Nojuku

The word nojuku in Japanese means something like sleeping outside or under the stars or in a rough place. “Box people” is not an exact translation.

When I lived in Tokyo (1991-2), the economic bubble was about to burst, but there were already homeless in a few places, mainly around Shinjuku Station. I pointed out that the living arrangements of Tokyo’s homeless weren’t only architecture. They were Japanese architecture.

Homeless people in London have a magazine, but they haven’t got an architecture. That is something to do with Japan.

The bigger point is that the Japanese, even before Japan was a rich country, tried to design their way out of poverty.

Here’s a website intended to prove my point. It shows homeless people, or rather people forced to improvise their own homes, in Tokyo.

Construction by the Sumida river

Another

You can see Japanese architecture when there are only boxes. That was what I meant when I made my original point.

Not architecture, but the possessions of a homeless and lonely-seeming man

There used to be a coffee-table book called Japanese Style, or Tokyo Style, which I am sure many Americans picked up expecting it to show Zen gardens and wooden buildings.

In fact, it showed rows of smart suits hanging next to beds in 200 square-foot apartments over overflowing ashtrays, and the like. Slightly upscale versions of this picture, a self-made living box of a construction worker by the Sumida river.