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.
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Notes
See John T. Dunlop (1958) Industrial Relations Systems (New York: Henry Holt).
For comprehensive treatments of Japan’s postwar economic growth, see, for example, Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky (1976) (eds), Asia’s New Giant: How The Japanese Economy Works (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution);
and Takafusa Nakamura (1981) The Postwar Japanese Economy (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press);
and Kozo Yamamura and Yasukichi Yasuba (1987) (eds), The Political Economy of Japan: the Domestic Transformation, vol. I (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
For a thoughtful statement regarding this development, see Koji Taira (1991), ‘Japan, An Imminent Hegemon?’, in Solomon B. Levine and Koji Taira (eds), Japan’s External Economic Relations: Japanese Perspectives, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 513 (January) pp. 151–63.
For a full analysis of ‘production control’ in postwar Japan, see Joe Moore (1983) Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press).
A detailed treatment is found in Akira Takanashi, et al. (1989) Shunto Wage Offensive: Historical Overview and Prospects, Japanese Industrial Relations Series No. 15 (Tokyo: The Japan Institute of Labour).
See Koji Taira and Solomon B. Levine (1985) ‘Japan’s Industrial Relations: A Social Compact Emerges’, in Hervey Juris, et al. (eds), Industrial Relations in a Decade of Economic Change (Madison, WI: Industrial Relations Research Association), pp. 247–300.
See Solomon B. Levine and Koji Taira (1980) ‘Interpreting Industrial Conflict: The Case of Japan’, in Benjamin Martin and Everett M. Kassalow (eds), Labor Relations in Advanced Industrial Societies: Issues and Problems (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).
For a comprehensive analysis in English, see Taishiro Shirai (1983) (ed.), Contemporary Industrial Relations in Japan (Madison, WI: University of Wiscons in Press).
For basic information, see The Japan Institute of Labour (1992) Labour—Management Relations in Japan (Tokyo).
An extensive literature on the Japanese auto industry has appeared in recent years. For a comprehensive history, see M.A. Cusumano (1989) The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology and Management at Nissan and Totota (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press).
For a detailed treatment of skill formation in Japanese industry, see Kazuo Koike (1988) Understanding Industrial Relations in Modern Japan (New York: St Martin’s Press).
Based on the Federation of All Toyota Workers’ Union (1990) Union Activities: Basic Concepts, Organization, Activities (April) Toyota, Aichi, Japan.
For an analysis of these relationships, see Michael J. Smitka (1991) Competitive Ties: Subcontracting in the Japanese Automotive Industry (New York: Columbia University Press).
An English-language history of Japanese human resources is available in Solomon B. Levine and Hisashi Kawada (1980) Human Resources in Japanese Industrial Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
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© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Levine, S.B. (1996). The Transformation of Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan. In: Deyo, F.C. (eds) Social Reconstructions of the World Automobile Industry. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24897-1_2
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