In sociology, debate continues to rage over the extent to which social mobility to the privileged upper middle white-collar sector Japan has declined. Reflecting these developments, scholarly class analysis has attained center stage in public discussion. Moreover, in regional economic comparisons, affluent metropolitan lifestyles often appear in sharp contrast with the deteriorated and declining conditions of rural areas. Even ‘regular’ employees who were guaranteed job security throughout their occupational careers have been thrown out of employment because of their companies’ poor business outcomes and the unsatisfactory performance of their own work. One out of three employees are now ‘non-regular workers’ whose employment status is precarious. In mass media, on one end of the spectrum, the new rich who have almost instantly amassed vast wealth in such areas as information technology, new media and financial manipulation are celebrated and lionized as fresh billionaires.Īt the other end of the spectrum are the unemployed, the homeless, day laborers and other marginalized members of society who are said to form karyū shakai (the underclass), revealing a discrepancy which gives considerable plausibility to the imagery of class-divided society.Īt the heart of the controversy is job stability which used to be the hallmark of Japan’s labor market. The new image of Japan as a class-divided and unequal society has resulted not so much from intellectual criticisms levelled at the once dominant model as from public perceptions of changing patterns of the labor market. The view appears to have gained ground during Japan’s prolonged recession in the 1990s, the so-called lost decade, and in the 2000s when the country experienced a further downturn as a consequence of the global financial crisis. 2 The emerging discourse argues that Japan is a kakusa shakai, literally a ‘disparity society’, a socially divided society with sharp class differences and glaring inequality. The view that Japan is a monocultural society with little internal cultural divergence and stratification, which was once taken for granted, is now losing monopoly over the way Japanese society is portrayed. At the beginning of the 21st century, the nation has observed a drastic shift in its characterization from a uniquely homogeneous and uniform society to one of domestic diversity, class differentiation and other multidimensional forms. Paradigm Shift: From Homogenous to Class-divided SocietyĪ dramatic paradigm shift appears to be underway in contemporary Japanese society, with public discourse suddenly focusing upon internal divisions and variations in the population. This paper argues that while the government has promoted various policy tools to help young people become economically and socially independent individuals, it has gradually shifted its policy focus toward human capital development for growth and industrial competitiveness as a way of revitalizing Japan's troubling economy.Class and Work in Cultural Capitalism: Japanese Trends 1 In particular, it analyzes variations in policy target group and goal across different measures and evaluates the effectiveness and limitations of these programs in dealing with youth problems in the labor market. This paper examines the deterioration of employment and labor market conditions for Japan's youth after the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s and the government's policy efforts to address these concerns, especially since the early 2000s, a period during which it has initiated a wide array of youth employment and labor market policies. Confronting these new challenges, an increasing number of young people have had extreme difficulties in searching for decent and stable jobs in the labor market, trapped in the vicious cycle of precarious employment. Japan's labor market has been under severe strain over the past few decades, driven by its protracted economic recession, a series of labor market reforms, and changing labor management practices.
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