Thursday, January 24, 2008

Homelessness in Japan Lu Lin (Kathy) Takushoku University

Good afternoon everyone. Have you ever heard of homeless people? Yes, I think most people often see them in the streets, in parks, and by riversides, what did you feel when you saw them? Homeless people have increased and their existence has become a social problem. So today I am here to talk about my research about homelessness in Japan. I’m going to cover four areas. First, I’ll talk about the population of Japan and what percentage of it consists of homeless people. Second, I want to explain the homeless situation in Japan to you. Then I will tell you about the cause of homeless people in Japan. And finally, I’ll talk about what we can do to help homelessness in Japan.

So let’s start by looking at the population of Japan. Japan’s 2005 National Census showed that its total population is 127.76 million, of which 18.56 thousand (0.015%) are homeless. Most them are in Osaka and Tokyo (2003 counted 7,757 in Osaka, 6,361 in Tokyo and 2,121 in Aichi). And 93% are men. Please look at the chart.


Most of the homeless are between the ages of 50 and 60. The youngest one is 26 and the oldest one is 78. Homeless people can’t get enough food or clothes sometimes. Most homeless in Japan live in parks, train stations, under bridges, garbage dumps and scraped factories near a city.

Why there are many homeless in Japan? Now I’ll talk about how the problem caused. Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in the world. So some people from outside come to the big city in order to realize their dreams. But they come without good preparation. They can’t find a job in order to make their dream come true. There are other causes too. For example having no job. Homelessness is often due to financial problems, or sometimes people become homeless because they have just been released from prison, or they are having physical health problems etc. They can’t get basic things to live. So how do we help the homeless?

Japan has enacted a law to help the homeless to get back into society. The main spirit of the law is, first, helping homeless people to get a job and get a place to live. Second, taking care of their mental and physical health. Also, there are many things we can do:
1. Ask our parents if you can clean out our closet and give some of our old clothes to homeless children.
2. Collect toys from our friends, for homeless kids.
Of course there are still many more ways to help the homeless. If only we care about the homeless, we will find a way to do something for them.

Ok, I’ve talked about the Japanese homeless population and situation, and the problems caused by it , and finally, I talked about what we can do to help homelessness. So everyone of us from now on, let’s do what we can to help homeless, then the world will be more beautiful. Thank you for listening!

Sources
Homeless in Japan by Cheng Ya Bin

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