Labor and management as a power relationship

Life at work in postwar Japan has been shaped to a considerable extent by shifts in the balance of power between labor and management. Immediately after the war, the unionization rate surpassed 50 percent. The movement was organized around strong industrial unions with a socialist-inspired leadership. A few unions took over the management of some firms as part of the “production control movement” (seisan kanri undo). Densan (the Electric Power Union) fought to establish the Densangata wage system which tied wages to the lifecycle needs of each employee. These efforts to “democratize” the organization of work were in line with the American-led Occupation policy to democratize Japan, but bore fruit only because the collective force of workers could be brought to bear on management through mechanisms sanctioned by the state.

Management groups vehemently resisted, and ultimately the gains of labor were undermined following the reversal of US policy. The cold war brought a sharper distinction between communist and socialist regimes with controlled markets and the liberal democracies with free markets. Moore (1983) accurately conveys an assessment commonly made by Japan's liberal intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s that Japan was in the late 1940s on the verge of becoming a socialist society. Kawanishi (1992a: chapter 4) described the next twenty years in Japan as a massive struggle between organized labor and organized management for the soul of Japan's workers. It was a struggle waged at the national level and at the enterprise level.