Japan’s New Inequality: Intersection of Employment Reforms and Welfare Arrangements Edited by Yoshimichi Sato and Jun Imai (review)

This collection of essays on social inequality identifies several emerging changes in the nature of social inequality and mobility in the last three decades and attempts to explore what has caused these changes. The volume makes a timely contribution in the context of extensive public debate in the media and recent academic works about the widening gap between rich and poor, and about the consequences of that gap for individuals and the society as a whole. The editors, Yoshimichi Sato and Jun Imai, are prominent sociologists based at Tohoku University, who have together previously published extensively on social stratification. All contributors to the volume except one are Japan-based scholars. The volume thus introduces published research unavailable in English to Anglophone researchers.

The book is a valuable addition to the field and complements recent publications on social inequality such as Hiroshi Ishida, ed., Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Sorting and Strategies (Routledge, 2010), Huiyan Fu’s An Emerging Non-regular Labour Force in Japan (Routledge, 2012), Toshiaki Tachibanaki’s Confronting Income Inequality in Japan (MIT Press, 2005), and Junsuke Hara and Kazuo Seiyama’s Inequality amid Affluence: Social Stratification in Japan (Trans Pacific Press, 2005). The major departure of this volume from the existing literature is that it directs our attention from the quantitative gap to qualitative changes in the nature of social inequalities, which the authors argue has resulted, at least partially, from institutional reforms affecting welfare and employment.

Seven chapters of the volume identify four major changes in social inequality and its patterns in relation to welfare and employment reforms. The first is the increasing division between regular and nonregular workers in labor markets (chapters 1, 2, and 3), which are seen as an addition to the preexisting dual structure based on company size (the large- and small-firm sectors). Regular and nonregular employment create distinctive career paths throughout an individual’s life course, whereby the latter workers are provided only limited access to job security, income, and other benefits throughout their lives (chapters 1 and 2). Hiroshi Tarohmaru in chapter 3 examines Japan’s nonregular employment in comparison to that of Taiwan and Korea, and argues that each presents particular features. These first three chapters discuss this change in relation to the Rōdōsha Haken Hō (Temporary Dispatching Work Law, 1986, 1994, 2004, 2012) and the Tanjikan Rōdōsha no Koyō Kanri no Kaizen Tō ni Kansuru Hōritsu (Pōto Taimu Rōdō Hō, the Part-time Work Act, 2008).

The second major change is in women’s employment patterns: women increasingly participate in paid employment, softening the famous M-curve participation rate; but a substantial number of them are in nonregular employment, earn less than men, and do not hold managerial roles. Marcus Rebick, in chapter 4, explains this trend in detail in relation to a series of amendments to the Danjo Koyō Kikaikintō Hō (Equal Employment Opportunity Law, 1985; amended 1997, 2006) and legislation intended to provide family-friendly working conditions, the Ikuji Kyūgyō Hō (Child Care Leave Act, 1991) and the Kaigo Kyūgyō Hō (Child Care and Family Care Leave Act, 1995). Participation in such leave has increased but remains relatively low.

The third change in patterns of social inequality is a significant decline in the “old middle class” (i.e., the self employed). Both self-employed agricultural households and small retailers had long benefited from various protections, such as government subsidies to the agricultural sector and the Daikibo Kōritenpo Hō (Large-scale Retail Stores Act, 2000), which restricted the establishment of large stores in the vicinity of shopping strips. This was at least partially because the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had regarded the “old middle class” as reliable supporters. In chapter 5, Shin Arita examines how, as both retail and agricultural sectors gradually became deregulated over...