The character of work and employment in Japan has become a major focus of English-language research and debate since the 1960s because on the one hand the Japanese economy became one of the largest and most successful capitalist economies in the post-war period, and on the other hand the ways in which work, employment and economic life are organised in Japan have been substantially different from the dominant patterns in Europe and North America.

Japan is a nation of over 123 million people that in the 1970s became the world’s second largest industrial state, in terms of Gross Domestic Product. ‘In 1963 Japan ranked fifth in the world league table with 5.5% of the world manufacturing total. In1994 it ranked second with a share of 21%’ (Dicken, Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy, 1998 p 28). In 1989 Japan’s GDP amounted to $2,834,232 million, while that of the USA was $5,132,001 million; West Germany $1,176,632 million and the UK $845,350 Million (Source: Japan Statistical Yearbook, [Catalogue no 52A] 1995 p 813).

This reflected a very high rate of ecconomic growth, especially in the 1960s. Furthermore, the Japanese economy recovered rapidly from the oil shock of the 1970s, despite being heavily dependent on fuel imports. While growth slowed and then went into reverse in the 1990s, and Japan has now been in recession for several years, many Japanese firms have now become major transnational companies (TNCs). Thus the so-called ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s to the 1980s has meant that Japan has become a key case-study in discussions about different forms of capitalist industrialism, in relation to such questions as:

* in what ways do economic institutions (work, employment and industrial relations, but also ways of organising relations among employers and the role of the state) vary between capitalist societies? Here Japan is seen as distinctive in terms of the extent of integration of ‘core’ workers into the capitalist enterprise, high levels of co-ordination between groups of private enterprises and the active role of the state in industrial policy. In this module we will be concentrating especially on the first of these features, the ‘Japanese employment system’ (see section 2 below).

* how can we explain the sources of these differences? Here a major debate has concerned the relationship between long-standing cultural traditions and beliefs, the particular conditions of ‘late-development’, and the initiatives of key actors (the state, private capital, organised labour). This will be a key concern of this note.

* what agreements and compromises, or pressures and conflicts characterise the different national patterns? A popular conception is that work and employment relations in Japan are characterised by greater co-operation and harmony than in the West. How far is this the case? What are the bases and limits of such features? These will be key concerns throughout our discussion of Japan

* finally there has been increasing debate about the extent to which the ‘Japanese model’ may be being exported around the world, through the operations of Japanese transnational companies (TNCs), and conversely the extent to which the ‘Japanese model’ is being eroded at home, through the pressures of recession and demands for restructuring of the Japanese economy. We will tackle the second of these arguments in Japan topic 3, while the first argument is one we touch on when we are considering contemporary developments in our European case-studies.

In the rest of this note we will cover three topics:

* an outline of the key features of the ‘Japanese employment system’ (JES)

* an outline of the historical development of the Japanese economy and JES.

* a discussion of the role of traditional cultural values in the building of the JES.

The success of the Japanese economy in the post-war period has partly been attributed to the close and ‘high-trust’ relationships which are said to characterise relationships between large firms, small firms and the state. However, the motor of that success is most often seen as the level of worker commitment and team-working which characterises working relations within the workplace, and the way in which this commitment has been harnessed through a variety of organisational innovations which involve workers in problem solving and ‘continuous improvement’.

Thus there is widespread agreement, in popular perception, mass media presentation and academic analysis, that Japan has been remarkable for both its consistently high rate of economic growth and the extraordinary work commitment of the labour force. [See the comparative statistics in the Appendix of G.J. Bamber and R.D. Lansbury International and Comparative Employment/Industrial Relations London, Allen and Unwin, first edition 1987, second edition 1993, third edition 1998]. A wide range of studies document worker commitment and diligence (e.g. Dore, Kazutoshi, Hull and Azumi). Even a report which is highly critical of Japanese work practice, Kamata’s account of life as a temporary worker in a Toyota factory, gives significant support to the common picture. For although Kamata brings out the militaristic organisation of the worker in and out of the factory and the continuous pressure to increase productivity, what is most remarkable is not these familiar aspects of mass production, but the worker responses e.g. an exhausted worker has to leave but feels guilty! (pp 124-5), a man commits suicide because accused of causing inconvenience to other workers! (p 208).

