Japan's Disposable Workers
Shiho Fukada's portrait series, Japan's Disposable Workers, is now available as a three-part documentary.
Shiho Fukada's portrait series, Japan's Disposable Workers, is now available as a three-part documentary.
More and more young Japanese women aspire to work as hostesses in bars. Experts say this popularity reflects a lack of professional opportunities for Japanese women.
The underemployed and homeless in Japan have found a new form of hotels: Internet cafes. The cafes offer the necessities for the disposable workers.
For Pulitzer Center grantee Shiho Fukada, her project on Japan's "Disposable Workers" was something of a nervous glance over the shoulder.
A project run by ExxonMobil to supply China and Japan with liquefied gas for the next 30 years is changing life in Papua New Guinea with wildly inequitable results for local people.
More than one in three people are employed as temporary workers in Japan today. At least 2,700 people with irregular jobs live in internet cafes because they cannot afford to live in an apartment.
Shiho Fukada has been photographing the effects of the economic crisis in Japan, where notions of personal prosperity and lifetime employment have eroded.
Photographer Shiho Fukada has been documenting Japan's economic difficulties, telling stories of people who made hard choices in the wake of the crisis.
Pulitzer Center grantee Shiho Fukada has been covering Japan's economic crisis and its struggling workers.
Shiho Fukada documents the lives of disposable workers in Japan in stories that illustrate the global unemployment crisis.
In Japan more than 30,000 people have committed suicide every year since 1997. Yet the stigma associated with suicide is so strong that many family members wait years before they will discuss it.
"I just feel irritated, exhausted and disgusted," Naoya Nishigaki wrote before committing suicide in 2006. "I know the cause of my depression is definitely work."