Compiled by Ed Shepherd

This report should be read in reference to 'Japan: Part One' in ALU Issue 51

Potted History
300 BC Rice farming and other technologies introduced
4th century AD Country unified under Yamato
1603 Tokugawa shogunate established
1609 Shogun officially permits Dutch trade, a trading monopoly the Dutch shared with China until the 19th century
1854 Japan signs trade agreement with US, soon followed by other western powers
1863 British warships bombarded Kagoshima
1868 Meiji Restoration replaced shogun rule, abolishing feudalism
1894-5 Japan’s more modern army won the Sino Japanese War for control of Korea
1894 Japan and China at war; Japan victorious
1895 China surrenders Taiwan to Japan; allows Japan to trade in China
1904 Japan and Russia at war; Japanese win in 1905
1910 Japan seizes Korea after three years of war
1914 Japan fights (limited capacity) for ‘Allies’ in World War 1 (WW1)
1919 Treaty of Versailles gives Japan Pacific territories
1923 Earthquake centred near Tokyo kills over 100,000
1925 Universal male suffrage for men aged 25 and over
Late 1920s Extremist nationalism emerges; stresses ‘traditional Japanese values’, rejects Western culture
1931 Japan occupies Manchuria (NW China)
1932 Prime minister assassinated by extreme nationalists. Militarism rampant
1936 Japan signs anti-communist accord with Nazi Germany; similar pact with Italy in 1937
1937 Japan declares war on China; possibly 300,000 civilians murdered in the ‘Rape of Nanjing’
1941 Japan attacks US fleet in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii
1942 Japan seizes many countries, including the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Burma, Malaya, and French Indo China
1944 US begins bombing Japanese cities
1945 US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1947 New constitution
1951 Japan signs peace treaty with US
1952 Japan regains ‘independence’; US military remains
1955 Liberal Democratic Party governs Japan until 1993
1956 Japan joins the United Nations
1972 Diplomatic relations re-established with China
1982 Honda’s first auto factory opens in US
1993 Nippon Steel sacks 20 percent of its workers (a first after 1945)
1997 Ailing economy enters acute recession
2000 Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori given refuge
2001 Prime Minister Koizumi annoys China by making his first visit to a shrine where war criminals are buried
2001 Koizumi apologises in Seoul for Korea’s suffering during colonial rule
2003 Government announces intention to install ‘defensive’ US-made missile shield
2004 First Japanese deployment in a combat zone (Iraq) since World War 2 (WW2)

Government
Japan is a constitutional monarchy; Emperor Akihito, crowned in 1990, is head of state.

Coalition parties, headed by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) govern the country.

The 1947 Constitution that replaced the Meiji one from 1889, was drafted by US occupiers (SCAP); the people replaced the emperor as the sovereign authority; citizens were given the freedom to organise political parties; basic human rights, peace, and democracy were guaranteed; and war was banned.

The Diet of two houses is the legislative body, chosen by universal suffrage by citizens aged 20 and over. The lower House of Representatives has more power than the upper House of Councillors. 480 Representatives are elected under a system of proportional representation (PR) for a maximum four years. 252 Councillors are elected by a combination of PR and first-past-the-post for a maximum six years; half are elected every three years. Representatives control the budget and foreign policy; executive power rests with the Cabinet. Central government is administered from Tokyo.

The prime minister and cabinet must be civilians by law.

Local government
The country is composed of 47 prefectures. There are 43 prefectures proper; Tokyo is a metropolitan prefecture; Hokkaido is a district; and Osaka and Kyoto are urban prefectures. The prefectures, administered by governors and assemblies, vary greatly in size and population. Prefectures consist of cities, towns, and villages, each with a mayor and local assembly. Since WW2 counties have only been used for statistical purposes. Regional governments between central government and the prefectures generally administer several prefectures. Some cities with a minimum population of a half million are divided into administrative wards, each with a chief who is nominated by the mayor, and an assembly chosen by popular local elections. Tokyo has 23 special wards where the chiefs and assemblies are elected.

Political parties
The current coalition government is composed of the LDP, the Social Democratic Party of Japan, and the New Party Sakigake under Junichiro Koizumi (LDP), who is Japan’s 27th prime minister since 1945, or about one every two years. Koizumi is relatively long-lived as premier – in April 2001 he took over from Mori, one of Japan’s least popular leaders reputed to possess “the heart of a flea and the brain of a shark”, who barely lasted a year in the job. The conservative and business-friendly LDP consists of various factions and is run on personal, not ideological, lines. The LDP has been in government almost continuously since 1955 when it was founded. This record was interrupted in 1993 after money politics and a string of revelations of corruption at the very top of government caused public outcry. But the LDP was back in power by 1996.

