Shibuya's homeless are fed up with the economy that devoured their jobs, and have taken to generating work for themselves. So each weekend through summer, shoppers and strollers on Tokyo's trendy Omotesando boulevard will see the homeless there not scavenging for cigarette butts or alminium cans, but selling their original T-shirts on the sidewalk.
"We want to sell T-shirts, but more importantly we also want to tell others why we are forced to sleep outdoors," said 33-years-old Hiroshi Yamaguchi, the project's manager who lost his job in construction last winter and slept outdoors until he found part-time work helping disabled citizens. "We want to be recognized."
For the second summer running, members of Nojiren ( Shibuya Free Association for the Rights to Housing and Well-being for the Homeless ) are selling a total of 120 silk-screened shirts with international squatters'logo and 20 long-sleeved ones, at 2,500 yen and 3,000 yen respectively. From the proceeds, the homeless vendor receives 500 yen per sale, and the rest goes to the group.
If the T-shirt project succeeds in raising enough funds, Yamaguchi hopes the group will be able to produce other items bearing the logo, such as bags, hats or bandanaas, for sale all year round.
However, as they displayed their wares outside a fashionvle Harajuku store last Sunday, group members said that more foreigners than Japanese stop to look at their shirts or information board in both Japanese and English.
NOJIREN
" The homeless issue is still slow in gaining recognition from the Japanese public," said Makoto Yuasa, Nojiren's 31-years-old spokesman who is also a graduate student in politics. "But one of the reason we are left outside of society is also because there is no sense of community among the homeless themselves," he added.
To compensate in part for this, last Saturday saw the second summer festival taking olace in Shibuya's Miyashita Park, with around 300 homeless people from the city's Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ueno districts gathered together for an evening of karaoke, Jurassic Park showing and a yakisoba dinner.
Apart from such isolated events, Yuasa said Tokyo's more than 5,800 street people need something productive they can do together, be it farming, public works laboring or scavengers for salvage at garbage dumps like in the Philippines.
Primarili, though, Nojiren members hope to develop the T-shirt project to be their main cultural activity and financial source ----as London'es homeless have so successfully done through publishing the magazine, "Big Issue."
" I just thought it would be good to see homeless people not selling used magazines or collecting alminium cans, but selling T-shirts they made," said their professional desinger, who asked to remain anonymous.
The nest T-shiet sale is on Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Harajuku Cat Street, near Omotesando subway station. Internet orders can also be placed at http://www.jca.apc.org/nojukusha/nojiren For details, call or fax 81-(0)3-3406-5254
PHOTO: Homeless hawk their original T-shirts on Omotesando boulevardiers.