The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 40 | Number 1 | Article ID 3419 | Oct 04, 2010

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Class and Work in Cultural Capitalism: Japanese Trends　　文化資本主義における階級と労働−−日本の潮流

Yoshio Sugimoto

Class and Work in Cu l tura lCapitalism: Japanese Trends1

Yoshio SUGIMOTO

Paradigm Shift: From Homogenous toClass-divided Society

A dramatic paradigm shift appears to beunderway in contemporary Japanese society,with public discourse suddenly focusing uponinternal divisions and variations in thepopulation. At the beginning of the 21stcentury, the nation has observed a drastic shiftin its characterization from a uniquelyhomogeneous and uniform society to one ofdomestic diversity, class differentiation andother multidimensional forms. The view thatJapan is a monocultural society with littleinternal cultural divergence and stratification,which was once taken for granted, is nowlosing monopoly over the way Japanese societyis portrayed.2 The emerging discourse arguesthat Japan is a kakusa shakai, literally a‘disparity society’, a socially divided societywith sharp class differences and glaringinequality. The view appears to have gainedground during Japan’s prolonged recession inthe 1990s, the so-called lost decade, and in the2000s when the country experienced a furtherdownturn as a consequence of the globalfinancial crisis.

The new image of Japan as a class-divided andunequal society has resulted not so much fromintellectual criticisms levelled at the oncedominant model as from public perceptions ofchanging patterns of the labor market. In massmedia, on one end of the spectrum, the newrich who have almost instantly amassed vastwealth in such areas as information technology,new media and financial manipulation arecelebrated and lionized as fresh billionaires.

At the other end of the spectrum are theunemployed, the homeless, day laborers andother marginalized members of society who aresaid to form karyū shakai (the underclass),reveal ing a discrepancy which givesconsiderable plausibility to the imagery ofclass-divided society.

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At the heart of the controversy is job stabilitywhich used to be the hallmark of Japan’s labormarket. One out of three employees are now‘non-regular workers’ whose employmentstatus is precarious. Even ‘regular’ employeeswho were guaranteed job security throughouttheir occupational careers have been thrownout of employment because of their companies’poor business outcomes and the unsatisfactoryperformance of their own work. Moreover, inregional economic comparisons, affluentmetropolitan lifestyles often appear in sharpcontrast with the deteriorated and decliningconditions of rural areas.

Reflecting these developments, scholarly classanalysis has attained center stage in publicdiscussion. In sociology, debate continues torage over the extent to which social mobility tothe privileged upper middle white-collar sectorJapan has declined.3 In labor economics, manyresearchers focus their attention on howJapan’s level of social inequality – measured bythe Gini index – compares with those of otherdeveloped societies.4 In family sociology,empirical studies show that intra-classmarriages within identical occupational andeducational categories remain predominant,and ‘ascriptive homogamy’ is most robustamong university graduates, with inter-generational class continuity enduring mostfirmly in most educated strata of Japanesesociety.5 In the field of education, about three

quarters of the students of the University ofTokyo, the most prestigious university in Japan,are the sons and daughters of companymanagers, bureaucrats, academics, teachersand professionals.6 In poverty studies, one inseven workers is estimated to live under thepoverty line in Japan,7 a condition that hardlymakes the country a ‘homogeneous middle-class society.’

Table 1: International comparison of‘middle class consciousness’ (%)

Still, a sobering reality prevails. Despite theclaim of the emergence of kakusa shakai, anoverwhelming majority of Japanese continue toregard themselves as belonging to the ‘middleclass,’ a pattern that has persisted fordecades.8 Yet, as Table 1 shows, comparativestudies of class affiliation in a number ofnations found that 80–90 percent of peopleidentify themselves as ‘middle class,’ whichsuggests that this phenomenon is far frombeing unique to Japan.

Debate and Caution about the KakusaSociety Thesis

While gaining broad acceptance, the so-calledkakusa society thesis has been subject toanimated debate and must be examined withcaution.

