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Evolution of the Japanese System of Employer-Employee Relations, 1868–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Robert Evans Jr.
Robert Evans Jr.
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Brandeis University
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Abstract

In analyzing the evolution of the modern Japanese system of industrial labor relations, Professor Evans argues that Japan's culture and history played dominant roles in the formation of employer-employee relations, and that convergence with western practices was Largely absent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1: Japanese Entrepreneurship , Spring 1970 , pp. 110 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1970

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References

1 Kerr, Clark, Dunlop, John T., Harbison, Frederick, and Meyers, Charles A., Industrialism and Industrial Man (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

2 Veblen, Thorstein, Essays in Our Changing Order (New York, 1934), 255.Google Scholar The article was reprinted from Journal of Race Development, VI (July 1915).

3 For a discussion of some of these issues for modern day Japan, see Karsh, Bernard and Cole, Robert E., “Industrialization and the Convergence Hypothesis: Some Aspects of Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Social Issues, XXIV (1968), 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See the interesting discussion on this point between Ichiro Nakayama, President of the Japan Labor Institute, Ballon, Robert, Lange, W., and Evans, Robert Jr., in “Japanese Industrial Relations as Viewed by Foreigners,” Nihon Rōdō Kyōkai Zasshi (Monthly Journal of the Japan Institute of Labor), IX (July 1967), 67–79.Google Scholar

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15 Idid., 658–59.

16 Byron K. Marshall, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan (Stanford, 1967), 22.

17 Ibid., 52–63.

18 Ibid., 69.

19 The following have been useful in the development of these views of apprenticeship, oyabun, and intemallzation of prior external relationships. Tsuda, Masumi, The Basic Structure of Japanese Labor Relations (Tokyo, 1965)Google Scholar; Sakurabayashi, Makoto and Ballon, Robert J., “Labor Management Relations in Modern Japan: A Historical Survey of Per sonnel Administration,” in Roggendorf, Joseph (ed.), Studies in Japanese Culture (Tokyo, 1963), 245–260Google Scholar; Kishimoto, Eitaro, “The Characteristics of Labour and Management Relations in Japan and Their Historical Formation,” Kyoto University Economic Review, XXXVI (April 1966), 17–38Google Scholar; and Levine, Solomon B., “Labor Markets and Collective Bargaining in Japan,” in Lockwood, William W. (ed.), The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965), 633–67.Google Scholar

20 This is the essence of Levine's argument in the article cited above.

21 The role of tradition, in particular the utilization of an age-based wage system for samurai who were employed as white collar workers in the government enterprises Just after the Restoration, is emphasized by some scholars. See Hazama, Hiroshi, Nipponteki Keiei no Keifu (A Genealogy of the Japanese System of Management), (Tokyo, 1963), 54–57Google Scholar, and Fujita, Wakao, Rōdō Kumiai no Soshiki to UndōGoogle Scholar (Union Organization and Movement), as cited in Tsuda, Basic Structure of Japanese Labor Relations, 75.

22 Nippon Kōgyō Kurabu Nijūgo-nen-shi (Japan Industrial Club 25-Year History), I, 182–183.

23 Tsuda, Basic Structure of Japanese Labor Relations, 38.

24 In addition to other works cited, the following have been useful in preparing material on the labor movement. Young, A. Morgan, Japan in Recent Times, 1912–1926 (New York, 1929)Google Scholar; Levine, Solomon B., Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan (Urbana, 1958)Google Scholar; Okochi, Kazuo, Labor in Modern Japan (Tokyo, 1958)Google Scholar; Ayusawa, Iwao F., A History of Labor in Modern Japan (Honolulu, 1966).Google Scholar

25 Harada, Shuichi, Labor Conditions in Japan (New York, 1928), 145.Google Scholar

26 Totten, George O., “Collective Bargaining and Works Councils as Innovations in Industrial Relations in Japan during the 1920's,” in Dore, Ronald P. (ed.), Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (Princeton, 1967), 210, 215.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 217–20.

28 International Labour Review, XI (1925), 239–43.

29 Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 70.

30 Kublin, Hyman, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton, 1964), 140.Google Scholar

31 Totten, George O. III, The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan (New Haven, 1966), 213.Google Scholar

32 Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 216.

33 Different estimates of the percentage of settled cases have been presented in ibid., 216, and Totten, “Collective Bargaining and Works Councils,” 212.

34 Totten, The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan, 384.

35 In August 1923 the arsenals of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Kokura surveyed their workers and found that 35.4 per cent had engaged in farming prior to that job. The Bureau of Social Affairs in Osaka studied 90,000 workers in six industries and found only 18,000 had the previous occupation of farmer. A 1921 study of discharged coal miners in Hokkaido and Kyushu showed 35 per cent of them returning to agriculture. Harada, Labor Conditions in Japan, 99–101.