published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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This thesis examines the evolution of postwar industrial relations in postwar Japan from 1945 to 1973. It analyzes the impact of postwar industrial relations institutions on the origins and development of “lean production” or, as it is otherwise known, the Toyota production system. It uses three case studies, Mitsui Coal’s Miike mine in Kyushu, Suzuki Motors in Hamamatsu, and Moriguchi City Hall as an empirical basis for analysis and constructs a schema of industrial relations institutions that challenges the conventional “three pillars” interpretation (lifetime employment, seniority-based wages, and enterprise unions). From a historical perspective there were three distinct stages in the evolution of industrial relations. The first, from 1945-1947 was a labour-dominated period during which unions began to develop a distinct factory regime in which they were equal partners with management and could veto layoffs. Employers rejected this regime, however, and led an offensive against the independent union movement. This offensive was relatively successful in weakening labour and overturning the new institutions, but it engendered further antagonism. Thus the 1950s were characterized by instability in labour relations and new institutions had to evolve out of the workplace. A stable Fordist regime consolidated in the 1960-1973 period. From a comparative perspective and in the context of the development of lean production, the author stresses four institutions: tacit and limited job tenure; a performance-based wage system controlled by management; unions with an enterprise (i.e. market) orientation; and joint consultation. These institutions gave Japanese industrial relations their distinctiveness and also help to explain why lean production developed in Japan. Under the traditional Fordist model, work was broken down into short, repetitive cycles and organized along an assembly line. Employers exerted control by keeping conceptual activities as their mandate and workers were to simply follow instructions. This study found that work itself did not change substantively under lean production but workers participated more in conceptual activities. One of the key reasons for this was that employers in Japan were able to exercise control not only through the division of labour but through the wage system and enterprise unions as well. These mechanisms put discrete limits on the scope of worker innovations. They also limited the benefits workers could expect from the system. Lean production represented a new stage in production, identified as lean, intensified Fordism.

This dissertation examines the rising medicalization of depression in Japan and asks how it has become possible that Japanese, who reportedly barely suffered from depression until recently, are now increasingly becoming "depressed." Drawing upon two years of fieldwork in psychiatric institutions in the Tokyo environs, I examine this change from three different angles---historical, clinical, and socio-legal. First, my historical analysis questions the assumption held by Japanese psychiatrists that depression did not exist in premodern Japan; I show that traditional Japanese medicine did indeed have a notion of depression (called utsusho), conceived as an illness of emotions in which psychological suffering was seen as intimately connected to both physiological and social distress. Though the premodern notion of depression was effectively obscured by the 19th-century adoption of German neuropsychiatry that located depression in individual brains, the current medicalization of depression is nevertheless deeply informed by an indigenous psychiatric theory emphasizing that depression is in part socially produced. Second, I examine how Japanese psychiatrists use this local language of depression in clinical practice in attempting to persuade patients that they are victims of both biological and social forces lying beyond their control. The lack of any psychiatric model of agency concerning depression, however, leads some patients---especially suicidal patients---to question psychiatry's jurisdiction over the meaning of their distress. Third, I analyze how the psychiatric language of depression has been adopted in legal discourse surrounding "overwork suicide," where corporations and the government have been found liable for workers' deaths on the grounds that excessive work stress can drive workers to depression and suicide. Furthermore, the psychiatric language is curiously limited in the sense that, in contrast to the West, in Japan it is men rather than women who have been represented as typical victims of depression. By examining patients' narratives, I demonstrate how psychiatry constructs a gendered discourse of depression, closely tied to local politics about whose distress is recognized as legitimate social suffering. The medicalization of depression in Japan thus suggests not a hegemonic, global standardization, but the emergence of psychiatry as a politically potent---though limited---force for social transformation.

