TOKYO: Yuichiro welled up as he collected a food parcel at a Tokyo outreach event offering help to the growing number of Japanese pushed into poverty by the coronavirus pandemic.
“There is no work. Absolutely none,” said the 46-year-old, until recently a construction worker, while clutching a small plastic bag of essentials on a cold winter street in the capital.
“This doesn’t get reported much in the media, but many people are sleeping at train stations and in cardboard boxes. Some are dying of hunger.”
The world’s third-largest economy has seen a relatively small coronavirus outbreak so far, with around 4,500 deaths and largely without the drastic…
