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High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan's social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy.
The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system.
In Miura's view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.
Mari Miura is Professor of Political Science at Sophia University in Tokyo. She is coeditor of The Lost Decade and Beyond: Japanese Politics in the 1990s.
"Through a skillful and well-written analysis of the intersection of social welfare policy, employment structures, and Japan's gendered society, Mari Miura's Welfare through Work provides key insights into how the Japanese political economy functioned in the heyday of its economic boom and also why it began to fail in the 1990s. This forceful book should be read by every student of Japanese political economy."
John Creighton Campbell, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, author of How Policies Change: The Japanese Government and the Aging Society:
"In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura tells a compelling story about the role of labor policy in the broader question of social protection in Japan. She focuses on the changing interests and ideologies of political parties and how they affected politicians' thinking about the nation’s problems and appropriate solutions."
Jiyeoun Song:
"Mari Miura's book presents an in-depth and detailed approach to the politics of social protection in times of political and economic challenges. This book turns our attention to controversial but important social and political tasks not only in Japan but also in many advanced industrialized countries, most of which have confronted rising inequalities over the past few decades. It will be required reading for years as a valuable addition to the study of Japanese politics, of social protection in advanced industrialized countries, and of the role of ideas in explaining policy changes."
Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia, author of Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan's System of Social Protection:
"Mari Miura takes the pulse of Japan's system of welfare through work and offers the best account I have read of how economic, ideational, and political forces have combined to make it increasingly dysfunctional. For the sake of Japan’s workers, one can only hope that the nation’s leaders learn from her book and figure out how to marshal new ideas to win political support for needed reforms."
Gregory J. Kasza:
"The subject of this book is the Japanese government's practice of promoting and protecting employment in lieu of offering generous programs of unemployment insurance and social assistance for the poor.. Mari Miura uses the apt phrase 'welfare through work' to characterize this system..Welfare through Workmakes a valuable contribution to the understanding of Japan's labor market and social protection politics."
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