Hajime Shimada lamented the toll the novel coronavirus outbreak has taken on his meager income from selling a long-running magazine that benefits homeless people like himself. 

“Now the number of people walking around outside here is 30 to 40 percent of the level before (the novel coronavirus outbreak),” Shimada, 49, said on April 10, standing on a sidewalk in Tokyo’s Yurakucho district, where he was selling copies of The Big Issue Japan. 

“I used to sell 25 to 30 copies a day, but that's dropped to around 10, especially after the state of emergency was declared on April 7 (over the coronavirus). I think the current social distancing trend has also hurt sales.”

Readers are coming to the rescue of homeless people selling the magazine after the government’s stay-at-home request to stem infections caused their earnings to plummet.

News spread quickly online that the magazine introduced a mail-order format temporarily to cover the vendors’ fallen sales. More than 4,000 orders had flooded in, just days after the magazine's publisher, The Big Issue Japan Ltd., started accepting orders on April 9.

The magazine, usually sold exclusively on the street, benefits homeless people who use their earnings from selling it to help them get back on their feet. The Japanese version of the eponymous street magazine, launched in Britain in 1991, debuted in 2003 and is published twice a month.

In April, the publisher upped the magazine's price by 100 yen ($0.93) to 450 yen a copy, putting more money in the pockets of vendors, who now get 230 yen for each one sold, after the purchase cost of 220 yen is deducted from the sales price.

But now with Shimada selling just 10 copies a day, he earns only 2,300 yen.

Despite the lack of customers, Shimada said he'll continue standing on the street daily trying to sell magazines.

“If I stop now, I'll lose the regular customers who have supported me,” he said. “They've continued to show they care about me, asking, ‘Isn’t it hard (to sell the magazine) at a time like this?’ even after the outbreak occurred. That gives me encouragement.”

A man approached Shimada that day and asked if he could sell the magazine as well. The man said he had worked as a temporary employee, but was laid off in late March, so he has since been staying at an internet cafe. 

Shimada himself has spent nights at internet cafes when he can afford to. However, the Tokyo metropolitan government requested internet cafes to close temporarily as well as part of its efforts to curb the coronavirus.

SALES DIVE DURING STATE OF EMERGENCY

“We need to take precautions against infections, but I’m also worried about the future,” Shimada said. “Some of my fellow vendors seem to be resigned to the current situation, which has been aggravated by the magazine's drop in sales.”

To help raise money, the magazine's publisher started selling a set of six editions that will cover April to June at 3,300 yen, including shipping, by mail order.

The publisher on April 1 had expanded areas where people could buy annual subscriptions to the magazine from regions with no vendors to all parts of the country.

But after sales of the April 1 edition sank 36 percent from a year earlier in the first seven days it was on sale, the publisher rushed to launch the mail-order format in line with the government’s request of refraining from nonessential outings.

It now plans to distribute more than half of the proceeds from the mail-order service to street vendors, the same share homeless people receive from selling the magazine on the street.

Though its initial mail-order target was 2,000 orders, the publisher has been inundated with more than twice that, as many customers expressed concerns over the street vendors and shared news about the mail-order option on Twitter and other social media.

The publisher said it will continue to call on readers to subscribe to the magazine since it will likely remain difficult to sell copies on the streets for the time being, given that the request from the central and local governments to refrain from going out is still in place.

Readers can order issues, which can be purchased by credit card or postal transfer at (https://www.bigissue.jp/)