June 01, 2002
‘Instructions for making a box:
1 empty box of corrugated cardboard
Vinyl sheet (semitransparent) – twenty inches square
Rubber tape (water-resistant) – about eight yards
Wire – about two yards
Small pointed knife (a tool)
(To have on hand, if necessary: Three pieces of worn canvas and one pair of work boots in addition to regular work clothes for streetwear.)…
…Just making the box is simple enough; at the outside it takes less than an hour. However, it requires considerable courage to put the box on, over your head, and get to be a box man…’.
In his 1973 novel Hako Otaka (published in English as The Box Man in 1974 by Vintage International), Japanese author Kobo Abe (1924-1993) reverses the observational perspective. Instead of being viewed from the perspective of society, the box man observes society through the slit in his box. The above-cited instructions explaining how to become a box man may strike us as cynical when we think about the actual situation, but it is the reversal of perspective in Abe’s novel that makes it possible to describe the life of the box man authentically. The following attempt at analysis is intended, on the basis of the interaction between the apparently chaotic settlement patterns of the box men and the specifically Japanese cultural conditions, to shed some light on the phenomenon, which is after all markedly different from our own picture of homelessness.
Since the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, if not earlier, unemployment and the related loss of status have become an undeniable reality in Japanese society. While until then it was normal, irrespective of the economic conditions, for a person to spend his entire working life in one company, a situation which guaranteed not only the individual’s livelihood but also a wider familial framework, this concept is increasingly falling apart today. This U-turn is particularly evident in the collapse of traditional Japanese role models and in the growth of those groups of people who live their lives on the margins of social conventions. Although objective estimates of the number of ‘homeless’ are significantly lower than the averages in all other industrialized countries, the village-like encampments of box men are clearly an irritating element in the urban space of the Japanese metropolises.
Two terms – uchi and soto – are essential for an understanding of the reality of Japan. The smallest spatial unit is not the space of the individual but is determined by uchi, home, the family, the household, indoors. This is not only to be understood spatially; uchi also has a very clear sociological meaning, which can be roughly translated as ‘that which is situated within a certain boundary’. Its opposite is soto, outside. Soto characterizes all areas of life outside that specific boundary, which is by no means always clearly defined. This model is also reflected in the Japanese language. People in the same social circle are referred to linguistically in a different way from persons outside that circle. The sociological dividing line between uchi and soto is often just as fluid as the spatial divisions of the Japanese home, which frequently leads to misunderstandings, especially by people who are not so familiar with the concept. It would seem logical to translate the two terms as ‘private’ and ‘public’, but that simplification results in an abstraction that fails to do justice to the meaning of the two terms.
The traditional social division of roles, which is also in crisis today, is built up around the same two concepts. It is no coincidence that the Japanese for one’s own wife (kanai) contains the character uchi, while the Japanese for another man’s wife (okusan) also contains a character (oku) that defines the inside. Traditionally, the woman’s social role is acted out indoors, whereas the man assumes responsibility for tasks outside the home. Though less rigid than it used to be, this model nonetheless helps to explain why most box people are men. They often include men who are no longer able to fulfil their tasks outside the home because they have lost their job and who, partly from shame, have turned their backs on their family, or have simply been ostracized. The number of box women is rising too, but women still tend to be taken care of by the social safety net of children with jobs. In times of economic prosperity it was completely normal for employees who were no longer of any use to a company to be kept on simply in order to maintain the traditional social consensus. These supernumeraries were called ‘window watchers’ because they were allocated a place apart from the other employees by the window where they could spend the rest of their working days doing nothing. Nowadays, however, economic pressure and a concomitant change in business philosophy have rendered the practice unfeasible.
If you stroll through Ueno Park when the cherry trees are in blossom, your will immediately notice the village of box men. Nestling among the museums, a concert hall and the crowds of passers-by who have come to admire the cherry blossom, is a more or less separate space centred around a public lavatory – a tent village you cannot miss because of the bright blue colour of the groundsheets. Not far away you will see groups of Japanese, seated on identical groundsheets, holding their traditional cherry blossom picnic. At first sight it seems a superficial, insignificant colour analogy, but in fact it has a hidden meaning. In both cases uchi is being practised, and the groundsheet functions as a territorial marker. Meeting to enjoy the cherry blossom and the related picnic (hanami) with people from different walks of life (work, family, circle of friends) who nevertheless form a sociological unit, is an annual event in which the sociological aspect of uchi manifests itself visibly in the public space. Paralleling this are the box men, whose simple spatial constructions bear witness to their own attempts to achieve a minimal uchi. While the homeless in the West usually reject such concealment completely and satisfy their needs by appropriating the functions of public space, the situation of the box men literally corresponds to the term ‘homeless’. The constructionally demarcated territory established by the box men is closer to a stripped down but spatially discrete minimal version of a Japanese home than to the haunts of the anonymous homeless person in the urban outdoors.
