Abstract
Homelessness became a widely-recognized problem in Japan during the 1990s when the number of rough sleepers rapidly increased. During and after the World War II, widespread damage caused by heavy aerial bombing in Japan left many people without a proper home. Demobilized soldiers found their homes in ashes and, unable to obtain employment, were forced to live on the streets, along with children who had lost their homes and parents. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, today's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, approached homelessness through a fundamental revision of the Public Assistance Act in 1950. This chapter shows how homelessness in Japan developed into a phenomenon strongly connected to day laborers and policies concerning them. The institutionalization of a parallel welfare system for day laborers turned it into a phenomenon spatially restricted to yoseba, becoming a strategy to overcome periods of unemployment. The chapter explores how homelessness spatially expanded out to nearly all areas of major cities.
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