Postwar Japan (postwar + japan)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Education and Social Mobility in Postwar Japan: Trends and Some Institutional Aspects

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000
Hiroyuki Kondo
Abstract, This paper examines the trend in social mobility in postwar Japan, especially focusing on the mediating role of education. The data set is derived from the SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) surveys. Applying log-linear models to the data of five periods, we analyze the trend of the relationship among origin, education, and destination. Occupations are classified according to type of job, and son's first job is used for the analysis. The result reveals that the unmediating transmission of position has declined, and education is becoming a more significant mediator between origin and destination. These changes proceed in the form of reduction in the random sphere of ,movers' as well as replacement of ,stayers' with ,movers'. However, the association between origin and destination has hardly changed for several decades. This stablity results from the inequality in educational resources available to families and the specificities, not universality, of relations surviving into the higher level of education. [source]


Feminism in the Grips of a Pincer Attack,Traditionalism, liberalism, and globalism

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2005
Yumiko Ehara
Abstract:, The dichotomy of individualism versus collectivism is one of the pivots around which political ideologies in postwar Japanese society can be broken down. Many people had thought that what postwar Japan needed was the development of modern individuals who represented a departure from feudalistic thinking. Against the backdrop of uncertainties related to employment and life in general engendered by a prolonged economic stagnation and globalism, Japanese society in the twenty-first century is being pounded by a tempest of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In the midst of this storm, ideas advocating social policies that promote gender equality are being dismantled by both of these forces. This is because the power of traditionalism as a force for asserting a revisionist ideology in modern Japanese society primarily constitutes the power of neoconservatism, which embraces neoliberalism with a view to revitalizing the free economy through the elimination of social welfare and the intensification of free competition. In order to establish formidable economic competitiveness, neoliberalism and neoconservatism (neoliberalism = neoconservatism) reject domestic systems geared towards labor protection (deregulation) and extol familism and nationalism as means to bringing social unrest under control through the mobilization of the labor force (traditionalism). However, the habitual way of thinking that places traditionalism and liberalism in a dichotomous pivot remains ingrained within us even now. Because globalization reinforces social mobility, these two positions will continue to gain strength even as they conflict with each other. With feminism in the grips of a pincer attack, the movement will struggle to maintain its breath. [source]


Education and Social Mobility in Postwar Japan: Trends and Some Institutional Aspects

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000
Hiroyuki Kondo
Abstract, This paper examines the trend in social mobility in postwar Japan, especially focusing on the mediating role of education. The data set is derived from the SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) surveys. Applying log-linear models to the data of five periods, we analyze the trend of the relationship among origin, education, and destination. Occupations are classified according to type of job, and son's first job is used for the analysis. The result reveals that the unmediating transmission of position has declined, and education is becoming a more significant mediator between origin and destination. These changes proceed in the form of reduction in the random sphere of ,movers' as well as replacement of ,stayers' with ,movers'. However, the association between origin and destination has hardly changed for several decades. This stablity results from the inequality in educational resources available to families and the specificities, not universality, of relations surviving into the higher level of education. [source]


Changes in the Labor Market and Occupational Prestige Scores

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000
Junsuke Hara
Abstract, In spite of the great changes in the structures of industry as well as work and occupation in postwar Japan as a result of rapid industrialization, occupational prestige scores as an index of people's evaluation of occupations did not reveal the corresponding changes. They maintained consistent stability since the mid 1950s aside from parallel upward movements, which might be a result of the permeation of an egalitarian ideology. Three kinds of occupational prestige scores calculated from data in the SSM survey of 1955, 1975 and 1995 had very high correlation with each other. The scores also showed a strong correlation between levels of education and income for each occupation, and no relation with labor market situation. And the unchanged order of occupations in Japan might be one of the reasons for the stability. The fact that people's evaluation of occupations revealed by prestige scores has scarcely changed and such scores has been associated with differences in the level of education makes us suspect that Japan's "credentialism" might be weakened in the near future. [source]


Respect in Japanese childhood, adolescence, and society

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 114 2006
Shuji Sugie
The meaning of respect changed historically in postwar Japan, and respect as a concept is important yet unnoticed in postmodern Japanese society. Contrary to the perception of Japanese socialization as instilling conformist respect and obedience in children and adolescents, this chapter shows why one commentator predicts that Japan may be changing from a "society of respect" to a "society of scorn." [source]


Industrialization, class structure, and social mobility in postwar Japan 1

THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
Hiroshi Ishida
ABSTRACT This study examines intergenerational class mobility in Japan using cross-national comparisons with Western nations and cross-temporal comparisons of five national surveys conducted in postwar Japan. Cross-national comparisons highlight the similarity in relative mobility pattern between Japan and Western nations and at the same time the Japanese distinctiveness in absolute mobility rates especially regarding the demographic character of the Japanese manual working class. The results of cross-temporal comparisons of mobility pattern report some systematic trends in total mobility, inflow and outflow rates, reflecting the Japanese experience of late but rapid industrialization. The pattern of association between class origin and class destination, however, was stable in postwar Japan. It is therefore the combination of distinctive absolute mobility rates and similar relative mobility rates that characterizes the Japanese mobility pattern in comparison with the Western experience. Furthermore, Japan's distinctive pattern of postwar social mobility is characterized by a combination of rapidly changing absolute mobility rates and comparatively stable relative mobility rates. [source]


Manipulating Electoral Rules to Manufacture Single-Party Dominance

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2008
Kenneth Mori McElwain
This article argues that the LDP manufactured its parliamentary dominance in postwar Japan by strategically altering specific facets of the electoral system. More generally, I demonstrate that intraparty politics play a crucial role in determining when and how electoral rules are changed. Despite widespread evidence that the LDP would win more seats under an SMP electoral formula, party leaders were repeatedly blocked from replacing the postwar MMD-SNTV system by intraparty incumbents, who feared that such a change would harm their individual reelection prospects. However, party leaders had greater leeway in altering rules that generated fewer intraparty conflicts. Between 1960 and 1990, the LDP implemented approximately fifty changes to campaign regulations, most of which were aimed at enhancing the incumbency advantage of all rank-and-file MPs. Statistical tests confirm that absent pro-incumbent revisions to the electoral code, the LDP would have succumbed to declining public popularity and lost its majority at least a decade earlier. [source]