Exploring the stark realities of Japan's socioeconomic divide, Andrew Fraser journeyed to Kamagasaki, Osaka’s largest slum—sometimes known as the Airin area—to reveal a unique poverty crisis defined not by visible chaos, but by an unsettling, almost invisible quiet. As Andrew Fraser notes, this invisibility makes the problem "maybe worse" because the government appears to be sweeping a massive, untold homelessness and inequality problem "under the rug" instead of resolving it.
Andrew Fraser highlights that Kamagasaki, once crammed with tens of thousands of laborers, represents the "last frontier of the country's forgotten poverty problem". Its origins are directly linked to Japan’s economic miracle; it was the country's biggest yosa, a black market where companies would hire thousands of day laborers to "build the high-tech wonderland that we love about Japan today". When the boom ended, the work vanished, leaving these men—now older, without families or homes—to stay behind.
This area has also become a destination for the Johhatsu, or "evaporated people"—men and women who disappear due to crushing debt, divorce, or shame. Kamagasaki is the perfect hideout, designed for a ghosted lifestyle with "no questions here, no records, just a street a name and a room".
Life in Kamagasaki is sustained by a deeply discounted economy. As Andrew Fraser found in a local supermarket, plain rice meals sell for a dollar and instant noodles for even less. The primary vice that fuels life here is alcohol, particularly sake, which is the "easiest cheapest making". The prices are stripped to the bone, with some sake available for under a dollar a liter—"that's less than water"—which Andrew Fraser suggests "kind of just tells you everything" about the local economic priority. The drinking problem is acute, as many residents are unemployed and "just start drinking from morning to night". Andrew Fraser noted that this micro society, which runs on "half priced coffee cheap booze free meals," does not seem "all that bad".
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Survival is enabled by Seekatsu Hogo, or public assistance, and Kamagasaki has the highest welfare density in all of Japan. However, as Andrew Fraser describes, the system is "harsh man, like really harsh at least by Western standards". It is a heavily conditional safety net, built on the idea of who deserves help. Applicants must prove they have hit "rock bottom," with no savings, no assets (officials check bank accounts), and no family support (officials literally call relatives to ask for help). This system is "not really a safety net, it's a stress test" designed to make dependence "pretty unpleasant" so that independence looks "pretty good".
Those who cannot qualify for the welfare-subsidized micro apartments, which can be as small as 52 square feet, resort to emergency shelters run by the Osaka city government. These shelters are described by Andrew Fraser as being "like a military barracks meets a prison". They are spotlessly clean—"cleaner than your local hospital"—but designed without comfort, with one blanket, no pillow, and a folded sheet foam as a mattress. The rules are brutal: the city government explicitly forbids pillows because it is "too comfortable for the emergency," and occupancy is decided by a daily lottery. Despite these conditions, some people have stayed for more than 10 years.
Andrew Fraser met a 72-year-old former policeman named Han in the shelter who lives on a small pension that disqualifies him from financial aid. After losing his family and career (he got divorced after cheating while traveling for work), Han lives a "tough contained existence". When asked about the hardest thing about his life, he simply replied "nothing," suggesting he had found a "strange kind of quiet peace" after losing the pressure to perform as an employee, father, and husband.
Despite the underlying poverty, Andrew Fraser repeatedly notes that by international standards, Kamagasaki is surprisingly "nice". It is clean, quiet, and safe. However, Japanese people with average incomes would not live there because they perceive the area as "dirty" and an "unknown". Andrew Fraser concludes that Japan's approach to poverty is not "charity really, it's containment". The ability of men like Han to "check out like this in Japan," having built the country during the boom and now having just enough to "go out contently," is enabled by Kamagasaki. The most visible sign of the lower socioeconomic status, according to Andrew Fraser, is the practice of "curb sitting," where men grab cheap sake from vending machines and hang out, as there is "nothing to do here".
