Japanese Capitalism Research Articles

Reforming Japanese capitalism: introduction

ABSTRACT Is Japan creating a new economic model through digital and green transformation which will overcome its ‘lost decades’ lethargy and demographic challenges? Do Society 5.0, DX, GX, ‘new/sustainable capitalism’, Digital Garden City Nation and other initiatives represent a well-intentioned mish-mash, or something new and potentially coherent which other countries should take notice of? These questions animated a conference held in Oxford in February 2023, and subsequently informed the 11 articles in this special issue by European and Japanese academics and policy makers. The collection identifies tensions and contradictions but also significant changes in in corporate governance, innovation, public policy and human resources, which may point to a new direction for Japanese capitalism.

고바야시 다키지(小林多喜二)의 농촌소설 연구

This paper considers the lives of peasants in Hokkaido through Kobayashi Takiji's rural novels. Even in the new Hokkaido, life was difficult for the peasants, and the shadow of war loomed over them. As the peasants suffered from exploitation by landowners, they were terrified of war. Through a series of rural novels, from “The Snow Forest” to “The Absent Landowner” and from “The Absent Landowner” to “The Village at the Edge of the Swamp”, Takiji depicted the rural areas being eroded by Japanese capitalism. In “The Snow Forest” he describes the work of individuals, in “The Absent Landowner” he creates farmers' organizations, and in “The Village at the Edge of the Swamp”, he describes the rural areas being dragged into the war. In short, “The Village at the Edge of the Swamp” shows an anti-war consciousness.

근세일본의 교호(享保1716-1736년)시기에서의 상인학교의 등장

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the emergence of merchant schools and the merchant spirit of the samurai society in Kyoho period (1716∼1736) of the Edo Shogunate.
 Research design, data, and methodology: The research direction of this study was determined through previous research, and a comparison was made between Kaitokudo(懐徳堂), a government-run merchant school, and Singakugosha(心学講舎), a private merchant school, through their establishment backgrounds.
 Results: Kaitokudo was founded in Japan’s early modern society by the power of merchants, and the merchant school was sanctioned by the shogunate and emerged as a government institution, which is probably one of the most important schools in the world. This is a rare phenomenon, and is seen as a result of the intellectual equalization of merchants and samurai. Meanwhile, Shingaku Kosha, a private merchant school, was founded by Ishida Baigan(石田梅岩). Ishida Baigan asserted the legitimacy of merchants and commerce, which had been looked down upon in the past, instilled pride in merchants, elevated them to the philosophy of “merchant’s ways,” and led them to Sekimon Shingaku. It expanded and became the spiritual origin of Japanese capitalism.
 Implications: If we think about it from the standpoint of South Korea, which is also a Confucian country, we can see that it justified the “merchant’s profession and the profits earned by merchants,” which were considered debased until the 18th century, and equated (merchant’s) profits with (samurai’s) offerings. This led to the equalization of the duties of merchants and samurai (Korea: 兩班), which was a revolutionary idea at the time, and was popular in Japan during the Kyoho(亨保)period (1716-1736). It must be said that this was a major event, and a world historical event in the Asian world, something that had never been seen before in Europe, Korea, or China.

근대일본의 자본주의 정신 - 시부사와 에이치의 도덕경제사상을 중심으로 -

Buddhism and Confucianism also contributed to the development of capitalism in Japan, just as Protestantism developed Western modern capitalism by providing an ethical basis for human beings. By injecting religion and ideology into economic activities, a practical ethical view was established, and based on this, the traditional Japanese professional ethics was established. Based on the historicity of the spirit of capitalism that began to form in modern Japanese society, this study aims to reveal the reality of the spirit of capitalism in modern Japan. The specific analysis target is Eiichi Shibusawa's 'ideology of moral economic unity', which is called 'the founder of Japanese capitalism' and 'the father of Japanese capitalism' in Japanese society. Through his moral economic ideology, I would like to analyze the characteristics and historical significance of Japanese capitalism in the period of the formation of modern society.