As we will see, the character and basis of worker commitment and worker involvement in Japanese industry remain issues of some controversy. However, it is generally agreed that they are closely related to three distinctive features of the JES.

The basic features of the employment system can be summarised as follows, with important qualifications which we note below and develop in further topics.

Employers hire labour direct from the various levels of the education system, train the worker for the company’s (this is shorthand to include both private and public sector organisations) requirements, retrain them as those requirements change, and finally are loathe to fire workers before retirement age. This policy (and 2 below) applies to both manual workers and white collar workers, indeed this distinction is not important within the firm. Japanese establishments thus display the characteristics of a highly developed ‘internal labour market’. Worker skills are firm specific, developed over the working life. Contrast this with labour markets in which the worker has transferable skills (whether this is general industrial experience, a City and Guilds craft or a Diploma in Personnel Management) which can be moved from employer to employer.

The basic principle here is that a worker’s remuneration is not based on the rate for the job (e.g. The hourly rate for a train driver or the annual salary for a teacher on a given grade). Rather, the wage depends on the particular characteristics of the driver or teacher. These characteristics are twofold:

In the early 1990s Japan had around 12.5 million trade unionists and a union density rate of 25%. This put it somewhere in the middle of the degree of unionisation league, lower than Sweden (85), UK (43), Italy (40), FDR (42) but higher than USA (16) or France (10). [These figures come from Hugh Williamson Coping with the Miracle: Japan’s Unions Explore New International Relations. 1994. London: Pluto Press. Appendix II, and may be a little different to other sources you come across.] What is remarkable about Japanese unionism is the number of unions - Williamson quotes a figure of 77,685 for 1991. This is because unions in Japan are overwhelmingly ‘enterprise unions’. That is they are confined to employees of a particular enterprise or establishment and generally include the great majority of such employees, whatever their job or rank within the firm. We will be returning to consider this pattern of unionisation later but some points bear emphasis now:

A worker is not a member of a craft, industrial or general union but a union of all workers in his/her firm. Such unions are parts of wider federations but the enterprise union is not a ‘branch’ or ‘local’ of a larger unit but an autonomous entity.

There is thus a close parallel between the company and the union. Unions are legally and organisationally separate from the company but there is an in-built symmetry between the two. For example, as the union includes members from all ranks but the very highest and union officers have to be drawn from company employees, very often union officers hold authority positions in the firm (foreman and shop steward is not unusual) and/or advancement in the union can lead to advancement in the firm (from union negotiator to personnel office). However, we should not prejudge the debate as to whether Japanese unions are simply ‘company unions’ - they have sometimes adhered to a Marxist political ideology.

The argument then is that under this system lifetime employment leads to lifetime worker commitment, the worker is locked into the company by the long term wage system and identity with the union is bound up with identity with the company. However, why should the safety of job security and long-term wage increments translate into worker motivation? They appear equally compatible with complacency and inertia at both the company and individual level. Thus whilst there is general agreement that these characteristics are important just what role they play has to be understood by investigating in more detail how the system operates. Such analyses take a variety of forms which we will explore further during this week and next.

As well as tackling the ambiguity of innovation and motivation in an apparently ‘safe’ system we also need to address a second problem. It is commonly recognised that the three features described above do not characterise all of Japanese economic establishments. Rather they apply most strongly amongst the permanent workforce, largely male, of large firms and public sector organisations. As this set of categories suggests, other categories of employees - such as temporary workers even in large firms, women, and those employed in medium or small establishments - have a more problematical relationship to the ‘three pillars’ (see the resume of the structure of the labour market in Kumazawa and Yamada, and diagram 1).

