Tokyo (Fides Service) - In an elegant district of Tokyo where yuppies flock to shop in stylish boutiques and dine in classy restaurants, and Jesuit Father Shimokawa Masatsugu seeks to alleviate the suffering of homeless sleeping in cardboard boxes. UCA News reports. Besides Tokyo, which has more than 6,000 of its citizens living on the streets, other cities Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama and Kawasaki have the same problem. Most of the homeless are middle-aged men made redundant by the Asian crisis in the late 1990s, Fr Shimokawa says. The homeless have their own organisation, the Shibuya Free Association for the Right to Housing and Well-being of the Homeless, SFA, of which the Catholic priest in an honorary member. After a SFA 1,500 km protest march from Tokyo to Okinawa to lobby a bill to guarantee homeless persons rights the Lower House unanimously passed the bill and now national government and local authorities must take steps to provide jobs, medical treatment and counselling to people on the streets or in danger of slipping into homelessness. PS (Fides Service 23/10/2002)