First of all, the assertion that Japanese societyhas suddenly become a kakusa society raises

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much skepticism. There is much well foundedargument that Japan has always been a class-divided and stratified society and was never auniquely ‘middle-class society’ as described bythe Nihonjinron model. From this perspective,an abrupt shift took place in public awarenessand sensitivity, not in empirical substance andreality. Even at the prime of the ‘uniquelyegalitarian society’ argument, numerousstudies demonstrated that such claim mayrepresent only the tatemae side of Japanesesociety. Some comparative quantitative studiessugges t t ha t J apanese pa t t e rns o fsocioeconomic inequality show no systematicdeviance from those of other countries ofadvanced capitalism. The overall social mobilityrate in Japan is basically similar to patternsobserved in other industrialized societies.9

The second proviso bears upon the opticalillusion that appears to have persisted duringthe high economic growth era. There is nodoubt that the high-growth economy of postwarJapan led to changes in the occupationalcomposition of the population and shifted largenumbers from agriculture to manufacturing,from blue-collar to white-collar, from manual tonon-manual, and from low-level to high-leveleducation.10 However, this transfiguration left afalse impression – as though industrializationwere conducive to a high measure of upwardsocial mobility. In reality, the relative positionsof various strata in the hierarchy remainedunaltered. For example, the educational systemwhich produced an increasing number ofuniversity graduates cheapened the relativevalue of degrees and qualifications. To put itdifferently, when everyone stands still on anascending escalator, their relative positionsremain unaltered even though they all go up. Asense of upward relative mobility in this case issimply an illusion. When the escalator stops orslows down, it becomes difficult for the illusionto be sustained. The occupational systemcannot continue to provide ostensibly high-status positions, and eventually it must berevealed that some of the social mobility of the

past was in fact due to the inflationary supplyof positions. This is exactly what many in thelabor force began to feel when Japan’s economycame to a standstill, recording negative growthin the 1990s and entering into a deflationaryspiral in the early 2000s. The reality of classcompetition began to bite only when theeconomic slowdown failed to discerniblyenlarge the total available pie.

Third, a widening gap between haves and have-nots may be exaggerated because of theincrease in the proportion of the aged in thepopulation. Since social disparities are thelargest among senior citizens, an aging societytends to show a greater chasm between ther ich and the poor . The demographictransformation towards a greying societyoverstates the general levels of classdifferentiation of the total population.

Fourth, Japan’s socio-economic disparities wereaccelerated not only by unorganized structuraltransformations but by deliberately engineeredpolicy changes in the taxation system. Theyhave decreased the rate of progressive taxationwith the result that its redistribution functionshave been weakened. For one thing, theconsumption taxation scheme was put intomotion in 1989, making it necessary for eachconsumer to pay five percent of the price ofpurchased goods as sales tax. This systembenefits the wealthy and harms the poor,because the consumption tax is imposed on allconsumers in the same way regardless of theirincomes and assets. Further, the reduction ofthe inheritance tax rate in 2003 has lessenedthe burdens o f a s se t owners i n theintergenerational transfer of ownership. Thisadvantaged the relatively rich and enhancedclass discrepancies in this area.

Finally, one would have to see the perceptionshift in class structure in Japan from theperspective of the sociology of knowledge.Apparent or real, recent changes in classsituations took place close to the everyday life

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of opinion makers and data analysts. Evenwhen economic hardship and class competitionwere daily realities in the lower echelons ofJapanese society, many of these commentatorspaid little heed to the issue because theyoccupied privileged positions distant from thelower levels of social stratification. However,their perceptions began to alter with theshifting class structure affecting theiracquaintances and friends in their networks asa consequence of the economic stagnation anddownturn in the 1990s and 2000s. The jobsecurity of full-time employees in the elite trackof large companies is now at risk.11 The upperwhite-collar employees, a category thatcomprises managers and professionals, are anincreasingly closed group which the children ofother social strata find it difficult to breakinto.12 A decline in scholastic achievementseven among the pupils of the upper middleclasses and above has aroused concern amongparents.13 There are grounds to suspect thatthe class position of ‘class observers’ influencestheir sensitivity to stratificational divisions inJapanese society.