There are wide discrepancies in estimates of exactly what proportion of the workforce are covered by the three pillars, but it is clear that only about a quarter of Japanese workers are part of this system. So we have the problem, if the employment system applies to only a minority of the workforce what happens to the majority?

3. The problem of a static conception of an evolving structure.

In addressing both the internal and the external problems we also have to consider how each element of the three pillars has changed over time. For example, the mix of seniority and merit elements in pay has changed over time; the number and role of temporary workers in the large firms has fluctuated; and the enterprise unions of the early post-war years were often much more radical than the dominant unions of today. Such features of the evolution of the JES are emphasised by Price (1997), who also shows that this evolution took somewhat different forms in the mines, in the public sector and in engineering.

On ‘the three pillars’ see:

# Kuwahara, Yazuo. 1998 ‘Employment Relations in Japan’ in G.J. Bamber and R.D. Lansbury International and Comparative Employment Relations London, Unwin Hyman, Chap 10 (or equivalent chapters in earlier editions, where the title was International and Comparative Industrial Relations)

# Kumazawa, Makoto., and Yamada, Jun. 1989 ‘Jobs and skills under the lifelong nenko employment practice’ in Wood, Stephen (ed) The Transformation of Work? London: Unwin Hyman

# Dore, Ronald. 1990. British Factory, Japanese Factory: the Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations. Second ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chap 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8

Watts, David. 1993. The Times Guide to Japan: Understanding the World’s Newest Superpower. London: Times Books. Chap 6

Okochi, K., Levine, B. And Levine, S.B. 1973. Workers and Employers in Japan Tokyo, University of Tokyo Press, Chap 2, 3, 13

Sugayama, Shinji. 1995 ‘Work Rules, Wages and Single Status: the Shaping of the Japanese Employment System’ Business History 37.2 120-139.

Price, John. 1979. Japan Works: Power and Paradox in Postwar Industrial Relations Cornell University Press

On worker motivation:

Dore, Ronald. 1990. British Factory, Japanese Factory: the Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations. Second ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chap 1 & 8

Kazutoshi, Koshiro. 1983 ‘The quality of working life in Japanese factories’ in Shirai, Taishiro Contemporary Industrial Relations in Japan Madison, Ws, University of Wisconsin Press, Chap 3

Hull, Frank., And Azumi, Koya. 1988 ‘Technology and participation in Japanese factories: the consequences for morale and productivity’ Work and Occupations 15, 4, Nov, 423-48

Kamata, Satoshi. 1983 Japan in the Passing Lane London, Allen and Unwin

On general approaches to the Japanese employment system see:

# For a general discussion of debate on ‘the Japanese model’ see pp 115 to 126 of:

Dohse, Knuth., Jurgens, Ulrich., And Malsch, Thomas. 1985. From ‘Fordism’ to ‘Toyotism’? The social organisation of the labour process in the Japanese automobile industry. Politics and Society 14 (2) : 115-46. But note that from then on in their paper Dohse et al develop their own analysis which we will consider in Japan 2.

Kawanishi, Hirosuke. 1992. Enterprise Unionism in Japan. London: Kegan Paul International. Chap 1

Shimada, Haruo. 1983 ‘Japanese industrial relations - A new general model?’ in Shirai, Taishiro Contemporary Industrial Relations in Japan Madison, Ws, University of Wisconsin Press, Chap 1

# Moore, Joe 1987. ‘Japanese Industrial Relations’ Labour and Industry 1, 1, Oct. 140-155

Chalmers, Norma J. 1989. Industrial Relations in Japan: The Peripheral Workforce London, Routledge, Chap 1

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Here is a brief outline of the historical development of Japan’s industrialisation. This is essentially to give an introductory context, but also leads into our next discussion which considers how this history has contributed to the character of social relations in contemporary Japanese industrial relations. In the following section we will follow this up more directly, by considering arguments about the role of traditional culture and late development in constructing the JES. For the moment we will simply indicate the links that have been claimed.