The Shinshinto (Japan Renewal Party) has been in opposition since 1994.

Foreign aid
Japan is the world’s largest aid donor. According to a survey published by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, the value of Official Development Aid (ODA) donated by Japan in 1994 amounted to $13.24 billion (excluding aid to the East European countries and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), the highest in the world for four consecutive years. Japan’s ODA went to 158 countries and regions in 1994, and the number of countries for which Japan is the largest donor of ODA rose to 34 (in 1993). Japan’s ODA plays a substantial role in the economic and social development of most of the developing countries.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Since the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, there has been greater international awareness of the possibility of poverty [zones] becoming hotbeds of terrorism and the role of ODA is being reconsidered.” At the end of 2002, Japan allocated ODA money to the Philippines, including US$22.6 million to a ‘governance-improvement programme’ for Mindanao (trouble spot of intense US military focus in southern Philippines) in a ‘package for peace and security’ and nearly US$370 million for a ‘peace-building and counter-terrorism programme’.

Worried that ODA is increasingly used for military purposes, Christian Aid (UK) says, “Within the official 2004 ODA budget, the funds allocated for peace building and conflict prevention have risen dramatically from 12 billion yen to 16.5 billion yen. Meanwhile, Japan has cut its total ODA budget from 857.8 billion yen in 2003 to 816.9 billion yen in 2004. Again, the implications are clear. Targeting the poor is likely to take second place to security interests.”

Other countries are under pressure to accept ODA with strings attached to support Japanese political problems such as supporting their position to restore commercial whaling in the International Whaling Commission.

Security
The police force causes little controversy, and Japan has unusually low rates of extremely violent crime compared to most First World countries.

Judiciary
The judiciary is formally independent of government. It consists of a Supreme Court, eight high courts, one district court in each prefecture (except Hokkaido, with four), and many informal and family courts. The Supreme Court (appeals only, no original jurisdiction) has one chief judge and 14 others; judges are effectively selected by the Cabinet, subject to national referenda. All lower courts judges must retire at age 70. All courts belong to one system – lower courts are not run by local government. The courts have no jury system – all legal proceedings are tried by panels of judges. There are no administrative or claims courts. Japan accepts International Court of Justice decisions with reservations.

Organised crime
Japan’s organised crime (mafia or triads) are called yakuza, which are deeply involved in business affairs. In June 2004 ‘diplomatic officials’ forced Hong Kong-based Credit Suisse banker, Atsushi Doden, to surrender his passport and return to Japan on a one-way travel permit to face charges of laundering money that had been made by gambling, drugs, prostitution, and usury. He is accused of involvement in a US$3 billion operation involving Japan’s biggest yakuza, Yamaguchi-gumi. Whenever such cases arise, the media are keen to reveal where the money comes from (global trade in illicit drugs alone has an estimated annual value of US$700 billion) but completely silent on where it goes; the only possible destination for so much money is big business but transnational corporations are never accused of involvement.

Armed forces
The army has been a source of contention since WW2, and militarism is now re-emerging. A right wing clique of the rich and powerful, like disgraced former minister Fukuda (see section on Pensions below), want to delete the anti-war aspects of the Constitution’s Article 9 which says, “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation … and that land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” Fukuda has openly stated that Article 9 would not stop Japan becoming a nuclear power. Koizumi’s four visits as PM to the controversial Yasukuni shrine is an outrage to China as it holds the graves of war criminals who rampaged through China for much of the first half of the twentieth century; such visits also bolster the hawks in the militarist camp.

The Self Defence Forces, created under the SCAP in 1950, caused an as-yet unresolved argument over their existence being unconstitutional.

With 231,500 men and 8,000 women soldiers, it is one of the biggest armies in the world.

6.1 percent of government spending or one percent of GDP was spent on defence in 1999.

The Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security, 1960 (confirmed in 1970), allows US bases all over Japan still causing protests by Japan’s considerable peace movement.

Amid national controversy, the first troops to go abroad since WW2 went to Cambodia in 1992 on humanitarian duties for the UN. Sending troops to the Iraq war zone in January 2004 without a word of debate in parliament continues to cause political uproar. The troops ‘temporarily’ halted humanitarian aid in Iraq in early April 2004 due to mounting resistance by insurgents.