Job Market Rationalization

The world of employment constitutes the centerof debate about class and inequality incontemporary Japan. While the familial andpaternalistic ‘Japanese-style’ model remainsentrenched in Japan’s work culture, theprolonged recession of the 1990s and thesubsequent penetration of globalizing forcesinto the Japanese economy has seen twofundamental shifts in the system of work – thecasualization of the workforce and theintroduct ion o f per formance-basedemployment.

Casualization of Labor

The first distinctive trend is the casualization ofthe labor force, a development that has beendeemed a major factor that has contributed tothe widening inequality between social classes.

The restructuring that many companieslaunched in the face of the sluggish economyproduced a growing number of part-time andcasual workers and sharpened the line ofdemarcation between regular employees(seishain) and non-regular employees (hi-seishain). Regular employees encompass thefull-time salaried workers who enjoy variouscompany benefits, with many relishing theprivilege of ‘lifetime employment.’ Non-regularemployees include a variety of impermanentworkers with disposable employment statusand unstable wage structure. With economicrationalism forcing managers to minimize thecosts of employment, approximately seventeenmillion workers, one out of three employees,now fall into the category of non-regularemployees.14 It is estimated that more than halfof working women and two out of five youngemployees belong to this group. Many of thesenon-regular workers form the ‘workingpoor,’15 a class of individuals who attempt towork hard in vulnerable jobs but are unable toget out of the cycle of underemployment andundersubsistence. Because of their vulnerablepositions, many of them submit tamely to thiscondition and fail to demonstrate theirdissatisfaction openly for fear of theiremployers refusing to renew their existingcontract.

These marginalized employees comprise a fewsubcategories, some of which overlap with eachother. The first of these are made up of the so-called part-time workers. Though classified aspart-timers, many in this group work for thirtyhours a week and differ little from full-timeregular employees in terms of working hoursand the substance of the jobs they perform.Married women who work to help supportfamily finances far outnumber other types ofpart-timers. Generally, these ‘full-time part-timers’ receive low hourly wages, stay in thesame position for years without careerprospects and rarely have the privilege ofjoining the employee welfare pension system towhich employers make contributions.

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The second subcategory consists of those whoengage in arubaito, a Japanese term derivedfrom the German, which includes a variety ofside jobs. Many students do after-school orvacation jobs to cover the costs of their schoollife. Moonlighters who earn extra money fromcasual jobs also belong to this category. Whilepart-timers normally designates simply thosewho work less than full-time, most of those whoperform arubaito are regarded as having full-time work (including schoolwork).

In popular parlance, the term friiter (freeter) isan established classification that combinesthese two subcategories (though excludesmarried female part-timers) and signifies thoseyoung workers who are ostensibly willing toengage in casual work on their own volition.The term comes from the English word freecombined with part of the German termArbeiter (people who work) and invokes theimage of free-floating and unencumberedyouths who work on and off based on theirindependent will, though the reality behind thisimage is highly complex.16 Many are the so-called ‘moratorium type’ youths who are buyingtime against the day when they could obtainbetter employment status, after dropping out ofeither school or other work without clear plansfor their future. Some set their sights on beinghired as regular employees despite thediminishment of these posts over time. Othersaccept casual work in the hope of obtaining‘cultural’ jobs in the arts or doing skilledcraftwork, though paths to long-termemployment in such areas are narrow andlimited. Still others simply drift in the casualjob market, living week by week or month bymonth, with no aspirations for their future lifecourse.

There are also other forms of non-regularworkers, including contract employees (keiyakushain) who are employed in the same way asregular workers only for a specified contractperiod; temporary workers (haken shain) whoare dispatched from private personnel

placement agencies; and part-time employeeswho work for a few years after retirementunder a new contract (shokutaku shain).

These non-regular workers are now firmlyembedded into the Japanese economy whichcannot now function without their services.They are quite noticeable in Japan’s highlyefficient and fast-paced urban life, at thecounters of convenience shops and petrolstations and in fast-food restaurants, some ofwhich are open twenty-four hours a day. Onecan also observe many non-regular workersamong middle-aged female shop assistants insupermarkets, elderly security guards at banksand young parcel-delivery workers fromdistribution companies.

