Japan's Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless (review)

During the era of rapid economic growth and for several decades thereafter, one of the secrets of Japan's relatively stress-free transition to the status of a leading industrial democracy was said to be the equitable way the fruits of economic growth were distributed across the nation. The impact of the near-miraculous growth was most spectacular in Kanto and Kansai, but there was no area of Japan that escaped. Yet throughout that period, and increasingly during the 1990s, foreign scholars, often working with Japanese colleagues, tried to demonstrate how there were nevertheless some people even in the metropolitan areas who remained stuck in, fell into, or could not escape from the most appalling poverty. Moreover, as Japan went through more than a decade of slow or no growth, the existence of a group living on the margins of society became more obvious as visitors to Osaka and Tokyo could easily observe an increase in the number of people living in temporary blue-plastic-clad huts and sleeping on the streets and at stations. It would be timely to have a study that updates us on what has been happening to those on the margins of Japanese society. How have they survived the lean years of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century? What are their prospects as the Japanese economy is poised to grow once more? Those interested in these questions will not find answers in the book under review.

In this book, Aoki is attempting to "open up new horizons in sociological research into Japan's present day urban underclass" (p. xiii). By this he means the day laborers and homeless within the yoseba and the foreign workers who share their sociologically and geographically marginal positions. In the first chapter, he sets up a framework for his research on the ur-ban underclass that he defines as a group composed mainly of men who live apart from their families and who exist outside of society and lack even the most basic human rights. This underclass relates to the rest of Japanese society through its participation in the labor market for day laborers. Unemployment increased during the 1990s to levels higher than at any time since 1950. Meanwhile, there were changes in central government policy that meant there were fewer large-scale construction projects launched. Demand for day laborers working on public construction projects went down while the number of temporary and part-time jobs in the service sector increased. At the same time, the number of young adults unable to find permanent employment increased which meant that one might have expected younger people to fall into the underclass. This first chapter suggests that the character of the underclass and its social function may have been changing.

Unfortunately, after this promising start, few of these innovative themes are developed. Chapters 1 and 2 describe in some detail the urban underclass in Kamagaseki in Osaka and Kotobuki-cho in Yokohama. In themselves, these are fascinating. They contain both concise background histories plus comments on how things changed in the 1990s. The work patterns are evolving. It is less common for men to find day work following recruitment by gang bosses first thing in the morning in the streets of the yoseba. They are more likely to be picked up at stations or to find work through ads in the free papers or to move into "work camps" from where they are taken directly to the site of work. Despite his earlier comments about unemployment among young adults, Aoki found in Kotobuki-cho the number of elderly people increasing from 17 per cent in 1992 to 35 per cent in 1997. Chapter 3 looks at the homeless: those who are so poor that they cannot even afford a bed in any of the "flop houses" that can be found in the yoseba. At least in Kamagaseki, these are mostly "unattached middle aged and elderly men who...