Japan's Government Takes Heat for Homeless Faux Pas

by Shannon Moriarty · 2009-01-06 21:07:00 UTC
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A Japanese government official is taking heat after accusing thousands of the country's homeless, many of whom were laid off due to the recession, of laziness.

Clearly, the reverberations of the sour U.S. economy are taking a heavy toll on other parts of the world. As global demand for exports contracts, thousands of Japan's temporary workers are being laid off from companies like Sony, Toyota, and Canon. Many of these workers are winding up homeless on the streets.

So it was not only cruel, but completely inaccurate, for Japan's vice minister of internal affairs to question the cause of the nation's rising homeless population. Rather than acknowledge the obvious cause, he said yesterday: "I wonder if these people have a willingness to work."

But it gets even better: this Japanese official also suggested that volunteers distributing food and tents to homeless people staying in a park were doing so only to embarrass the government.

Crazy. But does any of this sound familiar? Reminds me a lot of the way homelessness has been framed in this country since the 1980s: rather than focusing on systemic inequalities during good times or economic cycles during bad, our national sentiment overwhelmingly chooses to blame individual shortcomings as the cause of homelessness.

Only difference is, this ignorant comment might be enough to get this Japanese official ousted. The main opposition party is calling for this official's resignation, insisting that this remark "symbolically shows that the government has no intention to rescue the lives of people in this emergency situation."

Good grief.

Well, Dubya can feel better knowing he has better approval ratings than at least one other elected official in the world.

Shannon Moriarty has worked in various homeless shelters and service organizations around the country. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.
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