The casualization of employment poses aparticularly serious issue to workers in theprime of their working lives. Those betweentwenty five and thirty five years of age, whoentered the job market during Japan’s ‘lostdecade’ in the 1990s, form the nation’s ‘lostgeneration’17 and constitute the bulk of non-regular workers. Without having much hope forthe future, some drift into the life pattern of theso-called NEET, youth who are never educated,employed or vocationally trained. It is tellingthat, among males in their early thirties (30–34of age), only 30 percent of non-regular workersare married, half the rate of regular workers(59 percent).18

Performance-based Model

The second emerging trend that departs fromthe conventional internal labor market model isthe rise of new work arrangements, in whichshort-term employer evaluations of anemployees’ market value and job performanceform the key criteria determining remunerationand the continuation of employment. Someenterprises have started to offer large salariesto employees with special professional skillsand achievements while not ensuring jobsecurity.

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These companies no longer take years ofservice as a yardstick for promotion and wagerise and have thus opened ways for highachievers to be rewarded with high positionsand exceptional salaries regardless of age orexperience. Under this scheme, manyemployees opt for the annual salary system andreceive yearly sums and large bonuses subjectto their achievement of pre-set goals. Their jobsecurity would be at risk if they failed to meetthe set targets. It has been argued that thissystem provides good incentives to ambitiousindividuals and motivates them to accomplishwork in a focused and productive manner.Though not representative of a majority, a fewbright success stories of high flyers who havechosen this path are splashed in the massmedia from time to time. Head-hunting andmid-career recruitment became rampantamong high flying business professionals in theelite sector.

While an increasing number of largecorporations adopt the performance-firstprinciple in one way or another, the number ofemployees who elect the annual salary systemremains a minority. On the whole, this form ofemployment is more widespread in the servicesector than in the manufacturing industry.

The performance model has been subject tocriticism in many respects. The system, inreal i ty , requires employees to workinordinately long hours without overtime forthe attainment of set goals and thereby enablesmanagement to pay less per unit of time andreduces the total salary costs of the company.It has also been pointed out that theintroduction of the annual salary system notonly creates two groups of employees in anenterprise but also enhances the level of intra-company social disparity and reduces teamwork and morale. At issue also is thetransparency of the evaluation processregarding the degree to which pre-arrangedgoals have been attained. While advocates ofthe performance model contend that the

scheme is in line with globally acceptedbusiness practice, ‘Japanese-style’ managementproponents maintain that it is predicated uponthe principle of the survival of the fittest, adoctrine detrimental to the general wellbeingof employees. Even in the late 2000s, in thesphere of value orientation, the paternalistic‘Japanese-style’ management model appears tohave robust support among Japanese workers:national random surveys conducted by theInstitute of Statistical Mathematics haveconsistently shown for more than half a centurythat ‘a supervisor who is overly demanding atwork but is willing to listen to personalproblems and is concerned with the welfare ofworkers’ is preferred to ‘one who is not sostrict on the job but leaves the worker aloneand does not involve himself with theirpersonal matters.’1 9 Likewise, a largerproportion of the Japanese populace wouldprefer to work in a company with recreationalactivities like field days and leisure outings foremployees despite relatively low wages, ratherthan in one with high wages without such afamily-like atmosphere.20

It should be reiterated that the beneficiaries oflifetime employment, seniority-based wagesand enterprise unionism have been limited inpractice to the core employees of largecompanies, a quarter of the total workforce atmost. Inter-company mobility and performance-based wage structures had been prevalent insmall firms and among non-core workers,though neither was quite vis ible norcontroversial during the high growth periodbecause every worker’s labor conditionsappeared to be improving at least on thesurface.

The debate over the performance model flaredup because it started affecting the elite sector;‘Japanese-style’ management has never appliedto small businesses which adjust theiremployment structure according to economicfluctuations, with workers moving from onecompany to another with considerable

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frequency. An increasing number of non-regular workers, those part-timers and casualswith no long-term employment base, are hiredand fired depending upon performance andoutput. One should, therefore, examine thedebate over the competing models of work witha conscious focus on the lower end of the labor-force hierarchy.

