Three Days with the Homelessness men in Kamagasaki
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; the late 1980s] We embarked on a three-day experiment. We temporarily became homeless. Then there was a major riot!
We had been reading the Bible with an open mind, and acting upon what we discovered. We called it Action-Faith, and it led us to experience so much goodness.
That process led me to meet a homeless man, who might have been an Angel of God.
That process inspired us to preach in the Open Air at Shinsaibashi.
That process led us to go on evangelistic journeys to Awaji Island where we brought no money and no bag.
The first trip led to sweet victory. The second trip led to bitter defeat.
That process led to our searching for homeless people in Japan, culminating in our discovery of the historic neighborhood of Kamagasaki.
Kamagasaki was an epicenter for homeless men. And for Day Laborers.
What is a Day Laborer? Each morning at 5 am, companies would show up at the Yoseba Employment Center in Kamagasaki, where they would hire laborers for one day.
Thanks to that, thousands of Day Laborers migrated to Kamagasaki, where lined up at the Employment Center every morning, hopeful for a one-day job.
We visited people in Kamagasaki whenever we could.
The above might seem like it was enough.
But for us, it was not. We wanted more.
We came up with another experiment. For three days, we ourselves would become homeless.
We would be temporarily homeless.
Here was our idea:
We would show up in Kamagasaki, just like homeless people.
We would have no plan or schedule, just like homeless people.
We would wander around by faith.
We would be eager and accepting for whatever it was that God would put in our path.
We’d simply show up, and we’d see what would happen.
That way, instead of us being perceived as rich foreign missionaries swooping in from afar, we’d become one of the homeless people.
We needed to schedule a date for our experiment. For both Tom and myself, our regular missionary work had a break coming up.
During those days, neither of us had any regular ministry responsibilities on our calendars. So that was it!
It was in October 1990.
We traveled from the north of Osaka by a train ride aboard the Loop Line.
The Loop Line is a train that loops around the heart of the megacity of Osaka. It’s like the Loop Line in Chicago, but a lot bigger.
Finally we arrived at Shin-Imamiya train station. It was our stop.
If you were to look at the megacity of Osaka from above, the Loop Line is like the face of a round clock, and Shin-Imamiya train station is at the 6:30 location.
From the train station, we walked into Kamagasaki. There, we simply wandered around by faith.
We ended up walking to San Kaku Koen. That name means “Triangle Park.”
Triangle Park wasn’t the geographic center of Kamagasaki. It wasn’t even very big. It was a little piece of land, no bigger than a tiny city block.
But we saw it as the hub of activity for Kamagasaki.
The one ambulance station for all of Kamagasaki was right across the street from Triangle Park.
We were told that this single ambulance made about 6,000 runs per year. That calculates to 16 ambulance runs per day.
That’s a lot of emergencies for such a tiny neighborhood. We imagined those runs were due to all the violence and murders in Kamagasaki.
Homeless men seemed to congregate in Triangle Park. In the winter, they were almost standing around a fire.
They made fires by burning cardboard boxes, which they extracted from the recycle boxes of the neighboring businesses.
When they weren’t sitting around a cardboard fire, they were standing no more than 20 feet away, peeing on the ground in the open air.
Thus like pretty much all of Kamagasai, Triangle Park had two pungent odors.
It had an intense stench of burning cardboard. And an intense stench of fresh urine.
Those two made my eyes water and my stomach queasy.
These homeless men kept themselves looking pretty good.
If they had enough money, they went to the Sento, the communal public bathhouse. There, they’d bathe and wash their clothes.
We found that these homeless men of Kamagasaki were really clean, all things considered.
On our first day, we spent most of our time at Triangle Park.
Men were coming up to us all the time. They bought us Canned Coffee from the nearby vending machines on the street.
They also offered us liquor from the same vending machines.
There was no end to their curiosity about us. It wasn’t rejection or hostility. It was fascination.
Most of them had never conversed with a white foreigner before.
We had a very full day.
When night came, we watched the homeless men to see what they’d do.
They wandered about on a sort of hunting expedition. They returned with big sheets of cardboard.
A big piece of cardboard from a recycling bin made for an impromptu mattress. They put it directly on the pebbly gravel of Triangle Park and laid down to sleep.
So that’s what we did.
We must have been quite a sight. Two white foreigners, sleeping on cardboard, in Triangle Park. That hadn’t happened in living memory.
And then there was a RIOT.
It wasn’t just any riot. It was the biggest riot in Japan in 17 years!