Japan’s Secular Stagnation, Marx’s Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall, and the Theory of Monopoly Capitalism

Abstract Since the collapse of the bubble economy at the beginning of the 1990s, Japan has been in secular stagnation. Despite the stagnant economic conditions, the rate of profit has been rising, not falling. The coexistence of the rise in profitability and prolonged economic stagnation is a manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of present-day Japanese capitalism. Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF) provides a consistent explanation regarding the paradoxical situation in Japan characterised not by a falling but a rising rate of profit. Meanwhile, this paper discusses the Monopoly Capitalism school, which has studied capitalist behaviour concerning productive investment and changes in the form of capitalist competition at the monopoly stage of capitalism. While the school’s negation of the LTRPF is unacceptable, their notions may provide useful explanations as to why the rate of profit has risen under secular stagnation in Japan.

Japanese capitalism in multiple crises

Japanese capitalism represents a typical case of a decay in advanced countries under neoliberalism. It has formed a vicious circle among multiple socio-economic crises. Japan’s secular stagnation is composed from such complex crises in a viscious circle. I have concerned its historical significance as an important aspect of the third world great depression after the first great depression in 1873–1896, and the second one in the 1930s, since my analysis in The World Economic Crisis and Japanese Capitlism (1990). Let us examine the historical origin of these crises, their structural relations, and identify their core, fundamental issues. It will be also shown how three different types of natural disasters including the recent pandemic additionally deepen socio-economic crises, thereby endangering the metabolic reproduction of human lives and nature. How can we overcome such an age of deep crises? More than ever, it is indispensable to reconsider the historical significance and task of transforming neoliberal capitalism in the world and in Japan.

Association between Parents' Social Capital and Physical Status in Preschool Children in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Multicentre Study.

According to a World Health Organization report, in 2016, 41 million young children globally were overweight or obese. The connection between parents' social capital and their children's health has been studied, but associations between parental social capital and children's weight are largely unexamined. Hence, we assessed the relationship between preschool children's weight and parents' social capital. We used BMI assessment data for 357 children (46.5% girls; mean age 5.3years) in Japan. We examined parents' structural and cognitive social capital using a self-report questionnaire. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed associations between parents' social capital and children's BMI. Seventy-two (20.2%) of the children had poor BMI (body mass index; overweight or thin). Interpersonal trust was significantly associated with normal BMI in children after adjustment for all confounding factors (OR 2.68; 95% CI, 1.33-5.44; P = .006) and was independently associated with other social capital factors, including norm of reciprocity (OR 3.38; 95% CI, 1.68-6.79; P < .001) and trust in organization (OR 1.24; 95% CI, 1.09-1.42; P = .001). Social capital factors were independently associated with each other. Japanese parents' high social capital was an independent predictor of normal BMI among preschool children.

A Private Person and A Plural Human Vision from Fantasy: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Sen to Chihiro No Kamikakushi

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and released in 2001, Miyazaki Hayao’s animated film entitled Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) allegorically describe human beings in a capitalist civilized society whin a mythological narrative structure and fantasy. This paper will mainly focus on Spirited Away and partially analyze Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. First of all, this paper includes two works in the category of fantasy in a broad sense. This is because both works do not ignore fantasy as unrealistic but relate it to the real world. Next, I recognize that the 19th-century British and the 20th-century Japanese capitalist society and culture are the background of these two works, and the standardization, means, statistical methods of reason, and the selfishness of civilization in natural science are making a human being a kind of private person, and I will explain it in the view of Theodore Adorno’s instrumental reason and homogenization. Lastly, I hope to perceive the well-known line, in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, “men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world” (HC:7) and “plurality is inherent in every human being” in “Philosophy and Politics” (Arendt 1990:86), and develop human identity, understanding and co-existence with others from a plural human perspective.