Cultural Capitalism: An Emerging Mega-sector

Culture has become big business around theworld with advanced economies increasinglydominated by the information, education,medicine, welfare and other cultural industriesthat specialize in the world of symbols, imagesand representations. Japan’s capitalism hasbeen at the forefront in this area by producingfresh value-added commodities in the face ofgrowing competition from Asian countries towhich the centers of industrial production hadshifted. No longer the manufacturingpowerhouse of the world, Japanese capitalismhas carved out new and enormous marketsthrough expertise in the worlds of softwaretechnology, visual media, music, entertainment,hospitality and leisure. In these fields, Japanesecompanies continue to hold comparativeadvantage and claim international superiority,thereby releasing a constant stream of culturalproducts into the global market and reshapingthe Japanese economy.

One may argue that Japan has now developedcultural capitalism, which relies upon theproduction of symbols, knowledge andinformation as the guiding principle of wealthcreation and focuses upon cultural attractionsand activities as the primary motivating factorsunderpinning consumption. The debate over‘soft power’ and ‘Japan Cool’ has arisen in thiscontext. To provide a map of the comparativefeatures of emerging cultural capitalism asdistinguished from conventional industrialcapitalism, Table 2 contrasts the modusoperandi of the two types of capitalism in

existence today. It should be stressed that thefeatures in the cells do not denote exclusiveproperties of each type but exhibit the relativepoints of emphasis of the two for comparativepurposes.

As early as the 1980s, market analysts werequick to point out that the patterns of Japaneseconsumer behavior were becoming diversifiedin a f undamenta l way . P rev i ous l y ,manufacturers sold models standardized formass consumption, successfully promotingthem through sa les campa igns andadvertisements. Recently, however, thisstrategy has become ineffective as consumershave begun to seek products in tune with theirpersonal preferences. They have become moreunpredictable, selective, and inquisitive. Thenotion of the Japanese as uniform massconsumers does not effectively account for

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their consumer behavior patterns today. Aconsumer behavior study21 suggested theemergence of shōshū – individualized, divided,and small-unit masses – as opposed to taishū,the undifferentiated, uniform, and large-scalemass. The research institute of Hakuhōdō,22 aleading advertising agency, also argued thatthe notion of bunshū (segmented masses)would account for the behavior of consumersmore effectively than the conventional view ofthem as a homogeneous entity. In short,cultural capitalism thrives with masscustomization, the production of many differentcommodities tailored for specific focus groups,unlike industrial capitalism that is built uponthe mass production of a small number ofstandardized goods. If industrial capitalismsurvives on the relative homogeneity ofconsumer lifestyles, cultural capitalism restsupon their differentiation. Mobile phones, forinstance, are frequently revamped withdifferent functions, designs and colors,fashioned to fulfill the distinct desires ofparticular and shifting demographics.

Contents of takeout box lunches sold to officeworkers at convenience stores are highly variedto satisfy the diverse tastes of youngsters,women, middle-aged men and other socio-economic groups.

Table 2: Patterns of two types of capitalism

Such differentiation of consumer motivationsmirrors alterations in the criteria of classformation. Hara and Seiyama, leading expertsin social stratification, argue that inequality hasbeen removed in contemporary ‘affluent’ Japanas far as ‘basic goods’ are concerned, while thenation is increasingly stratified in pursuit ofwhat they call ‘upper goods.’23 Absolute povertywas eradicated when the population’ssubsistence needs were met. Almost everyhousehold can now afford a television set,telephone, car, rice cooker and other essentialgoods for a comfortable daily life. Virtually allteenagers advance to senior high school andfulfill their basic educational requisites. In themeantime, community perceptions of socialstratification are becoming multi-dimensional.The different sectors of the Japanesepopulation are increasingly divergent in theirrespective evaluations of status indicators.Some attach importance to asset accumulation,while others regard occupational kudos ascrucial. Still others would deem quality of lifethe most significant dimension. In each sphere,what Hara and Seiyama call ‘upper goods’ arescarce, be they luxury housing, postgraduateeducation or deluxe holidays, with theseexpensive commodities being beyond the reachof many people. Thus, social divisions inJapanese society today derive not so much fromthe unequal distribution of commonplace andmundane industrial goods as from that ofprestigious and stylish cultural goods.