Transport
In 1872 the construction of the Tokyo-Yokohama railway (with British finance and engineering) was followed by many others whose mountainous routes meant many tunnels.

Iron ships also became popular around this time. Yokohama and Kobe were the first port cities to be developed by the Meiji, and are still the key ones. Between 1941 and 1998 the transport infrastructure was improved to provide road and/or rail links between the four main islands.

Bullet trains carrying millions of passengers each day are world famous; introduced 40 years ago the system has had no fatal accidents.

Tokyo’s underground rail system was begun in 1927, and now serves the whole city. Most large cities also use underground rail systems, but despite constant expansion, serious rush-hour overcrowding seems insoluble.
Road traffic congestion is a big problem; rail is the most common transport for commuters, but most freight still travels by road. The internal combustion engine is largely responsible for Japan’s poor urban air quality and noise pollution.

International travel flourished after Japan Air Lines, the country’s first flight company, was founded in 1953; there are now 10 major airlines. Domestic flights are popular.

Post and telecommunications
Telecommunications in general provide excellent domestic services with a high level of modern technology. International telecoms are served by satellites - five Intelsat (four Pacific Ocean and one Indian Ocean), one Intersputnik (Indian Ocean region), and one Inmarsat (Pacific and Indian Ocean regions); submarine cables connect Japan to China, Philippines, Russia, and US (via Guam in 1999).

Japanese telecom traffic is the largest network in Asia.

There are three major (known as New Common Carriers) and over 100 smaller telecom firms. In 1998 annual revenue from telecommunications was worth over US$84 billion. Japan has the highest rate of mobile phone usage globally, and is a world leader in developing the technology.

Telecom and postal services rate among the best in the world.

Mass media
Newspaper circulation is high, 80 percent of Japanese adults read a paper every day. The advertising industry, mainly via newspapers and TV, is second largest in the world to that of the US with less than half the US’ 293 million population.

There are five national terrestrial TV companies, including the advert-free public broadcaster NHK which also owns radio networks.

Private TV networks are often owned by newspapers. TV broadcasting is diversifying rapidly; viewers watch pay-TV and digital terrestrial TV is developing.

The industry has pioneered high-definition TV (HDTV) development.

Pensions
Japan’s pension system is currently under attack as Japan’s population ages rapidly. New legislation means that the amount of personal income paid into the system will rise gradually from 13.58 to 18.3 percent by 2017, while pensions are cut from 59.3 percent of average earnings to 50.2 percent. On 15 April 2004 over one million workers struck in protest at the government’s attempt to bulldoze the bill through parliament. But the House of Representatives passed the bill in May amid resignations of senior politicians. One of them, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda who resigned on 7 May did not pay into the mandatory pensions system; six other top politicians including Prime Minister Koizumi, were also exposed as non-payers.

According to the social insurance agency 40 percent of Japan’s 18 million self-employed and students aged over 20 did not contribute to the pension plan in 2002. One of these, a 66 year-old man has no pension because he could not afford the premiums after his firm went bust. He said, “The government plan will only help create more people who are not eligible for pensions like me.”

Labour
The 1895 workforce is estimated at around 400,000 and continued to grow as tillers left the land to work in urban factories. Japan’s growing industries, especially textiles, was accompanied by rising rural poverty that caused migration to the cities, providing cheap labour for factories. This situation is recurring in modern Asia , particularly China where millions of young farming women now work in textile and clothing mills.

A global ‘Great Depression’ that began in the late 1920s wrecked Japan’s export industry, especially silk products to the US, and farmers and factory workers alike suffered the results, leading to industrial militancy
In the 1920s, a system of lifetime employment was formally declared.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Japanese companies used subcontract labour (even for skilled work), a system typified by authoritarian management, job insecurity, and high labour turnover. But with a scientific approach to production, industry leaders identified subcontracting as inefficient for skilled male labour, and in-house recruitment began to replace subcontracts, and a system of lifetime employment and seniority wages (see the Three Pillars section in Japan: Part One, ALU issue 51) for skilled men began to evolve. In low-skilled work, this did not begin to emerge until the mid-1930s when Japan’s imperialism was at its height, and the production system that underpinned it needed stabilising.

