According to a recent survey by the Tokyo city government, 60% of the city's homeless say their last job was as a day labourer.

ECONOMIST: Old, down and out in Japan

The state pension begins at 65, but after a day labourer turns 55, says Takao Yamauchi, who runs a local welfare centre, his chances of picking up work are slim.

ECONOMIST: Old, down and out in Japan

With no formal education, he busied himself as a sharecropper and day-labourer, working on railways and in mines until the Depression hit.

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Alongside his day job as a labourer, he honed his craft on the northern club circuit, eventually making comedy his main career by 1962.

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At the end of a sandy track leading out of town into the surrounding scrubland, in a house made of rough-hewn branches covered in clay, Lucia Vieira looks after her two children while her husband is out earning a mere 5 reais a day as a farm labourer.

ECONOMIST: Three square meals a day