Japanese Capitalism in Multiple Crises

Japanese Capitalism in Multiple Crises

Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962). Pionier japońskich badań folklorystycznych

Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962). Pioneer of Japanese folklore studies The Meiji era (1868–1912) pushed Japan towards a modern, industrialized and, most of all, positivist state. This era plays an important role in shaping the ethnographic (anthropological, folklore) thought in the country. However, this is only one side of the coin, a medal which, apart from a gigantic leap in civilization, had a reverse – traditional, familiar, “Japanese” side. Japan went through two important periods of modernization in the years of 1868-1962. From a feudal country ruled by samurai transformed into a country capable of competing with the previously industrially developed colonial powers, and after World War II, giving up imperial ambitions, transformed into a modern state. During the century, numerous changes have occurred in the streets of the Japanese capital. From the carriages, trough automobiles, and finally, after 1945, to the jets flying overhead. It was in such times that the pioneer of Japanese ethnography, folklore or socio-cultural anthropology, Yanagita Kunio, came to live and work. This text aims to present the profile and main theses of this Japanese researcher.

일본식 자본주의 변화와 전망: 조절이론의 관점에서

조절이론 관점 내 제도형태적 측면에서 일본식 경제는 다음의 두 가지 특징을 지녀왔다. 첫째, 호송선단형 경제시스템 및 메인뱅크 제도라는 일본형 기업지배 구조, 둘째, 연공서열, 종신고용, 기업별 노조라는 임노동 구조이다.<BR> 본 논문에서는 일본식 자본주의의 변화에 대해 조절이론적 관점에서 제시하는 두 가지 범주인 축적체제(Regime of Accumulation)와 조절양식(Mode of Regulation)의 측면을 분석하였다. 일본 사회는 90년대 후반의 장기불황과 글로벌금융위기(2008) 및 동일본대지진(2011)이라는 위기를 겪으며 급속히 변화하였다. 일본 정부는 적극적 경제개입 정책과 아베 노믹스라는 부양정책을 통해 경제 체질 개선을 견인하려 하였으나, 일본경제는 소득격차에 의한 양극화 구조 심화 및 비정규직 비율 증가라는 사회 구조적 문제에 직면하게 되었다. 결과적으로 일본은 일련의 조절양식 변화 및 현재의 축적체제를 통해 지식기반경제 등 다음 산업사회 단계를 맞이할 여력을 갖추지 못하고 있다.

Understanding the Trajectory of Japanese Capitalism

How can we understand the trajectory of Japanese capitalism? This Afterword situates Japan on a broad canvas stretching across both the region and the globe. East Asia’s regional dynamics figure prominently, shaping the trajectory of Japanese capitalism not only in the formative Age of Empire and postwar reconstruction, but also in the emergent Asian Century. An historical examination of geo-politics highlights imperial entanglements and both the routes and the roots of capitalist development in Japan. This discussion begins by setting the stage of post-World War II Japan, elaborating on the reproductive bargain that characterizes Japan’s political economy, investigating the importance of national identity as it informs who can participate in Japan’s economy, revealing the underbelly of contemporary Japan, discussing forces for change, and revisiting the methodological approach used to understand Japanese capitalism.

Japanese Agriculture and Capital Expansion: The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Global Food Value Chain Strategy

ABSTRACT This article explores the intersection of two nationwide policy discussions in Japan: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Global Food Value Chain (GFVC) strategy. The former has indicated a radical reform and liberalisation of Japanese agriculture and the latter promotes Japanese agriculture “on the offensive” and its overseas expansion. The TPP generated public concerns about external market forces coming into Japanese society and the GFVC is essentially about Japanese capital and agriculture reaching out to overseas markets. While Japan’s participation in the TPP became a controversial topic in the country, the GFVC strategy has relatively quietly rooted itself in the policy and public spheres. Current national policies describe challenges in Japanese capitalist society as agricultural problems and reframe the risks and costs of the free market on the population as a greater opportunity (or solution) for Japanese agriculture. Such logics have significant risks of accelerating problems inherent in Japan’s existing mode of production especially concerning the subordination of labour power to capital.