Interest in socialist ideas grew after the ‘Great War’, but employers and police made it difficult for leaders to contact workers. Union organisers faced police repression and large union busting corporations like Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Efforts to create socialist movements were crushed by the police. In 1900 and 1925 ‘Peace Preservation’ Laws were enacted to inhibit labour organisation. In 1928 another ‘Peace Preservation Law’ made it illegal to campaign against private property, and created an Orwellian special police corps to control “dangerous thoughts”.
Between the two ‘world wars’, the government suppressed the emerging radical labour movement and outlawed organising labour in 1937.

Labour suppression intensified during Japan’s war on Asia, with stricter controls on wages and conditions. The state also mounted a nationalist propaganda campaign like Germany and Italy with an ideology of sacrifice for the country.

SCAP’s 1947 constitution included the rights to work, organise, collectively bargain, and strike; in 1953 Japan ratified International Labour Organisation Convention 98 on organising and collective bargaining. The new freedoms were accompanied by huge growth in union membership - from zero in 1945 to over six million by 1949 in 30,000 unions as enterprise unionism became the model. But SCAP policy had changed by the time the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) was well represented in the unions; first the SCAP banned a proposed general strike in 1947, and public servants lost the right to strike; a new ‘moderate’ trade union centre, Sohyo (General Council of Trade Unions of Japan) was formed, and the JCP lost power in the labour movement.

Union power fell along with union membership after the 1980s, while management power to make redundancies rose with unemployment and informal employment levels.

Short –term contracts or nothing at all replaced ‘permanent’ contracts, and some of the informal workers created by the change are forced to work as day labourers.

Informal workers now constitute around a quarter of the 67 million strong workforce.

Japan’s unemployment rate broke through the psychological five percent barrier in midsummer 2001. This figure was well below the 10 percent that government critics quoted. The government, like many others, has techniques for fiddling official unemployment figures, e.g. excluding women and those unemployed for more than 300 days or to define as ‘employed’ anyone who works for more than one hour in the last week of any month. Nevertheless a 5.4 percent unemployment rate (2003) and 5.3 percent (2002) compares well against OECD countries whose average rate in 2003 was 7.2 percent.

Labour campaigning addresses the big wage differentials between workers in large- and small-size enterprises. National union centre the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) believes the differentials are growing.
Until the 1980s, leisure was not valued and workers often did not use up annual leave. This has changed, and though travel at home is popular, high costs of travel and accommodation encourage international travel.

Migrants
In January 2003 the Immigration Bureau reported that there were 1,851,758 registered migrants (slightly more women than men) in Japan, mostly from Korea, China, Brazil, and Philippines; undocumented migrants numbered 220,592 (slightly more men than women). Numbers in both sectors have generally been dropping steadily since 1995. The government recently announced a crackdown on foreign ‘illegal migrants’, by reducing the estimated 250,000 by one half by 2009. The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act of May 2003 increased maximum fines tenfold for convicted illegal aliens, from Y300,000 to Y3,000,000, and doubled the five year ban on re-entry.

Unions
Many unions can federate along craft lines. There are national union centres that these can affiliate to: they used to be the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyo, the biggest), the Japan Confederation of Labour (Domei), the National Federation of Industrial Organisations (Shinsambetsu), and the Federation of Independent Unions (Churitsu Roren). These were reorganised in the late 1980s; major national organisations and other private- and public-sector unions were reorganised into the Rengo, now the biggest national union centre with 6.8 million members; other unions formed the much smaller National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren).

Though individual shop floor unions can be militant, they are generally company-friendly. Membership in the organised sector has been steadily falling since the mid-1980s when it represented almost 30 percent of the workforce. In 2002, it was down to just over 20 percent, but the enterprise union system meant that there were still a staggering 65,642 unions!

By law all but senior management are eligible for union membership. The enterprise union system means that there is little room for a union career, and many trade union officials hold office before promotion in the company (this also happens in western industrialised countries). These two facts contribute largely to Japan’s conservative and management-friendly unions. Radical militancy occasionally surfaces, but in the small or non-partisan unions.

Shunto
Private sector unions co-operate in a ‘shunto’ or ‘Spring wage offensive’. By 1975 this tactic had brought together representatives of 80 percent (just under 10 million workers) of the unionised workforce. Because they act collectively the shunto gives unions more power in negotiations.

The shunto is highly organised with a complex system of integrated action, demands, and token strikes, but once this is completed, bargaining goes on at enterprise level.

