Tokyo drives out homeless before world's tallest tower opens

By Takehiko Kambayashi Jan 29, 2012, 6:17 GMT

Tokyo - On a bitterly cold morning, a 77-year-old man who has lived on the streets for two decades says he and other homeless people will be uprooted from areas around the world's tallest tower ahead of its opening in Japan's capital.

'I hear we will be kicked out from here,' Haruo said in the tourist area of Asakusa in eastern Tokyo.

Haruo and others who live in cardboard shelters say security guards are now patrolling the areas around Tokyo Sky Tree, which is due to open in May, to drive them away.

'We were told security people would start in April to go around 24 hours a day,' said Tanaka, a homeless man in his 60s. 'So there will be no place for us to sleep.'

Tanaka, a former construction worker, said he has lived on the streets for 10 years in the central district known for traditional crafts that help draw in tourists, low-paying jobs and for its homeless problem.

While advancing a redevelopment project, local government officials 'keep sweeping homeless people out of the areas without providing accommodation for them,' said Mitsuo Nakamura, the leader of a labour group that supports the homeless.

'Local government officials are spearheading the move,' he said.

Municipal officials and campaigners for the homeless say it is difficult to be sure about the actual number of people living on the streets, because they wander from place to place.

That is because the government is kicking them out of many areas, Nakamura and homeless people say.

The local government is not driving homeless people away, Shuji Sato, senior staff at Taito city office, said.

The office asks homeless people 'to go to self-support facilities so that they can look for a job,' Sato said

The office also gets older ones to apply for welfare benefits, Sato added.

Like Haruo and Tanaka, many of older homeless people in Tokyo used to be day labourers working for construction companies without fringe benefits 'to help build the foundation of this country after World War II,' Nakamura said. 'Once it was done, they were dumped.'

He said more people in their 30s and 40s are also thrown out onto the streets these days when they lose their jobs in the country's protracted economic downturns.

Advocates say the homeless are willing to work, but there are no jobs.

As Tokyo Sky Tree opens in May, officials and business people say they are hoping for a big economic boost from the tower and the adjacent shopping complex.

The 634-metre tower was certified in November by Guinness World Records as the world's tallest. The new skyscraper for digital terrestrial broadcasting surpassed in March the height of China's Canton Tower, a 600-metre broadcast and sightseeing tower.

Guinness named the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates as the world's tallest structure.

Sachiko Fuke, a public relations official at Tobu Tower Sky Tree Co, said 25 million people are expected to visit the tower and the complex annually, and the company believes the facilities 'will contribute significantly to the area's economy.'

'We are aiming to make them commercial facilities where state-of-the-art technology and local craftsmanship come together,' she said.

Nakamura disagreed.

'I don't believe it at all,' he said.

'Even if jobs are created, most of them are low-paying non-regular ones. I expect the employment situation to become much more serious as the central and local governments have failed to address employment problems.'