Does employment dualisation lead to political polarisation? Assessing the impact of labour market inequalities on political discourse in Japan

Abstract

Introduction While the Japanese public may have paid relatively little attention to issues of social inequalities and rising poverty until fairly recently, as the introduction to this volume has argued, the case seems to be, on the face of it, very different with regard to inequalities in the Japanese labour market. Differences in employment status related to, for example, the industry or size of the employer, have been hallmarks of Japanese employment practices for a long time (see also the chapter by Lechevalier in this volume). Consequently, young jobseekers have always been acutely aware not only of relative differences in pay and corporate welfare and but also of the long-term repercussions with regard to employment and social status of different jobs. Moreover, the Japanese labour market has always been highly gendered: until recently women were widely perceived as housewives who support male breadwinner spouses but participated only occasionally in the labour market themselves (Osawa 2002). Hence, it could be argued that the Japanese labour market has always been marked by significant inequalities and that current debates in Japan reflect a growing public interest in the issue rather than a genuinely new development.