Violence erupted early Wednesday morning when hundreds of policemen forcibly evicted homeless people from their cardboard shelters in an underground passageway near JR Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo.
About 1,000 metropolitan police officers, guardmen and officials dispatched by Tokyo Gov. Yukio Aoshima took part in the operation. City Hall removed the mostly middle-aged and senior residents in order to construct moving sidewalks along the underground corridor.
At around 6:50 a.m., about 100 policemen rushed into the passageway, which was barricaded by homeless people and supporters who were staging a sit-in.
Fierce skirmishes erupted, with the protesters yelling "Go home!" and hurling eggs at the law enforcement officers and spraying them with salad oil. Metropolitan guardmen and officials blocked the 300-meter section of the passageway while the fighting continued.
"This will be a dark spot on the history of Tokyo," a supporter shouted through a bullhorn.
The fighting continued for about 45 minutes. Police were finally able to penetrate the barriers at around 7:35 a.m., when they began grabbing the protesters by their arms and legs and dragging them to a nearby park.
By 8:20 a.m., most of the homeless people and their supporters had been removed. Three supporters of the homeless were arrested on suspicion of obstructing justice.
The Metropolitan Police Department claimed that of some 100 homeless people and their supporters, a few dozen were removed from the underground corridor by force.
Workers immediately began tearing down the cardboard houses and removing debris, while Tokyo officials tried to persuade the remaining passageway residents to apply for admission to a temporary housing unit set up by the city.
Forty-two homeless people entered the temporary Minatoku facility Wednesday, according to City Hall.
A metropolitan official told reporters, "We never refused to talk with us unless we talked to all of them, collectively."
Gov. Aoshima told reporters that the eviction operation was "unavoidable."