Precarious Work in Japan: Old Forms, New Risks?

Abstract

This paper scrutinises the growing trends and tendencies toward nonstandard employment in Japan to understand the making of new risk profiles. Since the first signs of new risk profiles emerged prior to the bursting of the economic bubble, an analysis should not, as many have done, isolate the 1990s. Yet, few noticed that the growth of nonstandard employment had preceded the reversal of economic fortunes. Often, characterisation of the Japanese model extrapolated from relatively secure positions of one labour market segment in the highly regulated, coordinated governance institutions. For this reason, extant models have failed to anticipate growing risks in society as a whole. A review of employment regulation highlights the function of legal reforms in the making of new risk profiles. State-based regulations allowed for and codified unequal treatment of part-time and temporary work. As a result, nonstandard employment emerged as a distinct status with few of the benefits or the social protections associated with the corporate-centred, male-breadwinner reproductive bargain. By identifying the institutional logic of the corporate-centred male-breadwinner reproductive bargain, we can better understand the emergence of precariousness in the Japanese labour market.

Key Words:

• Japan
• gender
• employment
• precarious
• policy

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to several people who commented on earlier versions of this paper. A special thanks to Kevin Hewison, Arne Kalleberg, Karen Shire, David Fasenfest, Anne Allison, David Slater, and the participants in the Sawyer Seminar on Precarious Work in Asia at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Notes

¹ According to Hirioshi Ishida and David Slater (2010) the professional-managerial class is highly male-dominated, while the manual working class exhibits less gender segregation; although men and women work in different industrial sectors and in different size firms.

² Gill’s ethnographic research offers a rich account of the social, cultural and economic conditions of day labourers in Japan. As day labourers age, they face an even more precarious future. They lack pension rights, typically have no savings and are detached from familial support networks and many file for social welfare which is not easily acquired. Despite their legal eligibility, local administrators in welfare offices sometimes refuse to authorise payments unless the applicant can prove incapacitation either due to age (65 years) or physical infirmity (which requires medical documentation). The dominant image of men as providers contributes to the view of day labourers’ unemployment as shameful rather than as a result of unfortunate circumstances beyond the individual’s control (Gill 2003, 153–4). Interestingly, day labourers are linguistically and geographically (proximate to red-light districts) associated with women in the imagery evoked and invoked by day labourers as well as by others. Some day labourers “described themselves using the word tachinbo, translated literally as ‘one who stands’” – a similar representation to prostitutes who also stand on street corners in the hope of selling their labour (Gill 2003, 156).

³ The birth rate stood at 1.34 in 1999.

⁴ The first instance of deregulation began with an amendment to the Older Persons Employment Stabilisation Law in 1994. While this amendment introduced a negative list of jobs only for persons older than 60 years, the regulation anticipated more significant changes.

⁵ That same year, an amendment to the Employment Security Law legalised private fee-charging employment services for 29 occupations and fixed a maximum fee. On 1 December 2000 another stage of deregulation lifted the ban on “temp-to-perm” services by allowing firms dispatching temporary workers to act as a private employment placement service – soon after, all agencies added this to their menu of services they provided (Weathers 2001). Re-regulation included language requiring that firms justify their reasons for not converting the temporary position to a permanent one (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2002) after a trial period of one year. Although not a high hurdle, firms employ a small pool of temp-to-perm workers, reluctant to take on any permanent staff.