Addiction to gambling has made Tsuneko homeless.

Having lost an enormous amount of money, her marriage was broken and after struggling few years by herself she lost her job due to health problems.

As she was living at her workplace she lost her home too.
No address = no job, no job = no address, the usual story..

So one day she finally ended up at the Osaka Umeda main railway station, the place where you go when you have nowhere else left to go.

As misfortune never comes alone her bag with all her money was stolen.
In few seconds she had lost everything.

The first night a group of homeless explained to her how to use the cardboards to sleep.

The second day she decided to do something about her situation and bought some pencils and drawing paper with the 1000 yens the lady at the labor office has lend her.

She set up her cardboard "shop" in a sleazy alley lined up with cheap drinking holes.

Her "geishas" drawings had some success with passers-by and drunk office workers, they were paying 1000 yens for them.

And she started writing poetry, not about love or flowers, but simple yet sharp poems about her life, life in the streets in general and the people she was observing everyday.

Now she was not sleeping in cardboards anymore but in a small 24 hours fast-food joint where she was accepted by the staff.

Finally as her success was growing the medias noticed her: in a typical japanese manner it was an immediate madness.
Tsuneko had up to 4 interviews a day, she got payed 30 000 to 40 000 yens for a TV broadcast, appeared in numerous radio shows.
She was contacted by an editor and published a poetry book: "Homuresu no uta" / "Poems of a homeless"

Maybe the first time in Japan that a homeless had such a success... Most people were looking at her as a funny and original old lady, they were not interested at all by the fates of the homeless in general..

Anyway this interest from the mainstream was short lived.

She is still spending her nights in the fast-food joint, unable to rent a room as she is too old and her income is too irregular.
Now the medias have lost their interest in her and her poems don't sell that much anymore, some days she sells nothing at all.

Most of the passers-by are drunk office workers and many have a very rude attitude.
Under the influence of alcohol they have fun trying to humiliate her and some even go further: she almost got strangled once..
All their daily frustrations and humiliations exploding against a 70 years old lady...

Of course Tsuneko is not a typical homeless: with her talent, her will and luck she has achieved a special status unknown to other homeless.

But life in the streets is still hard, her health is not so good and loneliness is always there.

Her biggest dream is to make a last trip to Europe when she will get the money from her book.

Osaka 1997

UPDATE 05/08/2003

Tsuneko is deceased on the 05/08/2003 at dawn from a cancer.
She was 76years old.