We were told that a high-ranking police officer in Kamagasaki was caught taking a bribe.
This grated at the Day Laborers. Thus began several days of intense violence. They set fire to several stores. They set fire to Shin Imamiya train station.
In the midst of all this, Tom and I were there. We walked around, carefully taking in the sights.
We saw a mob of angry men run up to a car, tip it over and lay it on its side. Then they started it on fire.
As it burned, various parts would catch fire and flare in some loud way. It was like the car was screaming in pain.
Before our very eyes, in about a minute, the car was turned into a lifeless hunk of smoldering rust.
We saw two cars murdered in that way. We were no more than 20 feet away.
That night, we slept in Triangle Park, per our plan. Or at least, we tried to sleep.
By the next morning, things had escalated. Police officers were everywhere, garbed in riot gear.
They wore helmets and face shields and body armor. They held transparent shields out in front of them.
Things came to a standoff not too far from Tabiji no Sato.
Tabiji no Sato was a Catholic Jesuit institution. It was one of the Catholic agencies in Kamagasaki.
The name means “Traveler’s Village.” It was a Jesuit Center for Homeless Workers.
The priest who ran the house was Father Suzukida. A lay Catholic man named Nakajima was his helper.
We had gotten to know Nakajima-san a bit.
That standoff, not far from Tabiji no Sato, was centered on the intersection of two streets. At one end of the intersection were the police, garbed in riot gear.
They were about 75 feet to the north. They stood in rows that spanned the full width of the street.
They were several rows deep, right next to one another. Nobody could get through that line.
At the other end of the intersection were Day Laborers and homeless men. There were perhaps a hundred. They were about 75 feet to the south of the intersection.
They had no body armor. They weren’t unified. They darted about, shouting and cursing at the police.
They threw things at the police, things that could maim or kill. The police blocked the flying objects with their shields.
The situation was grave. There seemed no way to end it peaceably. It felt like it was about to explode.
Where were Tom and I in the midst of all this?
Unfortunately for us, we had walked right into the middle of that intersection!
Standing there in the intersection, we looked to one side and saw the line of riot police. We looked to the other side and saw the Day Laborers and homeless men. Projectiles were sailing over our heads.
We realized we were in serious trouble. We tried to walk backwards out of the intersection. But riot police had formed a new line behind us, blocking our escape.
Looking across the intersection, riot police had newly blocked off that way, too.
There was no escape for us. We were in the middle of it all.
We were trapped!
There were fresh sounds from the riot police. I don’t recall if it was a voice of a commanding officer, or the sound of a whistle.
Whatever it was, it caused things to change.
Right now.
As one man, they started walking toward the Day Laborers. They walked in formation, shields and batons raised. They had grim looks on their faces.
There was nothing that could stop them. And nobody could slip through their lines.
They were advancing toward us. We were unavoidably in their path.
We tried to squirm through the line of riot police behind us. But they wouldn’t let us through.
The big mass of riot police increased their pace. Now they were moving at a pretty good clip.
In seconds, Tom and I would be trampled and beaten with batons.
We ran. We ran toward our friends the Day Laborers and homeless men. We ran as fast as we could.
Not one of the Day Laborers blocked our path. It was as if they accepted us as one of their own.
In hindsight, we considered it a privilege to be accepted by Day Laborers and homeless men.
The sounds from the riot police rose to fever pitch. They were shouting. Their pace escalated to a nearly flat-out sprint.
The Day Laborers and homeless men had no choice but to flee. To a man, they turned in retreat.
Tom and I were among them.
As we ran, a voice called out to us from the side. It was our friend Nakajima at Tabiji no Sato. He beaconed us to the nook at the entryway of his building.
With him, hidden from the direct police assault, we were much safer.
We weren’t beaten with batons. We weren’t trampled. We didn’t get a concussion. We didn’t suffer severe lacerations. None of our bones were broken.
Somehow, we were spared.
How did we end up in such a remarkable situation?
Tom and I had felt led to share the life of homeless people in Osaka. We set out on a simple three-day experiment.
We wanted to befriend homeless people, living as one of them. We wanted to share in their lives, at least as much of it as we could.
We felt that as one of them, we could more convincingly speak of the love of God with them.
When we arrived at Shin Imamiya station a few days earlier, we had no idea there would be a major riot.
When our three-day experiment in homelessness came to a close, we boarded the train at Shin-Imamiya Station and sped away down the Loop Line.
In that train car, we both felt certain that our time in Kamagasaki had not come to a close.
We were convinced it had just begun.
RESOURCES
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
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