This photo taken on March 18, 2009 shows

This photo taken on March 18, 2009 shows a man (R) selling the Japanese version of "The Big Issue", a magazine sold in a number of countries by homeless people, along a street in the western Japanese metropolis of Osaka. Japan, the world's second largest economy, once prided itself on being a universally middle-class society and free of the poverty that benights most other wealthy countries, but thousands were thrown onto the streets to become "homuresu" with the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s, which shattered Japan's promise of lifelong, secure company jobs for all men. Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry reported in early March there were over 15,000 homless in Japan, almost unchanged from a year earlier, but unofficially there are thousands more under-employed and daylabourers who are struggling to survive as the country struggles along with the world economy. NOTE: BLACK AND WHITE VERSION / COLOUR VERSION AVAILABLE AFP PHOTO / Richard A. BROOKS (Photo credit should read RICHARD A. BROOKS/AFP via Getty Images)