For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk

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For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless.

The country’s woes have led the government to open emergency shelters over the New Year holiday in a nationwide drive to help the homeless. The Democratic Party, which swept to power in September, wants to avoid the fate of the previous pro-business government, which was caught off-guard when unemployed workers pitched tents near public offices last year to call attention to their plight.

“In this bitter-cold New Year’s season, the government intends to do all it can to help those who face hardship,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said in a video posted Dec. 26 on YouTube. “You are not alone.”

On Friday, he visited a Tokyo shelter housing 700 homeless people, telling reporters that “help can’t wait.”

Mr. Nakanishi considers himself relatively lucky. After working odd jobs on an Isuzu assembly line, at pachinko parlors and as a security guard, Mr. Nakanishi, 40, moved into the capsule hotel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in April to save on rent while he worked night shifts at a delivery company.

Mr. Nakanishi, who studied economics at a regional university, dreams of becoming a lawyer and pores over legal manuals during the day. But with no job since Christmas, he does not know how much longer he can afford a capsule bed.

The rent is surprisingly high for such a small space: 59,000 yen a month, or about $640, for an upper bunk. But with no upfront deposit or extra utility charges, and basic amenities like fresh linens and free use of a communal bath and sauna, the cost is far less than renting an apartment in Tokyo, Mr. Nakanishi says.

Still, it is a bleak world where deep sleep is rare. The capsules do not have doors, only screens that pull down. Every bump of the shoulder on the plastic walls, every muffled cough, echoes loudly through the rows.

Each capsule is furnished only with a light, a small TV with earphones, coat hooks, a thin blanket and a hard pillow of rice husks.

Most possessions, from shirts to shaving cream, must be kept in lockers. There is a common room with old couches, a dining area and rows of sinks. Cigarette smoke is everywhere, as are security cameras. But the hotel staff does its best to put guests at ease: “Welcome home,” employees say at the entrance.

“Our main clients used to be salarymen who were out drinking and missed the last train,” said Tetsuya Akasako, head manager at the hotel.

But about two years ago, the hotel started to notice that guests were staying weeks, then months, he said. This year, it introduced a reduced rent for dwellers of a month or longer; now, about 100 of the hotel’s 300 capsules are rented out by the month.

After requests from its long-term dwellers, the hotel received special government permission to let them register their capsules as their official abode; that made it easier to land job interviews.

At 2 a.m. on one recent December night, two young women watched the American television show “24” on a TV inside the sauna. One said she had traveled to Tokyo from her native Gunma, north of the city, to look for work. She intended to be a hostess at one of the capital’s cabaret clubs, where women engage in conversation with men for a fee.

The woman, 20, said she was hoping to land a job with a club that would put her up in an apartment. She declined to give her name because she did not want her family to know her whereabouts.

“It’s tough to live like this, but it won’t be for too long,” she said. “At least there are more jobs here than in Gunma.”

The government says about 15,800 people live on the streets in Japan, but aid groups put the figure much higher, with at least 10,000 in Tokyo alone. Those numbers do not count the city’s “hidden” homeless, like those who live in capsule hotels. There is also a floating population that sleeps overnight in the country’s many 24-hour Internet cafes and saunas.

The jobless rate, at 5.2 percent, is at a record high, and the number of households on welfare has risen sharply. The country’s 15.7 percent poverty rate is one of the highest among industrialized nations.

These statistics have helped shatter an image, held since the country’s rise as an industrial power in the 1970s, that Japan is a classless society.

“When the country enjoyed rapid economic growth, standards of living improved across the board and class differences were obscured,” said Prof. Hiroshi Ishida of the University of Tokyo. “With a stagnating economy, class is more visible again.”

The government has poured money into bolstering Japan’s social welfare system, promising cash payments to households with children and abolishing tuition fees at public high schools.

Still, Naoto Iwaya, 46, is on the verge of joining the hopeless. A former tuna fisherman, he has been living at another capsule hotel in Tokyo since August. He most recently worked on a landfill at the city’s Haneda Airport, but that job ended last month.

