Byline: Tokyo
There is an interesting and possibly important element at Sacred Place 2. (See the blog below this.) This a photo of a public bum, sunning himself in the corner of Studio Alta Plaza and being ignored by everyone, including the police at the police station ten meters away. (The Japanese let public bums live in tents in parks.)
What is a public bum and is that the right word to use? A public bum is a person who has consciously opted out of the commercial system. Public bums are visible and live on the surplus of the commercial society. Obviously some people do this privately too.
A bum is one of the people who are not part of the billion other people who get up daily to work; that definition is found in several dictionaries. The dictionary meaning idle is most accurately applied to public bums, the people who publicly opt out of commerce.
We Americans, in 1982, started referring to street people as "homeless," largely borrowing the term from New York activist organizers with an agenda. Homeless is a term of condescension. It is wrong in the first place, since many public bums have homes. Most importantly the term homeless suggests that having a home is the socially correct behavior ... Puritanical non-sense.
I think it is appropriate that a public bum is sunning himself, undisturbed, in a Sacred Place of commerce. He is the living proof that commerce is awesome. A million people pass through Shinjuku to work, additional millions shop, and a tiny few don’t. That adds to the awe.