Japanese industrialisation originates with a political transformation in the mid-19C - the Meiji Restoration of 1867. Prior to this event Japan had been ruled, since 1600, by the Tokugawa Shogunate. This was a military dictatorship led by the Shogun in Tokyo, Japan being governed by provincial governors (Daimyo), tightly controlled from the centre. Two points are of note about Tokugawa Japan:

i. Feudalism.

The social structure of Tokugawa Japan was feudal in the sense of each persons’ place being fixed by birth and each person being located in a rigid hierarchy of obedience to his/her superior in a social hierarchy. This does not mean the automatic passivity of the peasantry, but rather that peasant uprisings generally sought to protect their position within existing feudal relations. Nevertheless, for some commentators the echoes of this feudal relationship are still potent in Japanese life and in work in particular.

ii. International Isolation.

Japan had resisted Western imperialism by imposing a ban on foreign settlement and trade and Japanese contact with foreigners.

The overthrow of the Shogun and the restoration of the Emperor marked the end of both of these features. From the late 1860s the new Japanese State undertook a self conscious policy of industrialisation. Some major features of this process were:

i. It was industrialisation sponsored and encouraged from the ‘top’, by the State.

ii. It is important to note that industrial capitalism was the model and the overriding objective. This had a number of corollaries:

iii. What lay behind this objective?

The underlying motivation for both the Meiji Restoration and the drive to industrialise was the fear of western imperialism. The message of India and China were not lost on the Japanese. The urge to catch up with the West was to avoid being subjugated to the West. The lesson that was learnt was one of emulation, not only in the sense of economic growth but also of economic and political domination. Japanese industrialisation thus also involved:

iv. These imperatives of industrialisation and imperialism necessitated large scale industrial organisations.

After initial State funding, shipyards, textile mills and steelworks quickly passed into private ownership. The owners were the zaibatsu, a small number of large, interlocking conglomerates. We should note the following features of these firms:

Japan’s imperial ambitions led her into the Second World War and to total defeat and subsequent occupation by the Americans. Both the development of imperialism militarism and the following defeat have been seen as further crucial periods in moulding the shape of contemporary Japan.

As noted above, the state played a key role in the 1930s in suppressing a small but potentially radical labour movement. During the war the state then sought to regulate labour relations more directly, which involved both tighter controls on wages and working conditions and deployment of an ideology of national unity and sacrifice (parallels with European Fascism). This meant strong constraints on living standards and tight labour discipline, but it also involved some constraints on employers’ prerogatives and strong ideological themes of egalitarianism and producer collectivism, which were translated into labour demands after 1945.

2. The aftermath of defeat

The years immediately following the War can be seen as a second crucial period moulding the shape of contemporary Japan. Firstly it was a period characterised by massive social and economic disruption, which evoked radical responses among the population, such as factory occupations. Secondly, the policies of the American Occupation forces had a major influence on the process of social reconstruction.

American policy in restructuring Japan went through two phases:

i. Anti-authoritarian, pro-democracy:

Immediately after the War the policy focused on destroying Japanese militarism and the Imperial State and replacing them with institutions to foster democracy. Wide ranging changes to the political and state structure accompanied economic reforms which are our main interest:

ii. Anti-communism, pro-Americanism.

Things were getting out of hand! Especially in the context of the ever cooling Cold War and, eventually, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Well before then, however, American policy shifted especially in response to the growing influence of the Japanese Communist Party in the labour movement. A planned general strike was prohibited in 1947, the law was amended withdrawing the right to strike from public employees, an alternative national trade union centre was backed and eventually the JCP was purged in 1950 (Tokunaga:1983:313-315). The revolutionary potential (Kenney and Florida:1988:126-129) was lost but the basic features of Japanese trade unionism were established in this immediate post war period.

