There was a news report on tv recently about a large homeless community getting kicked out of a park in Osaka where they had been 'residing'. There is actually a surprisingly large number of homeless people living in Japan. If you walk around the big cities you'll see homeless people hanging out in stations, at the park, wandering the streets or down by the river. At night, most of them return to their shelters - tents made from a ubiquitous blue tarpaulin (I don't know where they get it from, but everyone has the same tarp), pitched in the bushes at the park or on the riverside. Over time, one tent becomes two, two becomes four, and before long they have created a small homeless community. Generally, the authorities ignore them. They don't cause trouble and they keep to themselves.

However, in this case, someone high up decided that this homeless community was ruining the park image and had to go. The residents obviously didn't want to go, so when the police and local government officials showed up to remove them there was a showdown. In true Japanese style, words were exchanges, there was some name calling, a little pushing and shoving and then the homeless town was demolished. Now, I'm not here to make judgments about whether they should have been evicted or allowed to stay. What was more interesting for me was another documentary story a few weeks earlier. In preparation for this eviction, someone filmed a short about the lives of homeless people in this park.

The story was quite interesting. It went into detail about why some of the people had become homeless. Most of the stories were more than simply "no job, no money, so I'm homeless".

Some middle-aged middle-management people had been retrenched and had refused to re-enter a working society where they would be forced to start from the bottom again. In Japan, this is very common. Most people enter a company at the bottom, work hard to climb the ladder, and if they are successful, they might end up near the top of the company when they retire. If they leave the company for some reason, it is very difficult to find a similar level job at a different company This is because companies prefer employees who have shown commitment to the company from the start of their careers.


Some people had family issues. There was too much pressure from their wives, their parents or their children. They couldn't handle it so they left all their money and possessions with their family and took off.

Surprisingly, a few people had actually chosen to become homeless. They had given up good jobs and nice houses so that they could live the ultimate stress-free "outdoor lifestyle". The guy who was the official homeless community mayor (elected by the other homeless people), was one of these men. He helped organise food and shelter for the community, he was responsible for keeping order, resolving disputes and basically keeping everything running smoothly. He was also responsible for organising the official inter-city homeless baseball tournament. Yes, that's right, homeless baseball.

The documentary revolved around their annual baseball tournament. The Tokyo Homeless team traveled by hire-car to Osaka for this year's game against the Osaka Homeless, which took place in the park where the homeless lived. Both teams had put together kits of gloves, bats and balls scrounged from stuff people had thrown away (you'd be amazed at what people throw away in Japan).The game started in the morning and went though to the evening, but had to be called off due to bad light during the fifth innings. The score was something like 65-45 (for some reason the homeless people could bat quite well but couldn't pitch or field to save themselves). They had a barbeque and a few drinks in the evening and then they Tokyo Homeless went back to Tokyo the next day.

I can't imagine Australian homeless people organising a homeless cricket league.