TOKYO--Fumio Hayashi may never have studied economics, but he knows a thing or two about recession.

He learned the hard way 12 years ago when he lost his job, his home and his friends. For him, the current economic crisis in Japan and the world has a painful echo.

According to official estimates, some 85,000 workers on temporary contracts have recently lost their jobs or will lose them between now and March as Japanese factories close because of slumping demand.

But unlike the Japanese who lost their accommodation a generation ago when the so-called bubble economy burst, the new crop of homeless people have it worse as they are hounded by police.

"There are going to be even more people like me, that's for sure," Hayashi said as he took a drag on his cigarette while sitting on a stool at the Sanyukai association, which was founded in 1984 to help Japanese abandoned by society.

"When my employer went broke 12 years ago, I looked around for work but very quickly I found myself out on the street without anything," said the 58-year-old.

For the past eight years, he has lived under a bridge in a makeshift tent made of four slabs of wood and a plastic sheet in the Sanya district of northeastern Tokyo, one of the closest things Japan has to a slum.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, once prided itself on being a universally middle-class society and free of the poverty that afflicts most other wealthy countries.

But thousands were thrown onto the streets to become "homuresu" with the collapse of the bubble economy, which shattered Japan's promise of lifelong, secure company jobs for all men.

Many companies have since hired workers on temporary contracts -- and laid them off when the economy went into recession starting last year.

The homeless often feel deep shame in Japan, where a senior official this week raised controversy by accusing them of laziness. Many day laborers stay near their former workplaces after they are sacked.

"In Japan, when you lose your job, you don't go back to your home town. For the sake of the family, it's better to disappear," said Jean Le Beau, a Canadian who runs Sanyukai and has lived in Japan since 1972.

The last government survey showed Japan had more than 18,500 homeless people as of January 2007, with more than half of them living in Tokyo or the western metropolis of Osaka.

Most of Tokyo's homeless live in the northeast of the capital in a tent village in Ueno Park or on the banks of the Sumida River.

"In the '90s, there were tents everywhere in Tokyo, even around the train stations, and it reached the point that the city was finally forced to act," Le Beau said.

But the authorities were concerned not about helping the homeless but about removing an eyesore, he said.

Five years ago, Tokyo's local government began to address homelessness by renting out super low-cost rooms at 3,000 yen a month -- a little over 30 dollars at current exchange rates.

But Hayashi, who earns a small income cleaning trash in a park, said it was still too expensive when adding the costs of electricity and gas.

And the housing is available only on two-year contracts.

"If he didn't have a job at the end of that time, then he would be evicted and it would be very difficult to find another place to stay as the police are on alert to stop new tents from going up. They patrol five times a day, even at night," Le Beau said.

Whenever a tent goes down -- either because the homeless person leaves or dies -- the police quickly seal off the area to prevent another person from pitching up there.

In any case, the city's low-income housing plan has been halted due to budget constraints, giving poor people few options other than sleeping in a box on the street.

Besides the winter cold, the homeless also face the risk of violence as seen by a string of murders of destitute people.

In one case last year, a teenage boy told police he set a man on fire, killing him, because the homeless "do not contribute to society and are just like dogs and cats".

For New Year, Japan's most important holiday, volunteers offered tents and meals to some 300 homeless people in Hibiya Park, just a stone's throw from the Imperial Palace and some of Tokyo's most expensive real estate.

On the banks of the Sumida river, volunteers from the Sanyukai group also come once a week to each tent to offer homeless people food, basic medical care and a chance for some badly needed human contact.

But every other month, teams from the Tokyo government also come to "clean" the area -- and put pressure on the homeless to leave.

"I take everything down, I pile it all up, and later I put it all back together again until next time," Hayashi said with resignation.