Short introductions and overviews can be found in:

# Sugayama, Shinji. 1995 ‘Work Rules, Wages and Single Status: the Shaping of the Japanese Employment System’ Business History 37.2 pp. 120-139.

# Weiss, Linda. 1993 ‘War, the State and the Origins of the Japanese Employment System’ Politics and Society 21.3 pp. 325-354.

# Watts, David. 1993. The Times Guide to Japan: Understanding the World’s Newest Superpower. London: Times Books. Chap 1

Moore, Joe B. 1990 ‘Nikkeiren and Restoration of the Right to manage in Postwar Japan’ Labour and Industry 3 pp 281-301

Buckley, Roger. 1990. Japan Today. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chap 1

Burks, Ardath W. 1991. Japan: A Postindustrial Power. Third ed. Oxford: Westview Press. Chap 4

Gould, Arthur. 1993. Capitalist Welfare Systems. Harlow: Longman. Chap 2 Burks,

Haitani, Kanji. 1976. The Japanese Economic System Lexington Ms, Lexington Books, Chap 1 & 2.

Hanami, T.A. 1985. Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Japan Deventer, Netherlands, Kluwer Law and Taxation Publisher, Chap 1.

Kawamura, Nozomu. 1994. Sociology and Society of Japan. London. Chap 2

More substantial accounts are:

# Gordon, Andrew. 1985 The Evolution of Labour Relations in Japan Cambridge: CUP [Gordon also provides brief reflections on the ‘post-war settlement’ in Japan, in ‘The Emergence of a Labour-Management Settlement in Japan 1945-60’ International Labor and Working Class History 50 1996 pp 133-139]

# Dore, Ronald. 1990. British Factory, Japanese Factory: the Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations. Second ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Part 3 (NB this important book was originally published in 1973)

# Littler, Craig R. 1982. The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies. London: Heinemann, chap 10.

Storry, Richard. 1990. A History of Modern Japan. London: Penguin.

Tsuru, Shigeto. 1993. Creative Defeat and Beyond: Japanese Capitalism Since the War. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Garon, Sheldon. 1987. The State and Labor in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kunio, Yoshihara. 1986. Japanese Economic Development Oxford, Oxford University Press, Chaps 1,2,4,5.

Fukutake, Tadashi (1982) The Japanese Social Structure Tokyo, Tokyo University Press, Parts 1 & 2.

Eccleston, Bernard. 1986. The state and modernisation in Japan. In The Rise of the Modern State. Edited by J. Anderson. 192-211. Brighton: Wheatsheaf.

Okochi, K., Levine, B. And Levine, S.B. 1973. Workers and Employers in Japan Tokyo, University of Tokyo Press, Chap 2,3,13.

Barrington Moore Jr. 1967. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy London, Allen Lane, Chap 5.

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Our outline of the three pillars identified two major questions:

(i) What is the relationship between worker motivation and the JES?

(ii) How general is the system beyond regular, male workers in large establishments?

For the remainder of this week and in Japan 2 we will focus mainly on the first of these questions. Then in Japan 3 and 4 we will focus more on the second question.

One way of elaborating on how the Japanese employment system works is to see it as reflecting a uniquely Japanese culture, much broader and diffuse than employment itself. We will use Kanji Haitani’s The Japanese Economic System to illustrate this approach. Although this is over twenty years old it is a useful source as the logic of the argument is so clear. As the reading list below makes clear the culturalist approach is both long established and continuing, though also strongly contested. The argument is summed up by:

So the employment system is a ‘reflection’ of the Japanese family system, infused with neo-Feudal and religious values. This has characteristic features of hierarchy and groupism. Such key cultural values are encapsulated in several key concepts, namely ie (which embodies strong family ties and household obligations), on (a powerful sense of duty) and giri (the importance of mutual obligations). These are replicated in the organisation of companies. This parallelism comes about through the power of tradition. These cultural features were established in the Tokugawa period and cultural continuity has been maintained both within the family and work.