Table 3: Distribution of workers in fourmega sectors

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It is an established convention to divideeconomies into three sectors of activity: theprimary sector (including agriculture andfisheries) which transforms natural resourcesinto products, the secondary sector (comprisingmanufacturing and construction) whichproduces finished goods from the output of theprimary sector, and the tertiary sector whichoffers services or intangible goods andencompasses industries ranging from retail,wholesale, finance and real estate to the publicservice. Given that some 70 percent of workersin Japan are now employed in the tertiarysector,24 this sector needs reclassificationaccording to internal varieties. Specifically, therecent expansion of areas that makeknowledge-based, informational and value-added products form what may be categorizedas the quaternary sector which branches offfrom the conventional tertiary sector. Thoughno governmental statistics are based on suchcategory, on a rough and conservativeestimate, approximately one quarter of Japan’sworkforce operates in this sphere, rangingfrom employees in the information andtelecommunications industries, medical, healthcare and welfare sectors, restaurants, hotelsand other leisure businesses to education andteaching support staff, and governmentworkers. As Table 3 suggests, the number of

employees engaged in the quaternary sector ison par with that of those in the manufacturingand construction industries that are typicallyclassified as the secondary sector. Thesef i gures a re admi t t ed l y ve ry c rudeapproximations.25 Nevertheless, broadlyspeaking, cultural workers undoubtedlypredominate as much as industrial workers inthe landscape of Japan’s workforce today.

In tandem with these domestic shifts, Japan isnow seen internationally as a superpower interms of cultural ‘soft power’ that exercises asignificant influence around the world invarious areas of popular culture, includingcomputer games, pop music, fashion,architecture, not to mention manga and anime.In the field of education, the Kumon methodwhich has spread across at least forty fourcountries and territories uses special methodsto tutor children in a variety of subjects. Inmusic, the Suzuki method is marketed as aunique and special approach to enhancemusical talent. Even in sushi restaurants,Japanese cuisine techniques constitute the coreof business activity.

Nintendo is now a household name around theworld, and computer games made in Japanenjoy immense popularity. So do Sudoku

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puzzles initially actively commercialized inJapan. These developments reflect the sharpedges of the emerging international division oflabor in which the production of cultural goodsoccupies a crucial position in advancedeconomies in general and Japanese capitalismin particular.

All this signifies that the knowledge-intensiveskills that are based on exclusive patents,copyrights and intellectual properties take onincreasingly profound significance and attachgreater significance to the cultural dimensionsof production.

Cultural capitalism goes hand in hand withcultural nationalism. Japan’s state machineryregards the expansion of its cultural capitalismas a global strategy to enhance the nation’sposition in the international hierarchy. Inparticular, the popularity of Japanese culturalgoods has a special meaning in Asia wherecompeting historical interpretations of WorldWar II still cause contention. Even thoughmemories of the past and the cultural trade ofthe present are two separate dimensions, it is apart of the master plan of the Japanese statethat the prevailing popular image of Japanesecultural commodities in Asia will aid Japan as anation in gaining general acceptance in theregion in the long run. The notion that Japan asthe most advanced country in Asia should leadother nations in the region concurs with theworldview of the Japanese establishment, eventhough the idea sometimes conjures up thewartime Japanese ideology of the Greater EastAsia Co-prosperity Sphere.

It is also worth noting here that an increasingnumber of workers in the cultural sector, if notall, can produce their commodities withoutbeing bound to a particular physical place ofwork. If industrial capitalism originated fromthe Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenthand the early nineteenth century, culturalcapitalism exploded with the InformationRevolution in the late twentieth century,

accompanied by the sudden expansion of theinternet and the proliferation of mobile phones.Cyberspace technology enables culturalworkers to be de-localized, and this tends tofacilitate the above-mentioned casualization ofemployment. At the same time, the creativeexpertise of cultural products can easily becopied without authorization and pirated inter-territorially. To confront the situation, the‘Basic Law of Intellectual Properties’ wasenacted in 2002 to safeguard not only Japanesepatents but also the nation’s contents industrythat produces original texts, images, movies,music and other creative data, while strict stateregulation of cyberspace continues to be a nearimpossibility.

