The economic tribulations which have dogged Japan since the burst of the bubble economy have decimated employment opportunities for generations of graduates, especially for the cohorts of generation-X, who entered the job market in the depths of Japan’s ’employment ice-age’.
Now in their 30s and 40s, a large number of these individuals were forced to settle for temporary, unstable work as the job for life system enjoyed by their parents steadily eroded away. When the global financial crisis hit, even temporary work became scarce. A steadily growing number of this cohort are finding themselves homeless at a time when not too long ago they would have been at the peak of their careers.
The woes of this age group were compounded by Japan’s rigid employment structure. Frantic job hunting traditionally starts in the senior year of college, and within a year of graduation most are expected to find their place in the employment market. Even just a few year’s ago, studying abroad, taking time out to travel, or pursue other interests before finding a job could be viewed with suspicion by potential employers. Those that lagged too far behind in finding a role could find that they were ignored in favour of successive new graduates. The longer they took to establish their career, the less chance that it would ever happen. Instead, they were forced to take whatever roles they could take, often with little stability or employee rights.
Forced to while away long nights in Japan’s legion of all night diners, fast-food restaurants and bars, they are the ‘makudo nanmin,’ or McDonald’s refugees.
At the start of the crunch, there was much press attention on the ‘working poor,’ who lived hand to mouth doing tertiary jobs, working all day to raise the required 1000 yen (£7) to fund a night at an internet cafe or comic store. For the makudo nanmin, even this sum is out of the question, with many just able to stretch to the 100 yen (70p) required for a McDonald’s coffee and shelter for the night.
The American chain which once spoke of cosmopolitan urban leisure has now become a last-resort refuge for those with very little hope for the future. Numbers of makudo nanmin are especially high in Osaka, Japan’s second city. Seen as the industrial heart of the country, lower cost of living compared to Tokyo draws many of Japan’s lost generation down south. As a result, a far higher than national average 45% of the population of Osaka is engaged in temporary labour.
Far from being a temporary phenomenon, it seems that for the time being the ranks of the homeless are set to grow. As younger, cheaper labour graduates from college, even those in their early 30s still finding some part-time work may find themselves squeezed out. Depressingly, a spokesman for the McDonald’s told one news outlet that it plans to expand the number of restaurants which open around the clock, citing an increase in late-night customers. The subtext being, this new customer group is set to grow in the near future.