What the above cultural factor does is provide a link between the organisational features of the three pillars and the highly motivated Japanese worker. Lifetime employment, seniority wages and enterprise unionism do not lead to indolence and complacency because they build upon groupism and ranking consciousness. Being part of the company family implies strong pressures to conform to the company’s objectives precisely because the group structure is so strong and ranking involves competition with others outwith the group and fulfilment of the obligations of rank within it.

The cultural approach puts emphasis on Japan’s recent feudal background which provided the cultural ‘legacy’ that the employment system drew upon, but it is unclear how this cultural approach deals with change:

a) One version of this approach suggests that this cultural ‘credit’ weakens through time, that as it fades Japan would gradually loose its feudal characteristics and converge toward the ‘normal’ pattern of capitalist societies as exemplified by the USA and Western Europe. This developmental assumption became less and less persuasive in the 1960s as, despite rapid economic growth, the Japanese system seemed to be strengthening its hold rather than fading away as Japan was established as a major economic world power. This was reinforced after the oil crises of the early 1970s. Japan was particularly severely effected by the escalation in oil prices, being entirely dependent on imported oil. Yet whilst the Western economies went into recession and their unemployment rates soared to heights unknown since the 1930s, the Japanese continued to expand their manufacturing output and, although unemployment rose, it remained by far the lowest of the capitalist industrialised economies. Thus the Japanese system appeared to have considerable resilience, rather than fading away under the pressure of the market.

b) This suggests that another version of the cultural argument, one which stresses the persistent role of established cultural repertoires, may be more appropriate. However, the problem here is that, while the JES has not disappeared, it has undergone important changes, not only through the major institutional shifts from the pre-war to the post-war period but also through more subtle alterations in more recent years (for example in the importance of seniority wages, the extent of temporary work, the organisation of work groups and the character of trade unionism).

Although certain parallels are evident between the Tokugawa merchant house and some present practices many of the critics emphasise that there has not been a continuity of institutions and patterns of commitment. In the late C19th and early C20th even relatively skilled manual workers were not integrated into the enterprise, and dictatorial management, job insecurity and high labour turnover were the norm. Thus the components of the three pillars have their origins in the more recent past than the Tokugawa period. Therefore we need to look carefully at the timing of these institutional developments, and the conditions and actions which surrounded their formation.

a) Until the first decades of the C20th large Japanese companies recruited labour through subcontractors. It was the inefficiences of this system and the severe shortage of skilled labour which prompted employers to internalise the sub-contractor system, and to invent (not inherit) lifetime employment and seniority wages. Even then such practices were largely confined to some groups of skilled workers in heavy industry (see Gordon and diagram 2). Even in such a leading firm as Hitachi they were developed very hesitantly in the inter-war period (see Sugayama) and they did not apply in the same way to the largely female workforce in cotton (see Littler). Thus, as Abe and Fitzgerald note ‘Between 1920 and 1960 new practices began to replace less permanent, more alienating forms of employment, which had operated despite the Japanese inclination for group identity and notions of vertical society. If the cultural values of the group proved useful to the organisation of rising corporations, they had to be imposed on an industrial system where they had become absent’ (1995 p. 25).

(b) Weiss provides a particularly sharp critique of assumptions about cultural legacies and also emphasises that the creation of the JES was not only (or even mainly) a management response to changing labour market conditions but crucially the result of state policies designed to underpin the militarization of the economy. Thus she argues that ‘the widespread "white-collarization" of production workers only took off after the mid-1930s when, for reasons of mass military mobilization, the state directly intervened at enterprise level to systematise, stabilize and extend the main compnents of the modern employment system’ (Weiss 1993, p330). Indeed, she argues that this involved the state requiring employers to move further in this direction than they would otherwise have done, translating what was partial, ad hoc and even temporary into a more permament institutional complex, though this was further developed and modified after 1945.