In this environment, workers becomefragmented, with their work life becomingincreasingly compartmentalized. Labor unionswhich used to be the bastion of workersolidarity have gradually lost membership andpower, and individual employees attempt todefend themselves by being self-centered,resourceful and entrepreneurial. At thebeginning of the twenty-first century, theJapanese are concerned less with the survivaland subsistence issues that govern industrialcapitalism and more with the precariousness oftheir sense of identity and reality, theexistential issues that characterize culturalcapitalism. This trend forms a backdrop againstwhich people attempt to carve out a new formof community in expanding civil society.26

References

Asahi Shimbun ‘Lost Generation’ Shuzai-han2007, Lost generation: smayou 2-sen mannin(The lost generation: straying twenty million).Asahi Shimbunsha.

Chiavacci, David 2008, ‘From class struggle togeneral middle-class society to divided society:Models of inequality in postwar Japan’, SocialScience Japan Journal, vol. 11, no. 1: 5–27.

Chūō Kōron Henshūbu and Nakai, Kōichi (eds)

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2003, Ronsō: Gakuryoku hōkai (Debate on thedisruption of academic ability). Chūō Kōronsha.

Fujita, Wakao 1984, Sayonara, taishū (Afarewell to masses). Kyoto: PHP Kenkyūsho.

Hakuhōdō Seikatsu Sōgō Kenkyūsho 1985,‘Bunshū’ no tanjō (The emergence ofsegmented masses). Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha.

Hara, Junsuke and Seiyama, Kazuo 2006,Inequality amid Affluence: Social Stratificationin Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

Ishida, Hiroshi 2010, ‘Does class matter inJapan?’, in Hiroshi Ishida and David H. Slater(eds), Social Class in Japan, London: Routledge,pp. 33–56.

Kenessey, Zoltan 1987, ‘The primary,secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors ofthe economy,’ Review of Income and Wealth,vol. 33, issue 4: 359–85.

Kōsei Rōdōshō (Ministry of Health, Labour andWelfare) 2006, Heisei 18-nenban rōdō keizai nobunseki (Analysis of labor economics, 2006).

Kosugi, Reiko 2008, Escape from Work:Freelancing Youth and the Challenge toCorporate Japan. Melbourne: Trans PacificPress.

Morioka, Kōji 2009, Hinkonka suru howaitokarā (The impoverished white collar). ChikumaShobō.

NHK Special ‘Working Poor’ Shuzai-han 2007,Working Poor: Nippon o mushibamu yamai(The working poor: the dicease that gnawsaway at Japan). Popla-sha.

Satō, Toshiki 2000, Fubyōdō shakai Nippon(Japan: Not an egalitarian society). ChūōKōronsha.

Shirase, Sawako 2010, ‘Marriage as anassociation of social classes in a low fertilityrate society, Hiroshi Ishida and David H. Slater

(eds), Social Class in Contemporary Japan.London: Routledge, pp. 57–83.

Tachibanaki, Toshiaki 2005, ConfrontingIncome Inequality in Japan: A ComparativeAnalysis of Causes, Consequences, and Reform.Cambridge: MIT Press.

Tōkei Sūri Kenkyūsho (Institute of StatisticalMathematics) 2009, ‘Kokumin-sei no kenkyū:2008-nen dai 12-kai zenkoku chōsa’ (Studies ofnational character: the 12th national survey,conducted in 2008). Tōkei Chōsa KenkyōReport.

Yoshio Sugimoto is Emeritus Professor ofSociology, La Trobe University and Director,T r a n s P a c i f i c P r e s s P t y L t d(http://www.transpacificpress.com)

He drew on material from his Introduction toJapanese Society to prepare this article.

