The unemployed in Japan face the threat of homelessness. A sign at a protest last month read:“Do not allow layoffs by big companies.”

By MARTIN FACKLER

OITA, Japan - Koji Hirano said his“mind went blank”with disbelief when he and other workers at a Canon digital camera factory in this southern city were suddenly called into a cafeteria in October and told they were being laid off.

The shock turned to fear when they were also ordered to vacate their employer- provided apartments, a common job benefit here. With no savings from his monthly take-home pay of as little as $700, he said, he faced certain homelessness.

“They were going to kick us out into the winter cold to die,”said Mr.Hirano, 47.

The current economic crisis has spread joblessness and distress across the world, and Japan has been no exception - with output plunging at historic rates, the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent in December from 3.9 percent the month before. The country’s real gross domestic product shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent from October to December. But what has proved more shocking has been the fact that so many of those laid off have been so vulnerable, with hundreds and perhaps thousands cast into the streets.

Mr.Hirano and the others laid off by Canon are part of a new subclass of Japanese workers created during a decade of American-style deregulation. As shortterm employees they have none of the rights of so-called salarymen or even the factory workers for Japan’s legions of small manufacturers.

They can expect little in the way of unemployment or welfare benefits. In Japan, a country with little experience of widespread unemployment until recently, there is inadequate assistance for laid-off workers.

According to the Labor Ministry, about 131,000 layoffs have been announced since October. Of those, only about 6,000 were culled from the majority of Japanese workers who hold traditional full-time jobs, which are still often held for life. The overwhelming majority - some 125,000, the ministry says - are so-called nonregular workers, who are sent by staffing agencies or hired on short-term contracts with lower pay, fewer benefits and none of the legal protections against layoffs of regular full-time employees.

Mr.Hirano and other former temporary workers at Canon were allowed to stay in their apartments for a few extra months after a public outcry reached all the way to the prime minister. Over the New Year holiday some 500 disgruntled former temporary workers made homeless by layoffs built an impromptu tent city in a Tokyo park adjacent to the Labor Ministry.

As never before, the global downturn has driven home how a decade of economic transformation has eroded Japan’s gentler version of capitalism, in which companies once laid off employees only as a last resort.

“This recession has opened the nation’s eyes to its growing social inequalities,”said Masahiro Abe, a professor at Dokkyo University who specializes in labor relations.“There is a whole population of workers who are outside the traditional support net.”

Until a decade ago, nonregular workers accounted for less than a quarter of Japan’s total work force, and included subcontractors and others outside the lifetime employment system as well as students or homemakers working parttime jobs.

But the number of nonregular workers rose sharply after an easing of labor laws in 1999 and again in 2004 allowed temporary workers to work on factory lines and in other jobs once largely restricted to full-time workers.

Today, 34.5 percent of Japan’s 55.3 million workers are nonregular employees, including many primary earners for households, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry.

According to labor experts and Labor Ministry officials, Japan needs to revamp the system to fit a more dynamic labor market in which not all jobs are held for life, and to prevent layoffs from being so financially devastating.“We must build a safety net that suits this more deregulated working environment,”said Yusuke Inoue, a section chief in the Labor Ministry’s bureau of stable employment.

Canon said it had underestimated the difficulties faced by the laid-off temporary workers in the current economic downturn and would offer them more aid.

Mr.Hirano and other laid-off temporary workers said their annual pay was about $22,000 a year, below what many labor experts call Japan’s poverty line of $25,000 a year.

Mr.Hirano and his co-workers said they believed that if they worked hard, Canon would reward them with an offer of direct employment, at higher pay.

“We did our best, so Canon should have taken care of us,”said one 32-year-old laid-off worker who was so ashamed of his situation that he asked that only his family name, Murakami, be used.“That is the Japanese way. But this isn’t Japan anymore.”