Abstract

This chapter examines Japan’s regulatory strategies addressing homeless people in public spaces. Despite a relatively small number of homeless individuals in Japan, the country’s policies toward homelessness have been strict and harsh with regard to public spaces. The author argues that these policies can be understood in the context of historical discursive frameworks in Japanese society that mythically underscore the extreme homogeneity of the mainstream population, known as chūryū, and the regulation of public behavior through shared cultural codes. The political-economic concept of societalization as defined by Bob Jessop (The future of the capitalist state. Polity, Cambridge, 2002) is used to interpret these inherited chūryū discourses and their impact on Japanese homeless policy seeking to reinstate urban spatial homogeneity amidst rampant poverty. The author also explores how social movement actors have sought to challenge societalization in order to reform ground-level urban policies. The final part discusses the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and how Japan’s historical mode of societalization faces a significant crisis today.