Democracy Against Labor Movement: Japan’s Anti-Labor Developmental State and Aftermaths

This paper investigates the labor-controlling orientation of the Japanese developmental state and its consequences today. Developmental state studies has given us a robust epistemological grid whereby we can make non-Western state formation intelligible. Yet, mainstream authors have tended to treat the working class as a mere appendage to state– business relations, relegating labor politics at the analysis of state– society relations. By using democratic Japan—a prime example of this sort of obfuscation—in combination with Marxian state theory, this paper outlines the difficulties, addresses them, and extends the scope of developmental state studies to labor. After identifying main tenets of the literature, the author constructs a theory of labor control as a stabilizer of relative state autonomy. The author applies this to Japanese labor movements since 1945 and interprets events and processes of labor oppression/regulation through which Japanese capitalism subsumed the working class under the aegis of the developmental state. Labor control, emerging out of an “exceptional state” (Poulantzas, 1974), evolved into a refined socio-relational system that insulated developmental goals from labor movements. This Japanese trajectory keenly mobilized big business and elite labor, which transformed labor control into a bilateral and then a tripartite league in defense of industrial policy and its deskilling/reskilling intervention. By the 1970s, this achieved the famous docility of Japanese labor. The historically constructed character of docile labor force was exploited once again when Japan made a neoliberal turn in its post-development phase.

Marxism and the Debate on the Transition to Capitalism in Prewar Japan

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan rapidly industrialized, greatly raising its level of economic productivity. However, the peasants were kept in a state of hunger under a semifeudal agricultural system. How should this semi-feudality be understood? About this question arose a debate among Japanese Marxists in prewar Japan: the Debate on Japanese Capitalism. This article examines the methodologies of three analysists of Japanese capitalism focusing on the level of abstraction of the analysis of capitalism, whose ideas were derived from Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s methodology of downward analysis and upward development: Moritarō Yamada of Kōzaha, Itsurō Sakisaka of Rōnōha, and Kōzō Uno, who distanced himself from both sides. Uno criticized Yamada and Sakisaka for directly analyzing a particular Japanese capitalism with a highly general theory such as Capital, and proposed the Three-Stage Theory: the Pure Theory, which is based on the assumption of a pure capitalism, such as Marx’s Capital; the Stage Theory, which clarifies the historical developmental stage of capitalism, such as Lenin’s Imperialism (1917); and the Empirical Analysis, which analyzes capitalism in each country at a given time. However, Uno’s main concern was to analyze Japanese capitalism in the Stage Theory, doing little to further advance it in the Empirical Analysis. Therefore, this article divided the Empirical Analysis into two levels of abstraction: the domain of theoretical construction of Japanese Capitalism, such as Lenin’s Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), and of data analysis of specific conditions of Japanese capitalism, such as Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844), and thus proposed the Four-Stage Theory. It is a hypothesis for complementing Uno’s Three-Stage Theory, which should be further developed by data. Finally, such methodological consideration for analyzing capitalism is applicable to non-Japanese capitalist societies.

식민지 자본주의의 전개와 3·1운동에 대한 시론적 검토

This article is an introductory study of the correlation between the colonial capitalism implanted by the Japanese Empire and the March 1st Movement. The body of this article approaches the foregoing correlation from three aspects: the structure of colonial capitalism, changes in daily life due to colonial capitalism, and people’s perception of capitalism. Through the hierarchical structure formed between the empire and colonial capitalism, the colony was indirectly linked to world capitalism through the colonial power, and the colonial economy was unilaterally reorganized according to the interests of the colonial power and capital. The Japanese Empire enforced policies that ignored the practices that had been passed down from ancestors and the profits of farmers, and Korean farms were incorporated into the circulation system of Japanese capitalism by force. As a result, the rural community, which was a reproduction unit of farmers and directly connected to survival, was being dismantled. Whereas Koreans had to seek only survival as isolated individuals before the March 1st Movement, they showed united power through the movement rather than being isolated. After the 1920s, Koreans began to make independent voices based on solidarity as a collective subject.

