> There were many homeless people on the streets of Tokyo every time I went in the 2000s
This is misleading. Japan has the lowest homelessness rate in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan
They clearly had a problem and fixed it. I was in Japan a few years ago and I saw one homeless (I assumed?) person during my whole trip. He didn't look too bad (like the ones in the US) but he was probably having a rough time.
Which is reasonable? Within the millions of people there will be a few people that are completely helpless. I think Japan is as close to having no homeless as a country can reasonably get. Which is a completely different situation from the USA. Also living in a small shoebox hotel is orders of magnitudes better than living on the streets. I am not saying it is a good option but between having nothing (US) and having that, I'd definitively chose the shoebox.
One difference is that they’re concentrated in areas away from the public eye - if you enter Yoyogi park from the entrance nearest Yoyogi Koen station then before the hill starts go up the footpath to the right, you will find a homeless encampment with 20+ tents. It’s orderly but they are homeless.
I strongly disagree that 400 homeless people in a city of 14 million is a lot
There are some homeless people living in camps in certain parks. Ueno Park has a bunch of them. Others have camps hidden away in flood-plain areas next to rivers. Some live on sidewalks, like under overpasses, and have a bunch of junk in front of their sleeping bag that they're trying to sell.
Generally, these homeless people want to be homeless. There's options for homeless people to get help, but some people simply don't want to be part of normal society for whatever reason (like mental illness).
Overall, in my experience living here, I very rarely see homeless people. It's nothing at all like the huge homeless camps in US cities these days.
Neither of you are wrong. As your link says, they have one of the lowest rates of homelessness in the world, but it also says that their low rate is roughly 1 in 34,000 people. There are 14 million people in Tokyo (city, or 41M in Tokyo greater area), so for 14M residents you would expect roughly 400 homeless people if the ratio is exactly the same as national average (and typically, big cities have higher than average). So simultaneously there are many homeless people still even if you only saw one of them, it's just a smaller % than in most countries.
Ultimately the stats are what matters more than how many people any one anecdote happened to see, and they show that Japan should be applauded for doing well but also acknowledging that sadly they haven't completely solved the problem and too many people there, as everywhere, are still homeless.