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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: The Puzzle of Japanese Labor Politics -- 2. Reenvisioning the Role of Labor in Japan -- 3. Institutionalizing Labor Accommodation within the Company -- 4. Nationalizing Wage Negotiations -- 5. Back into Politics: Labor in the 1970s -- 6. Defending Employment Security -- 7. The Conservative Resurgence: Labor in the 1980s -- 8. The Distinctiveness of the Japanese Solution -- Author Index -- General Index

Japanese scholars have begun to challenge conventional wisdom about effective labor organizing, and Ikuo Kume has written the first book in English to advance their controversial theory. Since at least the early 1980s, the power of organized labor has.

In 1990, the Japanese Political Science Association (JPSA) and the APSA initiated a formal
exchange program. Every year, the JPSA invites APSA representatives to attend our annual
meeting—where they have a joint session with Japanese members—and sends two JPSA
representatives to the APSA Annual Meeting. In 2004, APSA President Margaret Levi
(University of Washington) and Ian Shapiro (Yale University) attended the JPSA meeting in
Sapporo; the JPSA exchange participants in the APSA Annual Meeting in Chicago were Ryosuke
Amiya (Kobe University) and Kensuke Takayasu (Hokkaido University).

Many scholars argue that labor is excluded from Japan's political system. However, since the 1970s, labor has become considerably influential in the policymaking process in Japan. The oil crisis of 1973 and theShuntouwage bargaining of 1975 have made labor, especially private-sector unions, modest in their wage demands, but at the same time these events have made labor participate actively in the policymaking process in order to maintain employment and seek some benefits from the government. This article demonstrates that Japan's increasing export-dependence and tradeoffs between wage increases on the one hand, and inflation and unemployment on the other in the 1970s, have driven labor to this new, more active role in policymaking, while the necessity for the governing Liberal Democratic party to seek a new constituency has enabled labor to achieve some success in this new role. This implies that Japan's political system has changed its nature since the 1970s; its political process has become more pluralistic with labor's participation within the existing political system.

AbstractWhy do people's preferences towards trade liberalization fluctuate? And why do we observe the eventual return of public support towards free trade? The traditional literature in international political economy has typically calculated individuals' preferences based on their comparative advantage as income-earners, which arises from their specific or general skill level or employment status. What needs to be taken into account, however, is that their economic preferences are constructed based upon their intertwined identities as both income-earners and consumers. We designed and conducted an experiment in Japan (2015) that would impartially elicit answers regarding respondents' daily consumption patterns or (and) employment concerns rather than deliberately or artificially informing them of the potential benefits or harms of trade liberalization. The results display that consumer priming offsets negative impacts arising from employment priming. The consumer effect reduces individuals' concerns on income level or employment when they are exposed to consumer and employment primings simultaneously. Furthermore, our subgroup analyses reveal that the consumer effect remains even among those experiencing economic fragility such as low income or job insecurity. This suggests that potential losers have incentives to support free trade by appreciating consumer benefits.

What determines the attitude of citizens toward international trade in advanced industrialized nations? The question raises an intriguing paradox for low-income citizens in developed economies. Increasing imports pose the most severe threat to job security for low-income citizens, who, on the other hand, reap the greatest benefits from cheaper imports as consumers. This article considers the role of dual identities that citizens have as both income-earners and consumers, and investigates how attitudes toward trade differ depending on which aspect of respondents' lives—that is, work versus consumption—is activated. The results of an originally designed survey experiment conducted in Japan during the recession suggest that the activation of a consumer perspective is associated with much higher support for free trade. In particular, those respondents who have lower levels of job security are the ones who, with consumer-priming, increase their support for foreign imports.

AbstractWhy are citizens in advanced industrialized countries willing to accept high prices for agricultural products? Conventional wisdom suggests that agricultural interests secure government protection because producers are concentrated and better politically organized than diffused consumers. Due to its focus on producer capacity for collective action, however, the literature fails to account for the high levels of mass support for agricultural protectionism in advanced industrialized nations. This article presents new evidence from a survey experiment in Japan conducted during the recent global recession (December 2008) that accounts for this puzzle. Using randomly assigned visual stimuli, the experiment activates respondents' identification with either producer or consumer interests and proceeds to ask attitudinal questions regarding food imports. The results suggest that consumer priming has no reductive or additive effects on the respondents' support for liberalizing food imports. Surprisingly, producer priming increases respondents' opposition to food import, particularly among those who fear future job insecurity. We further disentangle the puzzling finding that consumers think like producers on the issue of food import along two mechanisms: "sympathy" for farmers and "projection" of their own job insecurity. The results lend strong support to the projection hypothesis.

The purpose of this article is to explore the political dynamics of employer coordination in three well-known "coordinated market economies." examine differences in how employer coordination has been organized in Sweden, Germany, & Japan in the area of industrial relations, & we examine the extent to which such coordination represents a self-sustaining equilibrium, as some of the most influential treatments suggest. To preview the findings, we argue that precisely the intensification of cooperation between labor & management in some firms & industries (that the "varieties of capitalism" literature correctly emphasizes) has paradoxically had deeply destabilizing collateral effects that have undermined or are undermining these systems as they were traditionally constituted. All three cases are characterized not so much by a full-blown breakdown of coordination so much as a very significant reconfiguration of the terms & scope of such coordination. Specifically, all three countries feature the emergence of new or intensified forms of dualism -- different in each case based on different starting points -- n which continued coordination within a smaller core has in some ways been underwritten through the breaking off of other, more peripheral, firms & workers. References. Adapted from the source document.

Explores the origins of systems of industrial skill formation in Germany & Japan where prosperity has largely been based on economic performance that requires a highly skilled workforce & liberal solutions were repressed (freedom of trade in Germany & labor mobility in Japan). An analysis of factors that caused development to progress along different paths focuses on the metalworking sector. It is shown that employers in both Germany & Japan invest considerable resources into worker training. In addition, both countries have a relatively stable & enduring system of skill development that distinguishes them from the US & GB, which exhibit much lower levels of private-sector investment in training programs. However, Germany developed "solidaristic" strategies for skill formation that differed considerably from Japan's "segmentalist" strategies. It is argued that these divergent outcomes can be traced to differences in the relationship between the artisan sector & industry in the early industrial period, especially how interaction between those two sectors impacted relations between industry & the emerging labor movement. The theoretical implications are discussed. J. Lindroth

Explores the origins of systems of industrial skill formation in Germany & Japan where prosperity has largely been based on economic performance that requires a highly skilled workforce & liberal solutions were repressed (freedom of trade in Germany & labor mobility in Japan). An analysis of factors that caused development to progress along different paths focuses on the metalworking sector. It is shown that employers in both Germany & Japan invest considerable resources into worker training. In addition, both countries have a relatively stable & enduring system of skill development that distinguishes them from the US & GB, which exhibit much lower levels of private-sector investment in training programs. However, Germany developed "solidaristic" strategies for skill formation that differed considerably from Japan's "segmentalist" strategies. It is argued that these divergent outcomes can be traced to differences in the relationship between the artisan sector & industry in the early industrial period, especially how interaction between those two sectors impacted relations between industry & the emerging labor movement. The theoretical implications are discussed. J. Lindroth