A Historical Note: Does History Matter?

Abstract

There are good reasons why social institutions, including the labour market, adopt specific forms and characteristics. The development of the Japanese labour market is a case in point and provides an interesting example of the formation and reformation of a social institution. This social institution was not entirely new to Japan in the year 1868 and in the process of development two types of transaction mechanism – ‘internal’ and ‘external’ labour markets – counteracted each other, with the balance of dominance shifting from one to the other. I shall illustrate this point with an example from the history of the machinery industry in Japan.

At the 33rd Biwako Conference, I delivered my comments on each of the papers presented. I have omitted these comments from this chapter, as the papers subsequenthy underwent several revisions and so reproducing my original remarks would be meaningless. Editorial assistance rendered by Mr Andrew Hunt is gratefully acknowledged.