me an overwhelming sense of calm.
Family project this weekend....planting our first garden.
this could be anytown usa as well, we just know how to hide the 47 million better
give of your body to the innumerable, and in the infinite wisdom of the unknowable shall you be rewarded. do not bring force against those with will. they will serve their ultimate, without any help; become again.
wisdom is borne of hardship. indisputably.
my house is barely more than these men, i would serve them of necessity.
is that a louis vuitton briefcase I spot in the first pic?
speaking of which:
http://pursuitist.com/lady-gagas-louis-vuitton-wheelchair/
Jesus said the poor will always be with us, so it's good that there are poor people; it proves Jesus was right. The Invisible Hand helps Jesus out, kind of like Robin helps Batman.
I learned this from watching TV.
the poor will always be with us...so quit trying to fix them, just let the world give them jobs you darn gub so they can.......... guber-full-of-really-stupid-people-making-a-kings-ransom-off-the-backs-of-the-poor-so-we-can-say-we-helped-while-at-our-wine-and-cheese-parties-(blomeberg)-while-belittling-them-all (how about that for an ABC soup). Jesus didn't want folk's money stolen from them to help the poor, he wanted us to give willingly to them, which we must do, one way or another...........sorry for blatering, just a slant-eyed raised by an irish, given a german name and exported to america...I am the lucky one.
Counter the 1960's 1970's and 1980's when nearly everyone was employed until China ramped up. Welcome to globization.
The people in japan could always eat snow from plastic cups and eat the birds from the snow covered trees.
Guess no one here saw the North korean documentary on America.
Point being these pictures could be taken in most any country in the world, so to act like japan is in any worse shape than the others is a bit overboard.
Many of these homeless decline attempts to help them get a job or housing. They prefer being homeless.
Right, and you know this because...?
Because most of the homeless are fucking crazy, maybe? You talked to any homeless lately? Most are broken people. The victims of circumstance that find themselves homeless don't stay that way.
Very sad.
Oh come on, stop with sobs. In a city the size of Tokyo and their's only 15,000 homeless?
contrarian dickhead I see
Stop sucking on it and you won't feel so shamefull you fucking gay douche bag
jew controlled MSM will be reporting on this story of the catholic church being a force for good I'm sure
Tokyo should consider itself lucky.
Homeless population in NYC approximately 50K+
Maybe 50,000+
You see a video of one area of homelessness in Tokyo and make this comparison? Do you think that the Japanese are so organized as a society that they herd all of the homeless into one section of the city? Every major ward has its own area of homeless. Before they removed them, the homeless in Shinjuku camped out around the Metropolitan Government Building with scenes much like in the video. Shinjuku Park and nearby Yoyogi Park each have their own tent city. The same is true all over.
The Japanese homeless "herd" themselves into one section of the city, and you know it. They come together for solidarity and companionship and form their "Blue Cities" and are only removed after city offcials have spoken with their leadership and confirmed thay have somewhere else to move on to - and they only take that drastic step if crime gets out of control or some even like a marathon or something is going on. Public assistance in Japan is almost second to none and most, most all of these folks just find something redeeming in the hobo life.....There's nothing wrong with that but they aren't vicitms of a soulless society - "herd the homeless," honestly.
Just think of them as having a head start on the rest of the young'uns with techno-fantasy visions of a bygone future.
Both of the American missionaries have a Japanese aspect to their eyes.
Has anyone else ever noticed that -- when Westerners become imbued in an East Asian culture, their eyes start to show it.
I am sure much has changed, but years ago I did a story about Japanese street people as they called themselves or as ordinary citizens disparagingly called them, eta (one who is lower than a four legged animal).
There were two I will always remember. One guy called himself shimbun, which literally means newspaper. He made his entire kit, including everything he wore, out of old newspapers. He looked like a newspaper samurai.
The other one called himself, nan demo ii, which means anything will do. He had a whole philosophical explanation for why he decided to live on the street. This warranted a pack of cigarettes and a one hour discussion. Essentially, he said he could not live the way society wanted him to, so he decided to do it his own way. I was just a kid and this guy blew me away. There was a great deal of truth in everything he said.
