The New Homeless

Can't help but disrupt the hierarchy:

Until recently, homelessness was the misfortune of a small minority in Japan. According to official figures, the country had 16,000 homeless last year, less than two thirds the number counted five years earlier, and they are the neatest, cleanest, most unobtrusive homeless in the world.

...Many have been living on the street for the best part of a decade or more, since the beginning Japan's last recession in the 1990s. Like the rest of Japanese society, they live in an ordered hierarchy in conformity with strict social codes. It is with this smoothly functioning world that a new generation of destitutes is coming into conflict.

Mr Iwamura outlines the unwritten rules that govern life in the Shinjuku subway, which became his home last October after the bakery where he worked went bankrupt: once it has been claimed, a sleeping space is sacred and never to be infringed upon by another homeless person; never get into arguments with police or security guards; use only discarded cardboard boxes to construct shelters - never steal them from shops.

...“When you look for food in the bags outside McDonald's, the rule is to open them, take just what you need and close the bag neatly up again,” says Mr Iwamura, 42. “These newcomers carry the bag away with them and when they've finished just leave the rubbish spilling everywhere.”

...The new homeless are younger, angrier and unadjusted to the conventions of life on the streets. As numbers increase so, inevitably, does competition for food and shelter. When conflict arises, homeless society has its own way of resolving the problems.