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The Predicament that Japanese Men Out of Occupation Faces After clashes between riot police and protesters, workers at the K

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问题               The Predicament that Japanese Men Out of Occupation Faces
    After clashes between riot police and protesters, workers at the Keihin Hotel in Tokyo were forcibly ejected on January 25th. They had been fired in October when the hotel went bankrupt, but decided to keep it running—an example of the lengths to which people will go to keep their jobs in Japan, where unemployment is suddenly rising at an alarming rate. Over 150, 000 people are expected to lose their jobs between October and March. Hisashi Yamada of the Japan Research Institute expects 1. 5 million job losses by the end of next year, lifting the unemployment rate from 4 % last year to over 6 % . Though low by international standards, yet that is exceptionally high in Japan.
    Hardest hit will be " non-regular" workers—those who work part-time, as day-laborers, for a fixed duration, or under agency contracts. "Regular" workers enjoy benefits such as housing, bonuses, training and (usually) lifetime employment, but non regular workers earn as little as 40% of the pay for the same work, and do not receive training, pensions or unemployment insurance. In the past 20 years their numbers have grown to one-third of all workers.
    For years most Japanese ignored their predicament. But now their problems have erupted into plain sight. In January around 500 recently fired, homeless people set up a tent village in Hibiya Park—a highly visible spot in the centre of Tokyo. Politicians and television news crews flocked to the scene. The embarrassed city government eventually found accommodation for the park’s homeless in unused city-owned buildings, though it put them up for only a week.
    The problem is that Japan lacks a social safety net, says Makoto Yuasa, the organizer of the Hibiya tent village, who dropped out of a PhD program at Tokyo University to help homeless people. Because families or companies traditionally looked after people, the state did not have to. Moreover, there is a stigma in Japan if an unemployed person asks for help: "If you don’t work, you don’t deserve to eat," the saying goes.
    Yet there are signs of change. The main political parties recognize the need to establish better support and training for non-regular workers. And there is even a new government program to help unemployed foreign workers, such as Brazilians who worked at car factories, so that they do not leave Japan if they are laid off. With a shrinking population and workforce, losing skilled hands would only compound the country’s woes when the economy eventually recovers.
The word "predicament" (Line 2, Para. 3) most probably means______.
选项 A、plight
B、inferiority
C、poverty
D、misery
答案A
解析 词义理解题。答案在第三段。predicament一词出现在第三段的首句位置，通常段落的首句往往起到承上启下的作用，第二段主要提到非正式工所承受的不公待遇及所遭遇的问题。而第三段第二句指出非正式工的难题已是有目共睹．那么之前那句话中过往人们忽略的便是这些“问题’’，故选[A]项“困境”。[B]项“劣势”、[C]项“贫困”、[D]项“悲痛”都只是涉及这些难题的一部分，太过片面。
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