“I have looked and looked, but there are no jobs. Now my savings are almost gone,” Mr. Iwaya said, after checking into an emergency shelter in Tokyo. He will be allowed to stay until Monday.

After that, he said, “I don’t know where I can go.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/business/global/02capsule.html

Population drops for 3rd year

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Japan’s population fell by 75,000 in 2009, decreasing for the third straight year and dropping at the fastest rate since the end of World War II.

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s annual population estimate, the pace of decrease accelerated in 2009 as the 1,144,000 deaths–an increase of 2,000 from 2008–outpaced the 1,069,000 births–a drop of 22,000.

The population decline grew by 24,000 from that of the previous year.

The nation’s population fell in 2005 for the first time since the war. Although the population increased slightly in 2006, it has fallen each year since 2007.

The total fertility rate–the average number of children expected to be born to each woman over her lifetime–is forecast to hover around last year’s figure of 1.37.

“The rate of population decline likely will increase in the future,” a ministry official said.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T100102001583.htm

Employers denying jobs to applicants based on medical histories, gov’t study finds

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Some Japanese companies demand job applicants provide personal medical histories and deny employment based on their content, a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) research group has discovered.

The ministry has directed employers not to ask for medical information unrelated to the positions in question, citing a risk of employment discrimination, while the research group will distribute an awareness-raising booklet based on its findings.

“Should medical information on completely recovered former patients be required for employment screening, even if that information is not used as a basic employment criterion, the request itself puts pressure on childhood cancer survivors, and can become a barrier to reintegrating into society,” says Keiko Asami, head of pediatrics at the Niigata Cancer Center Hospital.

There are no laws regulating the demand for medical histories on job application forms. However, according to the MHLW, “There is a risk of influencing employment decisions, and is thus connected to employment discrimination,” putting medical histories in the same category as personal beliefs and ancestry as information that “should not be considered” for employment purposes.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100102p2a00m0na008000c.html

Population probably shrank even more in 2009, ministry estimates

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Japan’s population probably shrank further in 2009 as births fell by roughly 22,000 to about 1,069,000, the health ministry said in estimates released Thursday.

“The trend of increasing population decline is expected to continue in the future as the number of deaths rises due to the aging of the population, while the number of women at childbearing age is decreasing,” a ministry official said.

Although the national fertility rate — the number of children a woman would have if she followed the birthrate of each generation in a given year — rose for three consecutive years until 2008, past data suggest the rate in 2009 was around 1.37 — the same as 2008.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100101a1.html

Pensions body faces tough test

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Japan Pension Service, an organization set up to take over the work of the Social Insurance Agency, will start operations Friday. Though the new entity will attempt to regain trust of the public by tackling problems such as the pension records fiasco, it faces many hurdles.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama met the 13 people chosen to be directors of the new entity at the Prime Minister’s Office last Friday.

“One of the driving forces behind the shift of power [the election of the DPJ-led government] was the pension record fiasco,” Hatoyama said. “I want this entity to be one that gives priority to the interests of subscribers.”

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091231TDY03105.htm

Piecemeal temp jobs at agencies face ban

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An advisory panel to the labor minister issued a report Monday recommending that staffing agencies be prohibited from registering workers on individual contracts for specific jobs that pay only when work is available.

The report, which also proposes banning the practice of sending workers for short-term manufacturing jobs, comes in line with a government plan to submit a bill to the Diet to improve the working conditions of temporary staff by tightening the law regulating their dispatch.

About 2.02 million people worked as temp staff as of June 2008, and some 440,000 of them would likely be subject to the proposed regulations, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

The move, aimed at stabilizing employment, signifies a policy shift to tighten control on the temporary worker system, which has experienced gradual deregulation in staffing services since the law took effect in 1986.

The subcommittee’s report recommends prohibiting the dispatch of temp workers on a registration basis, except for 26 types of jobs that require professional skills and expertise, including secretarial work and translation, and jobs involving the dispatch of elderly workers.

It also seeks a ban on dispatching temporary workers for manufacturing jobs, except in cases where staffing agencies conclude long-term job contracts with workers.

For clarification, the regulations will be put into practice on a date set by ordinance within three years after the revised law is promulgated.

