SNA (Toronto) — A recent proud display of anti-homelessness online reflects how cruel some parts of society have become toward its most vulnerable members.

In a livestream on August 7, popular YouTuber DaiGo declared to his audience of almost 2.5 million subscribers that “the lives of homeless people are just, whatever… It makes no difference to me whether homeless people are alive or dead. That’s immaterial to me. Frankly, I wish they didn’t exist anymore.”

DaiGo’s hateful comments were met with criticism on Twitter.

User @obakyu_no_kyu asserted the need for administrative action on DaiGo’s active platforms, suggesting that “Google [and] YouTube should ban his account and purge him forever. Many Japanese [people disagree with him].”

Another user called @kuraiseikaku brought up the issue of violence against homeless people: “Appalling attacks against homeless people have in fact occurred many times before. DaiGo utterly fails to imagine the physical pain, fear, and a mixture of anger and frustration felt by the victims of those attacks, who were murdered or injured all of a sudden. A true scumbag.”

In an interview with Mainichi Shinbun, journalist Koichi Yasuda asserted that DaiGo’s remarks come from an existing discrimination against homeless people that is overlooked by the government. He stated, “the government and the administration have an unavoidable responsibility in the way they have come to accept people’s ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance toward the welfare system.”

But not everyone felt that DaiGo was out of bounds.

One apparent DaiGo supporter called @LsIay_WK implied that the hate against DaiGo had nothing to do with human rights and was only an act of performative action, saying, “it’s sad that the hypocrites who were beating up on DaiGo and talking about human rights for the homeless are all gone. I guess they’ll be waiting on the bench until their next target comes out.”

User @_BADCATBAD had a similar opinion, suggesting that DaiGo was simply speaking on behalf of others: “how do the people condemning him treat the homeless and on welfare? It’s easy to condemn someone for saying what the rest of us are ashamed to admit we actually think.”

Another individual under the handle of @qgs8EHwyZEmEOfV believed that “you can tell by watching that he’s not saying that he wishes the homeless would die or anything like that… If you want to criticize this person, you should donate to a homeless support group or something like that.”

Although DaiGo was widely criticized and eventually issued an apology, the incident calls attention to the issue of anti-homelessness in Japan that runs far deeper than a single YouTube drama. Japan does not have an institutionalized response to changes in social and economic distress of its citizens. Spending priorities are reliant on the number of Diet seats held by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), meaning that politics has a significant role over poverty in Japan.

A recent paper by Ulrike Schaede and Kuniaki Nemoto notes that, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Japan’s share of poverty relief, narrowly defined as comprising public assistance to the poor, is only 0.2% of GDP, which is less than half that of the United States with 0.5%.” The study further reveals that “public assistance in Japan… was designed to respond to temporary, short-term need.”

Nine years ago, in December 2012, when the LDP won the general election and returned to power with Shinzo Abe’s second cabinet, the government cut welfare benefits by ¥67 billion (US$610 million). They began to chip away at Japan’s safety net for low income people.

In addition, the government launched a media campaign in connection with the benefit cuts, implying that it was shameful that a woman was receiving welfare while her famous comedian son earned a huge income and refused to support her, despite there being no legal obligation to support family members.

This negative campaigning had an impact, leading to a benefit reduction that at the time gained the support of the majority.

It was not until February of this year that this particular benefit reduction was overturned.

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