TOKYO LETTER: The government plans to turn thousands of unemployed men into carers for the elderly
JAPAN’S LARGEST soccer ground, the 72,000-seater International Stadium Yokohama, squats majestically over the nation’s second city, within sight of its gleaming corporate cathedrals and concrete spires.
In better days, millions of people tuned in to watch Ireland play here during the 2002 World Cup, in a sporting festival billed as a showcase for Japan’s tourism industry.
Now, in the stadium’s giant shadow, Shuichi Baba experiences a more squalid side of the world’s second-largest economy.
Once counted among the ranks of Japan’s corporate samurai, Baba was fired when the construction company he worked for went belly up amid sharp government cutbacks.
Six years and a vertiginous slide down the social ladder later, he has reached the bottom rung: living among the homeless in a Yokohama park. Recession has stolen the part-time car-factory work that once saved him from destitution and his family has abandoned him. “There’s nowhere to go but up,” he says, laughing bitterly.
Like a punch-drunk boxer, Baba may have one last shot at salvation. If the 46-year-old can keep himself off the streets, he hopes to take advantage of a government plan to turn thousands of unemployed Japanese men into care workers for the elderly.
After half a lifetime involved in building houses and cars, he believes he can turn his hand to spoonfeeding old people and changing nappies. “I know it will be difficult but I just want a chance to try,” he says.
The maths behind the initiative seem compelling. With the world’s fastest ageing population and a growing army of pensioners, Japan is desperately short of geriatric care. According to one estimate, nursing homes will need more than 100,000 new workers by 2010. Meanwhile, the jobless rate is predicted to top 5 per cent by the end of this year as thousands of factory and office workers are thrown on the dole – about 460,000 people have lost their jobs in Japan since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
If the government can retool just a fraction of the country’s three million jobless, the problem should be solved.
But in practice, many expect a bumpy ride. Can salarymen who once prided themselves on being among Japan’s labour elite – the one-third of the working male population classed as full-time salaried workers – learn to work in a badly paid, insecure industry that demands they get in touch with their tender side? “It’s got to be tough on men who have worked in factories or offices all their lives,” says Kenta Wakabayashi, himself a salaryman-turned-carer.
“Looking after the old is something that sounds straightforward, but you have to be able to develop different skills: reading the faces of people you’re caring for and understanding their emotional needs,” he says as he does the rounds in a Tokyo home for the elderly. “It’s not something that everyone can do, although many think they can.”
Yuko Kawanishi, a sociologist specialising in health issues, agrees that the transition will be tough. “A lot of people try care work before discovering how hard it is and leaving. For men in particular, I see a lot of problems.”
Wakabayashi (35) is a rarity: a male worker in an industry that is still mostly the preserve of married women and a small number of immigrants. He quit his engineering job after looking after his ailing grandfather and becoming alarmed at the looming geriatric care crisis. “My parents’ generation, the babyboomers, will be 80 in two decades. Who will look after all these people? I don’t think the government has thought about it enough.”
The government says it is doing its best. Japanese prime minister Taro Aso recently announced a package of roughly £13.5 billion (€15.3 billion) to help ease the jobless crisis, much of which is likely to be used by local councils to retrain sacked workers. In greater Tokyo, money will be used on basic training and relocation expenses for men willing to swap dark suits and overalls for medical coats.
Outside the capital, schemes are afoot to funnel factory and office workers back to farm small plots of land in the declining countryside.
For some parts of the metropolis, the money cannot come soon enough. Baba’s temporary home in Kotobukicho is an area like Liverpool that once housed workers for a thriving docks but is now sinking into decline. About 18 per cent of the local population here are on the dole, and half are over 60. Doss houses, day-rent hotels, bars and off-licences make up most of the local landscape.
Baba was fired, aged 40, after 18 years with the same company. He then spent years working mainly in a car-parts factory affiliated with Honda before being laid-off in December.
He says his wife divorced him and remarried soon after he lost his construction company job, and he has not seen his 12-year-old daughter in three years.
Baba sleeps in one of the local hotels only when he can get work from the crowded local “hello work” (unemployment) office, which is not often. “Since December it has just been impossible to find anything.”
He says the deepening recession scares him. “People forget how to care for each other because they’re so busy looking after themselves. It’s a waste of human talent. I just hope someone sees that I still have something to give.”
