Name: Why Japan's Homeless are Different from North America's (Part 1)
Uploaded: 2018-05-08T10:36:43.000Z
Duration: 6 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This. This is the image that has been stuck in my mind for years.

Here I was below the massive towers of the Tokyo metropolitan government building and I came across this blue tarp with solar panels on it.

That's because back in Vancouver, where I lived most of my adult life, I was used to seeing scenes like this.

Why were the visible homeless I encountered in Tokyo so different?

Thus started my search into understanding why the homeless in Japan are different than the homeless in North America.

Where I started to find answers was in the research work of professor Tom Gill.

But I've lived in Japan for about 25 years and I'm a professor of Social Anthropology

here at Meiji Gakuin University, Yokohama Campus.

There are a number of things about Japanese society

which makes it a lot easier to deal with homelessness than in other industrialized countries.

the level of drug abuse is much lower in Japan

than a lot of other countries. It's pretty difficult to get hold of hard drugs in Japan unless you know a Yakuza,

And for the most part guys who become homeless in Japan

don't do drugs other than tobacco and alcohol.

alcoholics in the Japanese homeless population.

compulsive gamblers and of course, even if you are getting Livelihood Protection Money,

if you spend it all on alcohol or horse racing in the first couple of days of the month,

Another important factor is that Japan has a very conservative approach

If you look at statistics for mental health in Japan,

you are much more likely to be put away in an institution

that were called "mainstreaming" in America

which are both kind of code words for shutting down mental Hospitals and

Letting mentally ill people out into society and

Which might have seemed like a good idea and something-

some liberal people did support that move but unfortunately

there wasn't the backup to follow what happened to these people after they were let out

and a certain number of them ended up being on the streets,

and that's one of the reasons why you have a lot of people with mental health issues

in the homeless population in many Industrialized countries.

Then a third factor is that Japan has managed to

keep out of wars and conflicts since the end of World War II.

So as a result, traumatized war veterans, which are another large component

particularly of the American homeless population-

where you're walking along the street and you encounter a homeless person is

a lot less likely to happen in Japan because a lot of them are not in that part of the urban space.

Most of them do try to keep clean. One of the reasons why they tend to gather in parks is because they

generally have public toilets and washrooms there which helps you to maintain a basic level of hygiene.

it's true that very few homeless people in Japan beg.

Far more likely, as a way of making a bit of money, is can recycling,

and sometimes newspaper and magazine recycling,

but that's the main way for putting together a little bit of cash.

Why they don't beg? I think there are push factors and pull factors.

They're also disinclined to give to beggars, and these two things go hand in hand.

In countries with a strong Christian tradition, or indeed a strong Muslim, or Hindu tradition,

giving to the Poor is deeply ingrained in the religion and the culture.

There's nothing quite like that in in Japan so

People are less likely to give money to beggars.

I mean, they're not used to being begged off. It's a "chicken-and-egg" situation, really.

you don't want people to know that you're homeless

you don't want people to know that you're unable to look after yourself.

Pride, shame. Yeah, these are also factors

I'm sure you have many questions about homelessness in Japan and I did as well.

It's a very complex topic that touches on many parts of society.

As such, this is just a single video as part of a bigger series about homelessness in Japan that I'll be making,

I have to give special thanks to professor Tom Gill, who's so

knowledgeable and so generous with his time, so thank you for that!

And a shout out to my patreon supporters who make It possible for me to make videos like this;

videos that aren't necessarily so popular and videos that do take time to research,