The Transformation of Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan

Abstract

Industrial relations and human resource management in Japan have experienced steady change since the sweeping labor reforms instituted by the Allied occupation immediately following the end of World War II. The argument of this paper is that the postwar reforms laid the basis for the subsequent transformation although that was not necessarily the intended outcome. On the other hand, the changes which evolved in the decades after 1945 were hardly a reversion to the kind of industrial relations and human resource management of prewar Japan. Little of what exists today are such throwbacks. Rather, the present-day system is largely a product of the leading actors and environmental conditions which sprang up in the aftermath of the war and occupation and then continued to adapt in the years since. Even the major rules of the postwar industrial relations system were essentially new and then underwent modifications in subsequent decades.