Closer examination of the spatial configurations of the box men reveals surprising parallels with the traditional home. Although they are not deliberate or intentional, these parallels do show how certain spatial patterns of thought have been internalized in the course of time. In The Hidden Order, Yoshinobu Ashihara attempts to trace the typology of the Japanese home. In his view, this specific typology is not a product of cultural conditions, but a pragmatic reaction to climatological conditions. In many respects, the mini-architectures of the box men make use of the same typology thereby confirming Ashihara’s thesis, since it is only logical that their prime concern should be a pragmatic satisfaction of their basic housing needs. Since a large part of daily life takes place on the floor in Japan, the floor plays a more important role than in the West. The division and functions of the floor surface are also reflected in different heights and the material used. The main surface area in the home, which is laid with traditional tatami mats (183 x 91.5 cm), is usually raised about 40 cm above ground level to guarantee enough circulation of air beneath the floor during the hot and humid summers. The hall, with a concrete or tiled floor, is usually at ground level and has a clear spatial articulation, as have the kitchen and other rooms. The box men do not have tatami mats, but they do raise the living quarters by means of standard beverage pallets. In spite of the minimal dimensions, the division into spatial zones is clear, too. Even the customary, slightly raised tokonoma (display niche), which serves as a framework for a scroll painting or floral arrangement, can be found in a modified form in the architecture of the box men. The horizontality – often wrongly identified as a formal characteristic in our eyes – which results from sliding open the light framed paper partitions for through ventilation in the hot and humid summers, has also been adopted as far as possible. The box man reacts to changes in the weather in a similar way by using tent canvas that can be rolled up or shutters that can be opened and closed with adhesive tape.
Although the box-people settlements are tolerated by officialdom because of the lack of alternatives, the inhabitants are still driven game – driven especially by the need to satisfy their everyday needs. Mobility in the urban system is a survival strategy for them. The cart on wheels often determines the size of their architecture, which has to be capable of being assembled in a jiffy. Here and there in the city you sometimes see these compact packages parked while the owner is engaged in his business. The box men also use discarded objects and incorporate them, divorced from their original function, into their architecture. A society of surplus, which is perpetually looking for new, more attractive objects, enables the box men to make use of that surplus. In so doing, they resolutely adapt the rhythm of their lives to the income hierarchy of the districts of Tokyo. After all, a side-street in the chic Ginza district is more likely to yield a bottle of first class saké or a good French wine thrown away because of a damaged label. The box men come across a lot of items that can still be used – pieces of furniture, clothing, books – and put them back into circulation in a second-hand recycling circuit in which the cart often functions as a means of production. Unlike the spatially uprooted people who wander the streets of our Western cities, the box men return at the end of the day to their uchi, which they unpack from the cart and reassemble, or which in many cases has become a permanent home in the village-like settlements. In either case, the territorial boundary has to be re-established every evening to ensure the necessary stability in a life full of uncertainty.
More evidence of how strongly this concept of a territorial definition of uchi has been internalized in the Japanese way of thinking can be found by watching the way a relief organization doles out food near the tent village in Ueno Park. Four loudspeakers form a 30 by 30 metre square and with familiar Japanese sentimental music they mark out, though not entirely without ambiguity, a field in the public space that has been temporarily occupied by the box people. Reproving looks unambiguously inform any outsiders who may stray into this area that they are out of bounds.
The respect that the box men command in this way is also practised by them in their dealings with society. Stigmatized as they are in a prestige-orientated society, they try to make the best of their situation, on the one hand by contributing to social processes in proportion to their means, and on the other by doing all they can to maintain the impression of a functioning order. The collection of aluminium cans, used PET bottles and mangas (Japanese comics) generates a minimal income and is socially useful. It is not unusual to see box men maintaining a particular public space on their own initiative as a way of contributing to the public order and thereby offering a formal apology for their situation.
Many box men would like to escape from their situation and return to a normal life, but the prevailing legal conditions for obtaining a permanent job make that virtually impossible. In order to be eligible for a long-term labour contract, you have to have a postal address. The state offers the possibility of a short stay in a kind of centre for the homeless, which does confer a physical address, but practice has shown that the brief duration of the stay there is not enough to secure a footing in the labour market. Moreover, this opportunity can only be offered once. If it proves impossible to find a permanent job within the stipulated period, a long-term stay back in the box men’s village is the only alternative.
The fact that box men are not entitled to an address is surprising given the Japanese system of urban place-names. There are no street names, nor are houses numbered as they are in Europe. The abstract numerical code of a Japanese address refers to a subdivision into districts and blocks that is totally lacking in geometric regularity. This arcane numerical code can only be understood by specialists, and gives the layman little idea of where a house is situated. It is impossible to find the physical object without a sketch of its spatial surroundings, and the spatial significance of the individual object is subordinated to that of the neighbourhood. Given that the box-men villages are clearly distinguished in territorial terms and that the existence of these territories is also public knowledge, it is especially puzzling that they should not have been included in the improvised-looking address system. It is worth considering whether such an organizational measure, which is relatively easy to carry out, might not prove an effective way of helping the box men to cope with their situation.
Kurt Handlbauer, who studied architecture at the TU Vienna, is currently carrying out research for a PhD at the University of Tokyo, Japan.
This article first appeared in the Austrian magazine Derive.