Japan : Widespread Unemployment, Disposable Workers

Kenji Kawamoto – Yopparai Tengoku (Drunkards’ Heaven)
▻http://kawamotokenji.tumblr.com
▻http://www.oai13.com/portfolio/travailler-et-se-saouler-jusqua-bout-de-forces
“My photographs are a record of the people who have reached their limit and exhausted their strength after the daily grind.

Everyone has different burdens, but everyone lives at a frantic pace. People drink with friends as a reward for the hard day’s work and face a new day’s work like warriors.

A lot of people struggle through such work situations.

I took these pictures with a true feeling of respect for the people in them. I don’t believe the state my subjects are in is shabby in any way. I can feel they have experienced hardships and fatigue to end up like this.

— Kenji Kawamoto”

Shiho Fukada: Japan’s Poor, Homeless, Outcasted and Forgotten Workers
▻https://youtu.be/6kdzPOp6yik

▻http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/japan-disposable-workers-labor-unemployment-crisis-economy

Japan’s disposable workers
▻http://disposableworkers.com

“One billion people, 30 percent of the world’s workforce, are jobless. Recent political instability, from the Arab Spring to the London riots and Occupy Wall Street protest, all have one thing in common – frustration over unemployment and anger towards the growing gap between rich and poor. Unsustainable employment, and the political turmoil it provokes, is a global crisis.

Once a birthright for the middle class, the 40-hour-a-week job with medical benefits and a pension is fading. Disposable workers – those easily fired without a social safety net – are becoming the norm.

Japan has gone through a painful transformation from a lifetime employment system to one that readily discards unwanted labor. This project is about lives of such disposable workers in Japan: temporary employees who live in internet cafes, female college graduates who get by as bar girls, and businessmen who, desperate to retain their jobs, sometimes work themselves to death.”

Overworked To Suicide. The Last Conversation
Widows recall their last conversation with their husbands.
▻https://vimeo.com/101664234

Internet Cafe Refugees. Living in Internet Cafe

Dumping Ground. Hard Time for Baby Boomers

Hostess Girls educated but not employed.
▻https://vimeo.com/90716518

Shiho Fukada site web.
▻http://www.shihofukada.com/#!/index

Stephane Remael “Les évaporés du Japon”
« Chaque année, quelque 100 000 Japonais s’évaporent sans laisser de traces. Débarrassés de leur passé, ils tentent de refaire leur vie en passagers clandestins de l’archipel. Lié à la honte et au déshonneur, le phénomène est au cœur de la culture nippone. »
▻http://stephaneremael.com/reportage_67/Les-evapores-du-Japon

A MAN VANISHES / 人間蒸発 (PG) by IMAMURA Shohei.
▻https://youtu.be/xZQywgSjg84

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate
DIR: Sean McAllister
“Avant le crash économique de 1992, Naoki, la quarantainegérait l’entreprise familiale. En une journée, il s’est retrouvé à la rue et sa famille lui a tourné le dos. Il vit dans une chambre avec sa petite amie Yoshi, qui a la moitié de son âge. Il travaille sept heures par jour, un quart-temps au bureau de poste et Yoshi a trois emplois, dont un comme hôtesse. Elle travaille quinze heures par jour. Un amour étrange qui persiste et résiste aux défis de survie du quotidien.”
▻https://youtu.be/QH-kNnq7mFM

#salaryman #Japon #travail #souffrance #photographie #documentaires