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Their "improper" and "bad" behaviors were then associated with having less pride, determination, and commitment and, therefore, with being lesser persons, lesser homeless, and lesser Japanese. Those homeless people from the mountain in Ueno Park who went to collect food and recyclables in the nearby shopping arcade at night often complained to me about homeless from "down there" passing through, making a mess of the businesses' trash, and jeopardizing the relationships they claimed to respect with the shop owners. They viewed these ill-mannered "bums" ('kojiki') as undisciplined, unable to scavenge properly, and unconcerned with human relationships. For example, Kokusai, a person of the mountain who called himself a "tent lifestyler" (tento seikatsusha), explained how his lifestyle was different from a lifestyle of sleeping on the streets:
The color of their face is different; it is darker from being in the sun and from not bathing.They don't have a stove, hot food, or a change of clothes. One can tell just by looking who has a tent or not.
Kokusai's neighbor added that those without tents were always constipated because of their bad diets and could not sleep because they had no fixed schedule or place to rest. Indeed, the very rhythms of their bodies were seen as unpredictable and disrupted by their nomadism and instability.
By contrast, people of the mountain insisted that they themselves, whether they labored, recycled, or scavenged, did so properly (shikkari suru) and with perseverance and diligence (ganbaru). I spent many hours listening to ways in which one could better tie newspapers, more efficiently crush cans, or perfect the method of sifting through garbage. This is significant because the virtue of ganbaru or "to persevere" was an activity that many people in Japan, including the former governor of Tokyo, claimed that homeless people, in particular, did not do. Governor Aoshima once pronounced about the homeless, "They have particular views of life and philosophy. They want to be left alone." In other words, the governor declared the homeless responsible for their situations and suggested that it was precisely because homeless people did not persevere that they "became" homeless. Yet, rejecting this sentiment, one man I met in Ueno argued, "The only reason we are here is because we ganbaru. That is the only reason we are alive."
In fact, among the tented homeless in Ueno Park, it was precisely productivity and activity that lent legitimacy to putting up a tent in the park's limited space. While the general population may view homelessness itself as an illness and the homeless as socially unfit, the Japanese homeless persons I talked to judged some of those among themselves as too weak or ill and therefore too unfit to do homeless in Ueno Park.
For example, consider the situation of two park residents, whom I call Neko and Kita. Both had tents in Ueno Park during my research. Neko had been living with her "husband" since her arrival six years prior (the husband had been there already for four years), while Kita arrived more recently, a few months into the research. Yet, despite her seniority and growing despair, it was Neko who was losing legitimacy and support from her neighbors in the park. Neko was from a rural hamlet of Aomori Prefecture in the northernmost part of Honshū. She was seventy-six years old and just over four feet tall. She was very energetic, kept a cat for a companion, sang folk songs almost constantly, and was well liked by those around her. "Cute" (kawaii) was consistently used to describe her. However, Neko had severe arthritis and a bladder control problem which necessitated more and more of her husband's care. After a brief attempt to "pick up" another woman to care for Neko, the husband left the park without a word.
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