‘일본문화론’의 관점에서 본 야마모토 시치헤이의 『일본자본주의의 정신』

The Spirit of Japanese Capitalism(日本資本主義の精神), published by Yamamoto Shichihei(山本七平) in 1979, has been treated mostly focusing on Suzuki Shosan(鈴木正三) and Ishida Baigan(石田梅岩). For instance, it has been often said that the spirit of Japanese capitalism originated by Shosan in the early Edo period, was widely spread throughout the whole country by Baigan and his ‘Sekimon󰠏shingaku’(石門心學) in the late Edo period, producing ‘Japanese philosophy of diligence’ and as a result setting forward the accumulation of wealth through the hard work and frugality among farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen, etc. In sum, they say this book shows that the thoughts of Shosan and Baigan are the original forms of the spirit of Japanese capitalism. Of course, this point is of importance. Still, the perspective of so󰠏called ‘Nihonbunkaron’(日本文化論) or ‘Nihonjinron’(日本人論) might be of much notice, too. Because we can say that The Spirit of Japanese Capitalism must be a book which has described Nihonbunkaron based on work ethic of Shosan and Baigan. The purpose of this essay is to reexamine The Spirit of Japanese Capitalism for its total understanding from the perspective of Nihonbunkaron. In so doing, I will pay special attention to several aspects such as Yamamoto’s views on the dual structure of functional group and community, the relationship between Japanese Capitalism and religion, with analyzing main cultural codes such as Shigoto(仕事), Kuki(空氣), Seken(世間), Makoto(誠), Wa(和), and Nihonkyo(日本敎).

The Historical Meaning about the Changes of Administrative Districts in Gyeongbuk Area during the Japanese Colonial Era

일제는 러일전쟁 시기에 더욱 조선 침략을 본격화하였다. 국내 주요도시와 공간에 일본인 주도의 식민도시가 형성되기 시작하였다. 대구와 김천, 포항의 경우 1914년 지방행정구역 개편과 함께 일본인 주도의 식민도시로 전환되었다. 대구부와 김천면, 포항면은 행정, 경제, 교육 등 모든 측면에서 일반 군과 면과 두드러진 차이를 드러냈다. 그것은 식민도시로서의 성격이었다. 일본인 인구의 비중이 조선인에 비해 적으면서도 지역사회에 미치는 영향력은 막대하였다. 또한 여타 군과면에 비해 일본인 인구의 비중은 상당히 높았다. 이에 1914년 지방행정구역의 개편은 일제가 조선을 효과적으로 지배하는 수단이 되었다. 결국, 대구부와 김천면, 포항면은 일제의 조선 지배 거점이 되면서 일본자본주의의 이익을 담보하는 기제로 작동하였다.Japanese imperialism began to accelerate the invasion of Korea(Joseon Dynasty)during the Russo - Japanese War . Japanese-led colonial cities began to be formed in major cities and spaces in Korea. In the case of Daegu and Gimcheon, Pohang, they was converted into Japanese-led colonial cities in 1914 with the reorganization of local administrative districts. Daegu-bu and Gimcheon-myeon, Pohang showed a remarkable difference as compared with general gun & myeon(counties) in all aspects of administration, economy, education, etc. . It had the characteristics as a colonial city. The proportion of the Japanese population was small compared with that of the Koreans, but the impact on the local community was enormous. In addition, the proportion of the Japanese population was significantly higher than in other gun & myeon(counties) . Thus, in 1914, the reorganization of the local administrative district became a means by which Japanese imperialism could effectively control Korea. As a result, Daegu-bu and Gimcheon-myeon, Pohang became the bases of Korea(Joseon Dynasty) domination of Japan and operated as the mechanism to secure the interests of Japanese capitalism.

TimingㆍPlaceㆍStatus of Japanese Youmeigaku and Japanese capitalism

TimingㆍPlaceㆍStatus of Japanese Youmeigaku and Japanese capitalism

Review of Sagers, Confucian Capitalism: Shibusawa Eiichi, Business Ethics, and Economic Development in Meiji Japan

Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931) was often referred to as "the father of Japanese capitalism," and as a Japanese industrialist interested in Confucius' social-mindedness, he is the model for John Sagers' proposed economic reforms. The long, painful death of crony capitalism in Japan means that it is worth thinking about what should be done once Japan, Inc. is gone. But the book suffers from confusion over what "capitalism" means, anbd several other problems.