Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access originally published online on May 13, 2008
Social Science Japan Journal 2008 11(1):5-27; doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyn022
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Social Science Japan Journal 11:5-27 (2008)
© 2008 Oxford University Press
From Class Struggle to General Middle-Class Society to Divided Society: Societal Models of Inequality in Postwar Japan
David CHIAVACCI is a Research Fellow and Reader at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Free University Berlin. His recent publications include ‘The Social Basis of Developmental Capitalism in Japan: From Postwar Mobilization to Current Stress Symptoms and Future Disintegration’ in Asian Business & Management 6(1): 35–55 (2007) and ‘The General Middle Class Model under Pressure: Mainstream Japan at a Turning Point?’ in Hede Helfrich, Melanie Zillekens and Erich Hölter, eds., Culture and Development in Japan and Germany (Daedalus 2006). He can be reached at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Free University Berlin, Ehrenbergstrasse 26-28, D-14195 Berlin, Germany, or by e-mail at dachiava{at}zedat.fu-berlin.de
After the fierce class struggles in the first postwar years, a societal model describing Japan as a general middle-class society with outstanding equality in opportunities and outcome became dominant. In recent years, a new societal model of Japan as a divided society has replaced this general middle-class model. Nonetheless, empirical research and comparative studies neither fully support a model of Japan as an exceptionally equal society from the 1960s onward nor do they show a fundamental transformation of contemporary Japan into a socially divided society. This paper argues that the sequence and timing of societal models of inequality in Japan since 1945 reflect the degree of resonance that societal models of inequality have in the lifeworlds of society.
* The author would like to thank Verena Blechinger-Talcott, Wolfram Manzenreiter, Iris Wieczorek and three anonymous reviewers of Social Science Japan Journal for their substantial comments regarding earlier drafts of this paper.