(c) Furthermore, enterprise unionism is essentially a product of the immediate post war years in which promptings by the American Occupation Force to create a counterbalance to the all powerful zaibatsu employers are generally regarded as crucial (see above).

(d) Even the family, the bastion of the culturalist argument, may be a more recent creation than often imagined, as the distinctive version of the ‘good wife, wise mother’ was developed aspart of the process of industrialisation and militarisation from the late C19th onwards (see the discussions of Kondo and Carney/O’Kelly below, and Japan 4).

Haitani and others like her focus on how culture operates within the context of lifetime employment, seniority wages and enterprise unionism. Yet there is little recognition of the wide variation here:

The general problem here is how a Japanese culture can operate in a common way in very different organisational contexts. Simply referring to a ‘legacy’ does not explain how culture works in different contexts.

Many of the invocations of Japanese cultural values portray the firm as a ‘reflection’ of the family. However, this frequently used analogy with a mirror begs the question as to which way the mirror is pointing? Could not the groupism and hierarchy of the family be a reflection of the organisation of work? The problem is that the approach does not specify the mechanisms by which the culture of "the family" is constructed in employment other than by an appeal to the past - the ‘Tokugawa legacy’ (Hitani, pp 9 and 97).

Many of the critics of the culturalist approach have argued that the role of culture must therefore be much more carefully specified. This has led them to highlight the conditions under which such values are appealed to and the agencies which have sought to mobilise these values. We can identify three distinctive variants of these arguments about conditions and agencies, though they may sometimes be combined:

Note that distinctive cultural values can play rather different roles in such arguments:

The cultural approach has been rather out of favour amongst academic analysts (see Shirai, 1983, preface and Chap 1.) though it was influential in the past and continues to inform everyday understanding of Japan (see eg Hayashi, 1988). Despite all the criticisms above, there is still a case for regarding Japanese culture as an important factor. The crucial issues are why Japanese employers and workers adopted the three pillars in the first place and why (in their many modifications) they persist so strongly? What seems to be required is a concept of culture which:

A number of sources now use this kind of approach including:

For example, it is worth saying a little more about Dorinne Kondo’s Crafting Selves. Kondo is a third generation Japanese American who undertook participant observation field work in an industrial area of Tokyo. Hundreds of small firms occupied the district and the focus is very much on them. Equally, the district is a tightly packed residential area. Kondo focuses upon the Sato confectionery business and draws out how the firm as a ‘family’ is not simply a legacy from the past but a concept which is continuously reproduced and adapted in the relationships between the owner and his workers and between the workers themselves (especially between men and women). Thus Kondo explores the subtle and varied ways in which ie, on and giri are invoked and influence conduct in her small firm and community settings.

A clear and succinct example of the cultural approach is:

# Haitani, Kanji. 1976. The Japanese Employment System Lexington Ms., D.C. Heath and Co., Especially chap 2 and 7.

Rather older examples of the culturalist approach are:

Abegglen, James. 1958. The Japanese Factory Glencoe Ill., Free Press.

Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthenum and the Sword New York, Houghton Mifflin.

However, the approach is found in more recent works such as:

# Hanami, Tadashi. 1980. Labour Relations in Japan Today London, John Martin.

Fukutake, Tadashi. 1982. The Japanese Social Structure Tokyo, Tokyo University Press.

Kenrick, Douglas Moore. 1988. The Success of Competitive-Communism in Japan. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Esp chap 2.

Kawamura, Shigekuni. 1993. ‘Japanese management style’. Japan and the World Economy 5 : 289-92.

Hayashi, Shuji. 1988. Culture and Management in Japan. Translated by Frank Baldwin. Tokyo, Tokyo University Press.

For criticism of the culturalist approach see:

# Shimada, Haruo. 1983. ‘Japanese industrial relations - A new general model?’ in T. Shirai Contemporary Industrial Relations in Japan Madison Ws., University of Wisconsin Press, Chap 1.