Despite the collective nature of the shunto, wages remain personal and individual in the highly competitive system generated by Human Resource Management techniques (such as performance related pay or satei), designed to divide and rule workers. The system baffles western unionists who wonder why the workers and trade unions tolerate management dominance on such a scale.

Federations like Rengo adopt the ‘top down’ style of undemocratic unionism and more or less dictate policy to affiliates. Negotiations which originally only covered wages developed to cover pensions, minimum wage, working hours, and compensation for injuries at work.

The 2004 shunto resulted in an average rise of 5,976 yen per month (US$54) for Japanese workers. Over the last decade or so workers have had wage rises larger than inflation despite Japan’s long recession. On 1 October 1993 the Labour Ministry named 187 industries, including steel and IT software, as needing help; 4.04 million workers are paid by the state to stay at home several days a month.

National union centre Rengo was created in 1987, and is considered by some as the most important recent arrival on Japan’s labour scene. It has 6.8 million members in 61 affiliates and 47 local organisations. RENGO recently held discussions with the Prime Minister Koizumi, particularly on issues of reorganising the pension system, an investigation of ‘corporate social responsibility’ in relation to OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, equal status for part-time workers whose numbers steadily rise under big business’ preference for informal employment; Rengo has been campaigning along these lines for several years now.

Labour law
The Factory Law, 1911, banned work for children under 12 years of age, night work for women and minors, and limited the working day to 12 hours.

The Constitution recognises workers’ rights to freedom of association, to organise, and to collective bargaining. But there are conditions on these rights, especially in the public sector, laid down in two 1948 laws on national and local public services. Nationally the police, penal institutions, and the Maritime Safety Agency are not allowed to organise; locally the police and fire services are banned from organising. A strike ban exists for all public employees; union officers advocating strikes can be jailed.

The government continues to ignore ILO recommendations to improve labour laws for civil servants to the level of international standards; instead it argues “The distinctive status of public employees in Japanese Society should be taken into account,” as though that status were markedly different abroad. The law for nationalised companies bans collective bargaining on management and company operations, including seniority, promotion, transfer, dismissal, and discipline. Education, worker safety, health care, and leisure time are all exempt from public service collective bargaining. The ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association complains that the procedures to protect workers are too “slow and inadequate”. In 1999 for example on average it took over five years from filing labour complaints to making a ruling. Until recently labour laws have been generally respected in the private sector, but the ILO says this may now be changing. Having said that, the right to strike and laws on discrimination and retaliation by employers is upheld in the private sector, including re-instatement and back pay.

Many labour regulations have weakened over the past 20 years, to the detriment of women in particular as labour flexibility is extended, temporary and part-time work increases, and unemployment grows. Women are particularly vulnerable despite an ‘equal opportunity’ law, e.g. the only penalty for violating this law is to advertise the name of the offending employer.

Law on dismissal without just cause favours the employer – a worker on a contract that has no specific term can be sacked with two weeks notice without any reason. One worker was dismissed from ‘lifelong employment’ for refusing even one hour of overtime; the real reason was his political beliefs. Refusal to relocate workplaces, no matter the distance involved, is grounds for dismissal (see story in HRM section in Japan: Part One, ALU 51).
Japan has ratified 46 ILO conventions, including six of the eight conventions on core labour standards (Nos. 29, 87, 98, 100, 138, and 182), but reneged on seven of the 46 conventions it previously ratified - No. 42 (OSH compensation) in 1974, No. 96 (employment agencies) in 1999, and Nos. 5, 7, 10, 15, and 58 (all on minimum age) in 2000.

The ILO’s 2003 annual survey report on Japan said, “The heavy restrictions affecting public sector employees’ trade union rights were to be reinforced by reforms scheduled to be introduced in 2003, in spite of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association’s recommendations.”

A 2001 law on company restructuring does not guarantee workers’ rights after restructuring.

Japan’s labour internationalism has been weak. However Rengo joined the largest international trade union group, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, in 1989, and the Japan International Labor Foundation (JILAF) has its own international programme with indirect links to ODA money, and runs labour courses in conjunction with the ICFTU.

Minimum wage
There is no national minimum wage law. Instead particular industries and all prefectures have minimum wage systems. Average industrial minimums, 132,000 yen, about 10 percent higher than prefectural ones, have led to calls from industry to abolish them, even though the current prefectural minimums are not enough to support a family.

Despite Japan’s wealth, minimum wages are among the lowest of OECD countries. Japanese labour observers point out that part-time workers earn half the pay rate of formal workers, and this is largely responsible for low minimum wages.