His Recent books include An Introduction toJ a p a n e s e S o c i e t y(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521705193/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20), third edition (2010) and TheCambridge Companion to Modern JapaneseC u l t u r e(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521706637/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (2009).

Recommended citation:Yoshio SUGIMOTO,"Class and Work in Cultural Capitalism:Japanese Trends," The Asia-Pacific Journal,40-1-10, October 4, 2010.

Articles on related subjects:

N o b u k o A d a c h i(http://japanfocus.org/-Nobuko-Adachi/3410),

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Ethnic Identity, Culture, and Race: Japaneseand Nikkei at Home and Abroad

Stephanie Assmann and Sebastian Maslow(http://japanfocus.org/-Sebastian-Maslow/3342), Dispatched and Displaced: RethinkingEmployment and Welfare Protection in Japan

D a v i d H . S l a t e r(http://japanfocus.org/-David_H_-Slater/3279 ),The Making of Japan's New Working Class:"Freeters" and the Progression From MiddleSchool to the Labor Market

Recommended citation: Yoshio Sugimoto,"Class and Work in Cultural Capitalism:Japanese Trends," The Asia-Pacific Journal,40-1-10, October 4, 2010.

Notes

1 This article is based on material drawn fromAn Introduction to Japanese Society, thirdedition (Cambridge University Press 2010) andsubmitted at the invitation of Japan Focus.

2 For an excellent analysis of the paradigmchange, see Chiavacci 2008.

3 Satō 2000 initiated the debate.

4 Tachibanaki 2005 is one of the best studies inthe area.

5 Shirahase 2010.

6 Tokyo Daigaku Kōhō Iinkai 2008. The datawere gathered in 2007.

7 Japan’s relative poverty rate, an indicator ofthe percentage of low-income earners, was 14.9percent in 2004, the fourth highest among theOECD’s thirty member nations, and rose to15.7 percent in 2007. The relative poverty raterepresents the percentage of income earnerswhose wage is below half of the medianincome.

8 See Tōkei Sūri Kenkyūsho 2009, Table 1.8.

9 See Ishida 2010.

10 The total index of structural mobility recordsa consistent upward trend throughout thepostwar years. The agricultural populationprovides the only exception to this propensity,showing a consistent downward trend. Thetotal index arrived at its peak in 1975,reflecting a massive structural transformationwhich transpired during the so-called high-growth period starting in the mid 1960s.

11 Morioka 2009.

12 Satō 2000. Some experts dispute this thesis.See, for example, Hara and Seiyama 2005, pp.xxiii–vi.

13 Chūō Kōron Henshūbu and Nakai 2003.

14 The Labor Force Survey conducted in 2008by the Ministry of Welfare, Labor and Health.

15 See NHK Special 2007.

16 For details, see Kosugi 2008.

17 Asahi Shimbun ‘Lost Generation’ Shuzai-han2007.

1 8 Kōsei Rōdōshō 2006. The figures arecalculated from data collected in 2002.

19 Tōkei Sūri Kenkyūsho 2009, Table 5.6. In the2008 survey, 81 percent support the formertype and 15 the latter.

20 Tōkei Sūri Kenkyūsho 2009, Table 5.6b. Bothin 2003 and 2008, the figures were 53 percentversus 44 percent.

21 Fujita 1984.

22 Hakuhōdō 1985.

23 This is a major theme of Hara and Seiyama2005. See pp. 164–7 in particular.

24 Labor Force Survey in 2007, conducted by

APJ | JF 8 | 40 | 1

13

the Minis try o f Internal Af fa irs andCommunications.

25 The so-called ‘compound’ and ‘other’ serviceindustries include cultural enterprises, such as‘political, business and cultural organizations’and ‘religion.’ Some researchers of thequaternary sector – such as Kenessey 1987 –

include ‘real estate’ in this sector. Ourapproximation here is quite conservative, andwe simply wish to show that the quaternarysector now forms an independent, expandingand sufficiently large sector in its own right.

26 The thesis is examined in Chapter 10 of thebook.

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(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521706637/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)

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