For Japan, and especially this recession-wracked western city, hosting the World Cup is a dream come true. Trains, planes and hotels will be full.
Restaurants and bars will serve hundreds of thousands of visiting fans. And local economies will get a much-needed boost.
The World Cup is nothing short of a nightmare for Hiroshi Sato and his living mates, who reside just across the road from Osaka's Nagai Stadium. They're homeless and have the added misfortune of building their cardboard houses and tents near one of Japan's World Cup venues. Local police have been dropping by to let them know they'll soon be evicted.
"We'll just have to find another place to stay," complains Sato, 55, who has lived on Osaka's streets since losing his job at an air-conditioner factory just over three years ago.
Sato is among the rapidly growing ranks of Japan's homeless.
Almost unheard of five years ago, at least 30,000 live on the street, mostly in Tokyo and here in Japan's second-biggest urban area. Their increasing presence is the most obvious sign that the nation's 11-year slump is hitting some very hard.
The homeless "are growing in number and this has become a huge social issue," says Tsuyoshi Inaba, who works with the Resource Center for Homeless Human Rights.
Stories like Sato's were never supposed to exist amid Japan's cradle-to-the-grave lifetime employment system. Compared with cities like New York or Washington, Japan's homeless problem seems trivial. In general, homeless here aren't the public nuisance folks in other nations claim street-dwellers to be. Overt drunkenness, drug use and panhandling aren't major social problems in Japan.
But in a nation that's always gravitated more towards socialism than every-person-for-his-or-herself capitalism, even a handful of homeless is shocking to Japanese. It's a reminder that far from ending, Japan's malaise is deepening and manifesting itself in ways that seemed unthinkable a few years ago. It also could be a harbinger of things to come.
In a nation suffering from a crisis of confidence, the sight of more homeless people collecting cans and sleeping in train stations is a jolting one. For no longer is Japan's downturn hitting those toiling at the margins of society, but those at the center of it. It's now possible for salarymen who earn a handsome wage one day to be yen-less and homeless the next.
Increasing homelessness complicates things for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as he tries to trim government spending.
Revitalizing Japan means many deadbeat companies may go bust and downtrodden areas will have to do without economy-boosting construction projects. Bottom line, unemployment will skyrocket.
Japan may be in its third recession in a decade, but one hardly gets that impression. Telltale signs of recession one finds in other nations are curiously absent here. Because Japan's slump is largely a corporate one, not a consumer one, most are still employed and socking away savings. So far, banks have kept fragile companies afloat, cushioning households from the pain.
When there's a recession virtually anywhere else, you know it. But in cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Sapporo, swanky shopping districts are still abuzz. Glitzy stores are packed with people plopping down hundreds of dollars for names like Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Whiskey bars are full of office workers dropping US$20 for a shot of single-malt scotch.
At the margins, though, one can find signs of Japan's slide, particularly in Osaka. Between 1991 and 1999, for example, while Japan's national economy lost 2.1 percent of its jobs, Osaka lost 13 percent. Many of the jobs moved overseas to low-wage countries.
Huge manufacturers like Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Sanyo Electric Co and Sharp Corp moved factories to China. Many others are planning to.
On this day, Sato has little to do but sit in his blue tent and read some newspapers he pulled out of a trash bin. He'd woken up at 4am and taken his place in a job queue, hoping one of the scouts searching for day laborers would select him. "My back is no good anymore, but on a really good day, I can come away with Japanese yen 10,000 (US$80) working on a construction site or unpacking trucks."
But good days are becoming rarer. A year ago, Sato says, there were fewer men looking for work. Worse, the newcomers are younger and stronger, leaving Sato, a man in his mid-50s, having to talk his way into jobs. "Many days like today, I find myself sitting, with nothing to do, thinking `How did this happen?'"
Japan's homeless problem is sure to get worse before it gets better. That's because Osaka is a microcosm of trends unfolding around the nation. The city rested on its laurels after decades of rapid growth and watched China and other competitors take away the capital and jobs it long took for granted. Now, Japan finds itself uncompetitive in a world joined by globalization.
As jobs disappear, an increasing number of Japanese are being forced to fend for themselves. Since Japan lacks a broad social safety net to catch those who suddenly find themselves jobless, a growing number have no choice but to live on the streets. The homeless trend caught Tokyo largely off guard. In Osaka, there are at least 10,000 homeless. Some observers think the figure is closer to 15,000.
"The main cause of this increase in homelessness is job losses that the economic recession brought about," says Hiroyuki Fukuhara, an economist at Osaka City University. "However, insufficiencies of the social [safety net] system in Japan have also pushed them into homelessness."
The nation is under increasing pressure to fix those cracks.
On April 26, nearly 300 homeless people rallied outside Parliament in Tokyo to demand more government help.
Chanting "Listen to the voices of the people who live outdoors," protestors urged lawmakers to provide more shelters and job-placement and medical-care programs.
The national government has come up with some money, but only a fraction of what's needed. Last year, for example, Tokyo budgeted Japanese yen 780 million to fund 11 "Self-Dependent Support Centers" that offer food, health checks and job counseling. But that was Japanese yen 110 million less than the previous year.
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