Among registration-basis temp jobs, those that match the needs of workers and face few problems, including clerical jobs, will be prohibited after five years at the latest.

Conditions of so-called registered temp workers – those who register with staffing companies and get an employment contract only for the duration of a job – are particularly poor, critics say.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20091229a1.html

Revision to dispatch law

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The global recession that started in autumn last year has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of temporary and other nonregular workers at this time of economic contraction.

In response, the government started reviewing the worker dispatch law at the Labor Policy Council, which advises Akira Nagatsuma, the minister of health, labor and welfare. The council has come up with an outline of a bill to revise the law.

According to the outline, the revision would, in principle, ban companies from using registration type of recruiting, in which employment contracts are drawn up only when there are jobs for dispatched workers. The ban would not be applied to 26 job categories that demand a high level of skill, such as interpreters. The ban would not apply to aged dispatched workers as well.

Supplying haken dispatched workers for manufacturing jobs would be allowed only for positions for what is essentially regular work in which individuals have a reasonable chance of winning a relatively long-term labor contract with the companies that recruit them. This is a key issue because of the large number of dispatched workers in manufacturing who lost their jobs after economic conditions slid and manufactures moved to trim their payrolls.

Supplying temps for day-labor jobs–the most unstable form of employment–would also be prohibited, except for limited categories. The revision would also require companies to stop treating subcontractors as effectively dispatched workers who are subject to company supervision. If such practices are found, the new regulation will regard those firms as having hired these workers.

There is strong opposition to the proposed steps within the business community. Critics say banning the registration system to recruit dispatched workers and the supply of temps on a daily basis would raise unemployment by making it harder for companies to use haken workers.

Others argue that tightening the regulation on supplying dispatched workers to manufacturers would prompt more companies to shift production overseas, causing further jobs losses. These arguments, however, don’t present a strong case for allowing nonregular workers to bear the brunt of the economic downturn as people who can be brought in or laid off more easily than regular employees.

Past revisions to the worker dispatch law have basically eased the regulations on the dispatched-worker industry to promote labor liquidity. The new proposals are significant in that they would change policy by protecting workers.

The envisioned change, however, would leave some problems unsolved. Even the hiring of people on a dispatched basis–for less than a year, for instance–could be regarded as almost regular employment. Workers under subcontracts who are treated effectively as temps would be regarded as employees directly hired by the companies that use them, but only for the period of their contracts with the companies that supplied them. This could lead to a situation where companies that use temps would not take sufficient responsibility for the well-being of these individuals. The bans on the registration-type recruitment of dispatched workers and the supply of temps to manufacturers would take effect only three to five years after the revised law is proclaimed.

The Diet should discuss these and other related issues, including arguments by employers, during the regular session to be convened in January. The revision of the law would not address all the problems concerning nonregular workers. There is still a basic problem facing the government and society as a whole.

The wide disparity in incomes between regular and nonregular workers due to the lack of recognition of dispatched and other nonregular positions as legitimate options to increase diversity in workstyles has become a major issue. The principle of the same pay for the same work is the norm in Europe. It may be unrealistic to expect an early introduction of this principle in Japan. But serious efforts should be made to establish this rule.

There should be limits to the renewals and periods of contracts with nonregular workers to reduce the benefits for companies of depending on such workers as a buffer against a downturn.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200912290117.html

Public schools turn to non-Japanese teachers

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Third-grade students at Osaka municipal Kita-Nakajima Primary School get insights into culture on the Korean Peninsula that many others do not.

Their homeroom teacher is Lee Chi I, 31, a third-generation South Korean living in Japan. Lee’s grandfather came from South Korea’s Gyeongsangnam-do, but she was born and raised in Aichi Prefecture.

Students at the school in Yodogawa Ward include children of Koreans living in Japan, but Lee introduces musical instruments such as the chango, a Korean drum, to all the pupils in her music class.

Lee is one of an increasing number of foreign nationals teaching at public primary, middle and high schools across the country. An estimated 200 non-Japanese teachers, mainly Koreans living in Japan, teach at schools in 25 prefectures, including Osaka, Hyogo, Kanagawa and Kyoto.