This is an in-depth analysis of competing cultural ideas at a pivotal time in Japanese history through study of masculinity and identity. Through diaries, newspaper articles, and illustrations found in popular periodicals of the Meiji period, it is evident that there were two major groups who espoused very different sets of ideals competing for the favor of the masses and the control of Japanese progress in the modern world. Manner of dress, comportment, hygiene, and various other parts of outward appearance signified the mentality and ideology of the person in question. One group espoused traditional Japanese ideas of masculinity and dress while another advocated embracing Western dress and culture. This, in turn, explained their opinions on the direction they believed Japan should take. Throughout the Meiji period (1868-1912), the two ideas grew and competed for supremacy until the late Meiji period when they merged to form a traditional-minded modernity. / Department of History

This thesis examines the evolution of postwar industrial relations in postwar Japan from 1945 to 1973. It analyzes the impact of postwar industrial relations institutions on the origins and development of “lean production” or, as it is otherwise known, the Toyota production system. It uses three case studies, Mitsui Coal’s Miike mine in Kyushu, Suzuki Motors in Hamamatsu, and Moriguchi City Hall as an empirical basis for analysis and constructs a schema of industrial relations institutions that challenges the conventional “three pillars” interpretation (lifetime employment, seniority-based wages, and enterprise unions). From a historical perspective there were three distinct stages in the evolution of industrial relations. The first, from 1945-1947 was a labour-dominated period during which unions began to develop a distinct factory regime in which they were equal partners with management and could veto layoffs. Employers rejected this regime, however, and led an offensive against the independent union movement. This offensive was relatively successful in weakening labour and overturning the new institutions, but it engendered further antagonism. Thus the 1950s were characterized by instability in labour relations and new institutions had to evolve out of the workplace. A stable Fordist regime consolidated in the 1960-1973 period. From a comparative perspective and in the context of the development of lean production, the author stresses four institutions: tacit and limited job tenure; a performance-based wage system controlled by management; unions with an enterprise (i.e. market) orientation; and joint consultation. These institutions gave Japanese industrial relations their distinctiveness and also help to explain why lean production developed in Japan. Under the traditional Fordist model, work was broken down into short, repetitive cycles and organized along an assembly line. Employers exerted control by keeping conceptual activities as their mandate and workers were to simply follow instructions. This study found that work itself did not change substantively under lean production but workers participated more in conceptual activities. One of the key reasons for this was that employers in Japan were able to exercise control not only through the division of labour but through the wage system and enterprise unions as well. These mechanisms put discrete limits on the scope of worker innovations. They also limited the benefits workers could expect from the system. Lean production represented a new stage in production, identified as lean, intensified Fordism. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 532-554) and discography (leaves 555-557). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / 2 v. (xix, 557 leaves, bound) music 29 cm

This dissertation is an analysis of population and households of a village in Northeast Japan, using historical documents from the period between 1760 and 1870. The population of the village increased 1.73-fold in 110 years with the average growth rate of 0.50 per cent per annum. In general, the population shifted from a low pressure regime characterized by relatively low fertility and low mortality to a high pressure regime with high fertility and high mortality. Fertility was found to be the driving force of the population growth, but high mortality slowed down the growth between 1800 and 1835. Migration played only a minor role. However, migration made a significant impact on the population growth through fertility by changing the nature of service. The increase in fertility resulted mainly from changes in marital fertility rather than changes in nuptiality. The most important factor contributing to the increase in marital fertility was the transformation of labor from servants with yearly contracts to day laborers which increased couple's exposure to the risk of childbearing by affecting coital frequency. In addition, increased employment opportunities and improved wages, which were brought about by the development of market economy and small-scale industry centering around a highly profitable cash crop, safflower, had a positive effect on marital fertility. The number of households increased 1.50-fold throughout the period. An increase in the number of lower class households was solely responsible for the increase in the number of households of the village. The mean household size rose from 4.8 to 5.6. The household size was positively associated with socio-economic status. As in the case of fertility, increased employment opportunities and improved wages were primarily responsible for the increase in the number of households and in the household size. Namely, the increased employment opportunities and improved wages made peasants, especially those of the lower class, less dependent on land, and allowed them to establish new branch households more easily. The most frequently-encountered household types were simple and multiple family households, the two types combined accounting for over 70 per cent of all households of the village. The proportion of multiple family households increased throughout the period, whereas the proportion of simple family households declined.