JAPAN: Worries over Rich-Poor Division

TOKYO, Japan (The Manila Times), June 1, 2006: Japan’s economy is headed for its longest post-war expansion but away from the thronging shopping malls, new skyscrapers and luxury condominiums, many elderly and unemployed complain of losing out. Kurumada, 72, who declined to give his first name, says he can only afford two meals a day with his welfare payment of 96,000 yen ($870) per month from the government, which also subsidizes his rent. “I feel I just survive. I don’t feel I’m living a life,” said the former blue-collar worker, who began receiving benefits four years ago after heart disease forced him to give up his job fixing electric equipment. Before he earned up to five million yen, or about $45,000, a year. “Now I can’t afford three meals a day,” he said with rueful smile in his small one-room apartment in Arakawa ward in the old area of Tokyo. Elsewhere in the capital, 71-year-old Kimiko Kimura has to make do with no bath or shower. “There is no room equipped with a bath available at a cheap enough rent in Tokyo,” said Kimura, who ran a small polystyrene manufacturing business north of the city until her husband’s death. These are not extraordinary cases in Japan, which has prided itself since the end of World War II on being a classless society. Even today people in need are often reluctant to ask for help. “In Japan, poor people hide. Those who live on social security don’t talk about it because they think they are responsible for their own misfortune,” said Kazuya Hata, a charity worker at The Group to Protect Living and Health. Homelessness, which was largely unknown in Japan until the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, has also risen and many parks are dotted with the blue tarpaulins of their makeshift shelters. Japan’s economy may be finally emerging from the ‘lost decade’ of deflation but it is still expected to have more than one million households on welfare on average in the year to March, according to the most recent government survey. This is about two percent of the total number of households in Japan and a 60 percent jump from 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor. While the increase is largely due to the aging population, the total number of working-age people on welfare, including disability and other benefits, has also gone up. Almost 20 percent of the Japanese population is now aged 65 or older. By Kyoko Hasegawa © Copyright. The Manila Times