Labor-Management Relations in Twentieth-Century Japan: A Review Essay

Abstract

Japanese labor-management relations and production systems, as typified in large manufacturing firms, have long provoked contrary assessments. To this day, the debate is framed by the names and practices of two Americans who attained prominence in the 1910s: Fredrick Taylor and scientific management and Henry Ford and mass production. There are those who emphasize the participatory role of Japanese workers in production processes (most importantly through foremen-led quality circles), at odds with the Taylorist centralization of production control in the hands of management. Others regard the Japanese system as an intensification of Fordist mass production, facilitated by the weakness of Japanese enterprise unions. These recent books provide histories of the contested evolution of labor-management relations in twentieth-century Japan. In taking a longer historical view, the best of these books aim to reconcile the seeming contrariness of contemporary Japanese industrial relations.