# Linda Weiss ‘War, the State and the Origins of the Japanese Employment System’ Politics and Society 21.3 1993 325-354 see diagram on page 331

# Koike, Kazuo. 1988. Understanding Industrial Relations in Modern Japan Basingstoke, macmillan, Introduction.

# Carney, Larry S., And O’Kelly, Charlotte G. 1990. ‘Women’s work and women’s place in the Japanese economic miracle’. In Women Workers and Global Restructuring. Edited by K. Ward. 113-145. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, Cornell University.

Gordon, Andrew. 1985 The Evolution of Labour Relations in Japan Cambridge: CUP Introduction and conclusion

Abe, Etsuo., and Fitzgerald, Robert. ‘Japanese Economic Success: Timing, Culture and Organizational capability’ Business History 37.2 1995 1-31:

Sugayama, Shinji. ‘Work Rules, Wages and Single Status: the shaping of the JES’ Business History 37.2 1995 pp 120-139.

Shimada, Haruo 1980. The Japanese Employment System The Japan Institute of Labour, Japanese Industrial Relations Series 6.

Dohse, Knuth., Jurgens, Ulrich., And Malsch, Thomas. 1985. ‘From "Fordism" to "Toyotism"? The social organisation of the labour process in the Japanese automobile industry’. Politics and Society 14 (2) : 115-46.

Sakoh, Katsuro. 1990. ‘Economic implications of enterprise unionism’. Journal of Labor Research 11 (3) : 257-267.

Gould, Arthur. 1993. Capitalist Welfare Systems. Harlow: Longman. Chap 5

For more recent conceptualisations of ‘culture’ which attempt to circumvent the traditional problem areas see:

# Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. London: University of Chicago Press. (NB This is quite a ‘big’ book. Students tackling this topic for assessment / exam should read it all. As a ‘taster’ look at chapters 5 and 6).

# Kawamura, Nozomu. 1994. Sociology and Society of Japan. London. Chap 8

Kinzley, W. Dean. 1991. Industrial Harmony in Modern Japan: the Invention of a Tradition. London: Routledge. Esp chap 3. [note: for further material on the Kyochakai, the main focus of Kinzley’s book see Garon, Sheldon. 1987. The State and Labor in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.]

Warner, M. 1994. ‘Japanese Culture, Western Management - Taylorism And Human Resources In Japan’. Organization Studies 15 : 509-533.

Carney, Larry S., and O’Kelly, Charlotte G. 1990. ‘Women’s Work and Women’s Place in the Japanese Economic Miracle’. In Women Workers and Global Restructuring. Edited by K. Ward. 113-145. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, Cornell University.

Finally, an early attempt to trace out the interplay between cultural values, institutional arrangements and class interests was Robert Cole. 1971. Japanese Blue Collar : The changing tradition (Berkeley: Californmia UP)

I. What are the main elements of the ‘Japanese employment system’?

II. What role have traditional cultural values played in the formation and operation of the JES?

III. Who were the key agents in the construction of the JES?

IV. How might the employment system account for work commitment in Japan?

1. Discuss the main influences on the development of the JES.

2. Does the history of industrialisation in Japan indicate a particularly strong attachment to traditional culture and institutions?

3. Summarise the main arguments about the significance of Japanese culture for Japanese workers developed by two of the following: Haitani, Kondo, Weiss. What major differences of interpretation separate them?

A final note on internet sources on Japanese work and employment.

The Japan Institute of Labour

http://www.jil.go.jp/index-e.htm a Ministry of Labour linked publication

Japanese Trade Union Federation (RENGO)

http://www.jtuc-rengo.org/ the largest union federation

The Ohara Institute for Social Research

http:/oohara.mt.tama.hosei.ac.jp a guide to a whole range of other relevant web sites

@ Copyright Tony Elger and module team 2000