The government approved the hiring of teachers with a foreign nationality at public schools in 1991.

According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, foreign national teachers can be “full-time lecturers with unlimited tenure,” but they are not eligible to hold management positions, such as being the senior classroom teacher. They have the same educational authority as Japanese teachers, and can be homeroom teachers.

The Osaka prefectural and municipal governments started hiring foreign national teachers on their own accord in the 1970s. Although they stopped this practice in 1982 in line with an instruction from the central government, they resumed hiring non-Japanese in 1993 following the abolition of the Japanese nationality requirement. This academic year, 135 non-Japanese were teachers in the prefecture.

Lee had gone by the Japanese name Chisato Miyamoto until she graduated from university.

“I felt deep down as if I was hiding my true self,” she said of those years.

Lee decided to identify herself by her real Korean name following advice from members of the Osaka Municipal Board of Education and the principal who hired her as a teacher six years ago.

“They told me children who have roots on the Korean Peninsula would be encouraged if I used my real Korean name,” Lee said.

Lee now teaches children about Korean culture and has explained her ethnic background to students and their parents.

An estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of foreign national teachers in Osaka Prefecture have revealed their ethnic roots in their schools.

Fifty-two foreign national teachers from 11 cities in the prefecture shared their experiences at the inaugural meeting of a network of teachers with roots in foreign countries, held in Osaka on Nov. 7. They plan to hold meetings to discuss their ethnic backgrounds and educational issues.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091229TDY03105.htm

Interac and pregnancy; Part Two – The Michael Collison Case::

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I am not sure what it is about Interac and pregnancy, but they really don’t seem to be on the same page as the rest of the work force in Japan. The case in point is concerning Michael Collison and I first learned about his case on the website of a Japanese activist named Arudou Debito. Fortunately for Interac, I did not hear of the case until several months after the fact and it seems that Mr Collison has simply chosen to put the matter behind him rather than to pursue legal action. A very brief synopsis here is followed by a link to Arudou Debito’s original post.

Synopsis:
1) Mr Collison is an excellent teacher and has the reviews to prove it.
2) Mr Collison’s wife has a miscarriage.
3) Mr Collison has to take some time off of work to deal with funeral arrangements
4) Mr Collison is fired, Interac claims it is for “performance issues and missing work” (the performance claims are disproven by his excellent reviews).
5) Interac attempts to force Mr Collison to sign resignation papers, going so far as to tell him that he could not leave the office until he signed them (this is horribly illegal).

I really wish that Mr Collison had contacted us when this happened because I can garantee you that this kind of thing will NOT happen to any union member. A strong union can prevent this kind of thing from happening to its members, and can right these kinds of labor issues even after they have begun to go sour, all it takes is the initiative to contact us and the willingness to fight. This is not a criticism of Mr Collison, I certainly cannot imagine the pain he and his family have had to deal with, I just wish we would have had the oppurtunity to try and help. Workers in Japan are all garanteed to have time off for bereavement, and it seems that Interac is unaware of this fact.

A link to the original post:

http://www.debito.org/?p=2993

Bar hostesses form union to combat workplace exploitation, sexual harassment

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A group of women working as bar hostesses have formed their own labor union, complaining about unpaid wages and sexual harassment.

Working at so-called “kyabakura” — a portmanteau of “kyabare” (cabaret) and “kurabu” (clubs) — bars as a hostess is becoming increasingly popular among young women in Japan. However, the group, which announced the formation of the “Kyabakura Union” at a press conference at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on Tuesday, warned hostess wannabes it’s no easy job.

After [Kyabakura Union representative Rin] Sakurai reduced the number of her workdays per week due to poor health, the bar reportedly stopped paying her. Sakurai, who had been sexually harassed by the bar manager, also found unjust payroll deductions for services she had never used, such as 3,000 yen per day for welfare expenses, and 1,500 yen for hair styling and makeup. [An] investigation revealed illegal wage deductions and falsely imposed penalties.

“Some think unpaid wages and sexual harassment are normal in the nightclub industry, but that’s not true,” says Sakurai.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091223p2a00m0na010000c.html