Yuichiro bursts into tears as he picks up a food parcel from a social welfare group’s outreach service on the streets of Tokyo. The outreach service is helping the growing number of Japanese people who have fallen into poverty due to the coronavirus (CCP) outbreak.
Yuichiro, 46, was originally a construction worker and recently lost his job. Carrying a small plastic bag with necessities in his hand, he told AFP on a cold Tokyo street in winter: “There is no work to do. There’s no work.
The media doesn’t report on it much, but many people are sleeping in stations and cardboard boxes, and some are dying of hunger.
As the world’s third largest economy, Japan’s coronavirus outbreak is relatively mild, with about 4,500 people sickened and most of the time without the massive blockade measures implemented in other countries.
With an unemployment rate below 3 percent and Japan’s reputation for a robust social safety net, the country seems to be able to withstand the economic fallout from the outbreak with ease.
However, social welfare sources say that the most vulnerable populations are still the hardest hit, as invisible in the data are the high rates of underemployment and low-wage temporary workers.
The epidemic, the increase in unemployment and the decrease in wages have directly affected poor people who were already barely getting by,” said Oshirian, director of the Center for Independent Living Support for the Poor, an anti-poverty group.
At present, about 40% of the workers are engaged in “unconventional” jobs, which not only pay less, but may also terminate their contracts at any time, and many of them have difficulties in obtaining social benefits.
Yuichiro, who declined to give his last name, told AFP that he was kicked around by government officials and was finally told that social welfare assistance was only available to people with children.
But there are many adults who are having trouble even eating,” he said.
More than 10 million people in Japan live on less than $19,000 a year, and one-sixth of the population is in “relative poverty,” or earning less than the national median.
Economists say 500,000 Japanese people have lost their jobs in the past six months, and social welfare sources say the ripple effect of this is spreading to the entire Japanese population.
I’m pretty sure the middle class is disintegrating,” said Kenji Kiyono, representative director of the nonprofit relief group Tenohasi.
About 250 people lined the streets of Tokyo’s bustling Ikebukuro district to receive food, clothing, sleeping bags and medical assistance from Tenohasi’s volunteer team, which also gives free advice on finding jobs and government services.
People who are already struggling to survive are facing another coronavirus outbreak,” said Kiyono. They were already walking on a steel rope, and now that rope has broken again,” he said.
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