As a general observation, the ones I was able to interview, along with my trusty translator who became a MD at a very well known investment bank, looked upon their predicament as a challenge to be met with the same Japanese finesse and esprit d' corps that manifests itself in all walks of life.
Here's to the street people.
Ginko no shihei hihei no sei de shikata ga nai, kekka wa ningen kusai. Zen sekai wa kyosei de eta ya burakumin no tachiba ni ochiraremasu. Wareware wa shorai no nai ningen kusai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahashi_Korekiyo
40% devaluation.
"There were two extreme episodes of money printing in the inter-war years. The Reichsbank's financing of Weimar deficits from 1922 to 1924 - like lesser variants in France, Belgium and Poland - is well known. The result was hyperinflation. Clever people made hay. The slow-witted - or the patriotic - lost their savings. It was a poisonous dichotomy.
Less known is the spectacular success of Takahashi Korekiyo in Japan in the very different circumstances of the early 1930s. He fired a double-barreled blast of monetary and fiscal stimulus together, helped greatly by a 40pc fall in the yen."
Hyperinflation. Step devaluation. Seizure and confiscation. No elegant solutions left.
In the US you still have long term effects from the de-institutionalzing of the mentally ill decades back. No facilities were put in place to replace the old large 'willowbrook' places. So you have the mentally ill left adrift - it is their 'right' not to be treated (you can argue that both ways but the reality is we don't have any real system in place to deal with the mentally ill).
But on top of the mentally ill and alcoholic/drug abusers, you're seeing a change in the homeless demopgraphics. You used to have 'affordable' places for people in the form of SRO's and cheap one room hotels. They're gone. So now you even have EMPLOYED peopel who are homeless.
Was doing some volunteer work at a local place - it's only licensed as a temporary shelter - it provides shelter overnight with dinner and breakfast but nothign can be left in the place during the day. There's a significant percentage of the population that is EMPLOYED but homeless - they cannot afford a place to live and try and make do grabbing couch time at friends and the shelter. It's a real problem not havign a place to keep possessions or having a permanent address. You've got a significant number of young guys in ths situation. You've then got those who've lost jobs, housing and pretty much everything else in their lives - people who were doing OK until they lost their jobs and who have been unable to finad anything.
The director has a problem in that he has two very different groups - those who are functional and working part or full time or trying to... these people would not be there in bettter times if they were employed or making a better salary. Simply saving up enough for a deposit on an apartment here is hard and rents are nto cheap. But then he also has the 'dysfunctional' group who are mentally ill or alcoholics/drug abusers. He's got those who are trying their best to live a 'civilized' life in dire circumstances and those that (litereally0 will shit on the floor or piss out the window instead of going down the hall to a toilet.
Neither group can get the help they need they way things work now.
This is the real skid row of America, look how far we have fallen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS2Z19yTuPI
The remarkable thing in all these photos is that I see people who still cling to life despite their obvious plight.
It somehow reminds of politicians who despite the failure of their policies still cling to them with religious fervour.
I guess there is a strange commonality in human suffering and human ego.
Now I know where to spend my golden retirement years. NO! Not on the streets, but helping the good sister. Hello from KC MO sis!
zero homeless in Sweden.
http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/mymovetosweden/2012/04/23/homelessness-in-sweden/ ??
I live in Sweden and pass homeless people every day on the way to work.
Where did you hear this myth? Was it from the same people that said the healthcare here is "free"?
That's what's happening in the US if you don't suck off your employerer corrrectly.
It will be interesting to see what is the effect of the BoJ easing on poverty. A sharp fall of the Yen will inevitably reduce the purchasing power of the average Japanese. But what about the poors? If it last long enough can it revive jobs for the lower rugs of society? Not impossible. In which case the right wing policies of Abe will end up being more positive socially that the misguided laws of his predecessors. The problem is that Sanya doesn't vote and the pain will come sooner for the middle class than new jobs for the poor. I expect a hot spring for Abe early next year when the VAT goes up to 8%.