Dark side of Japan revealed in film about Internet cafe living

Before Junichiro Koizumi was elected Prime Minister employment in Japan was stable, with a majority of those seeking full time work finding and those holding part time or temporary positions were either high school or university students the culture of temporary work and contracts didn't exist and then Japan's labor laws were amended in 2004 and the a large portion of the work force became temporary workers.  While the situation wasn't great, people were able to survive.

That changed with the 2008 financial crisis. Suddenly all those temporary workers became redundant and with it came an unstable and  untenable employment climate.  Which led to the birth of the internet culture which exists in Japan today.  Low wages and poor working conditions will do that.

The bleak and unforgiving existence of Japan's salarymen and part-time workers, who often live in Internet cafes to save on rent, is difficult to describe, but one filmmaker has done a great job of giving us a brief peek.
Net Cafe Refugees is a short 10-minute documentary that plunges the viewer into the world of 24-hour Internet-connected cubicles that serve as makeshift living spaces for many Japanese living on the edge of society.

If you've ever wondered if some of those film depictions of futuristic, dystopian cities will ever come to fruition, you need look no further than the dark, broadband-connected caves shown in director Shiho Fukada's film.

One part-time construction site worker is shown spending his time between monotonous work shifts and Internet cafe existence by chain smoking and staring listlessly at a computer screen surrounded by black walls draped with wires. Another man admits that he has lived in an Internet cafe for four months, after quitting his job as a computer systems manager at a credit card company.