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Every year, millions of people around Japan receive packages from Amazon. The packages arrive day and night and invariably in pristine condition. But few give much thought to the exhausted delivery worker.
When C.I. Desert landed at the Narita International Airport in 2018, he stepped into a new life. Young, educated, and multilingual, he fled home, family and a teaching career in Cameroon, which was rife with civil unrest. The reason for choosing Japan, he says, was simple: “In 2018, if you typed ‘10 safest countries in the world,’ you saw Japan.”
Someone in the Japanese government appears to have ordered an Osaka-based union to be destroyed. The Kan’nama story has triggered alarming constitutional questions – but little media attention.
Shibata Akari is one of a small number of female slaughterhouse workers in an industry steeped in discrimination and where workers were not even paid until the 1970s.
Due to the spread of coronavirus, people who are in vulnerable positions such as the impoverished and those living on the street, are finding themselves in a pinch situation. In Tokyo, which is one of the target municipalities of Japan's state of emergency declaration, there are critical problems with finding housing for such people, many of whom are directly affected by the closures of Internet cafes and and shared rooms for welfare guardians due to the spread of Covid-19.
Pay dispute shines spotlight on supply chains and justice
A factory responsible for producing products for retail chain Uniqlo has closed, leaving 4,000 workers out on the streets without work or any severance pay. Indonesian national Wani Rena Napishul was...
The murder of an elderly homeless woman in Tokyo in November was another reminder of the vulnerability of people living on the streets, even in one of the world’s safest cities. Misako Obayashi, 64, was hit on the head, apparently with a bag of rocks, while sitting at a bus stop near Sasazuka Station in the early hours of Nov 16. Her alleged killer, Kazuhito Yoshida, 46, reportedly offered her money to move elsewhere and became enraged when she refused.
Japan's retirees offer solution to labor shortage conundrum
For Eiji and Kumiko Ishikawa, the working day starts as early as 5 a.m. Having loaded the requisite equipment into their van, they set off for their first job of the day,...
Vulnerable young gay men lured into "legal" Tokyo sex industry
At a glance, First Dash is just a regular Tokyo bar. Customers laugh and drink, their animated chatter competing with the monotonous beat of techno thumping through speakers hovering somewhere...