Social Stratification in Contemporary Japan

Kosaka, Kenji Kosaka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136159329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Anthropologie

First Published in 1994. The focus of this study is class and stratification in Japan. There are a few papers on social stratification in Japan that are written in English and make use of the SSM research. The present study uses the latest SSM data. These were collected in 1985, and are themselves becoming out of date, given that Japanese society has been experiencing rapid and radical change, though they remain among the most recent available. The authors are sociologists this book is intended for a general readership.

1 Introduction

Kenji Kosaka

The present book is not a history, but is rather an empirical and theoretical sociological study of social stratification in contemporary Japan. As mentioned in the Preface, it is based largely on the SSM survey research conducted in 1985 and in the preceding thirty years. However, it may help the general reader if mention is made of those features of modern Japanese history which are most relevant to the class system and social stratification in Japan. (See Beasley (1981) and Storry (1982) for a general history of modern Japanese society.) In particular, the historical background outlined in 1–1 below will aid in demonstrating the validity of the concepts, methodology and data we shall use in this book.

Following the historical background, Section 1–2 reviews previous studies of class and stratification in postwar Japan, thereby also reflecting the historical process in the changing interests of sociologists.

1–1 Historical Background

In two periods of modern Japanese history major steps have been taken towards levelling classes and status, these being the Meiji Restoration and the period immediately following World War II. Japan underwent a change from a feudal clan system to a modern system during the Meiji Restoration. But it also retained and recreated features of a feudalistic status system, which was deeply intermingled with an emerging modern class system and the development of capitalism. The end of World War II pushed Japan in the direction of greater democracy with a series of democratization or demilitarization policies initiated by the Allied Powers. At the institutional level,¹ it is only after World War II that Japanese society became largely free from an ascriptive principle of class and status allocation.

1–1–1 The Meiji Restoration

In 1868 the declaration of Equality of Four Social Classes (Shimin Byodo) abolished the feudal clan system. Under the former system the warrior class, peasants, artisans and merchants (Shi-No-Ko-Sho) formed the main social classes within a fairly rigid hierarchical system. In 1881, the nomenclature of Eta and Hinin for outcaste people was also abolished. Thus the modern Meiji state created a fairly homogeneous society. However, the new system was not totally homogeneous; it maintained a feudal-aristocratic element within the modern state by retaining imperialism (control by the Emperor and the royal family) and by restructuring the feudal status system to include a class of aristocrats called Kazoku. Alongside this, the Meiji state also adopted a policy of fostering modern manufacturing industry, which in turn created a large number of factory workers who formed a working class. Japan is one of the few countries that has developed a comprehensive census registration system. Under the prewar registration law, people were identified as either Kazoku, Shizoku or Heimin.²

Tominaga (1990) presents a succinct summary of the eight major social classes which existed in Japan before World War II. We shall use his descriptive framework to delineate the general situation, and give special emphasis to the explanation of how some social classes retained premodern elements at both the institutional and sub-institutional levels. The eight prewar classes are as follows.

1 Aristocrats Aristocrats called kazoku were placed below the Imperial family and above shizoku (families of mostly warrior class origin) and heimin (common people). Under the new enactment, Kazoku-rei (established in 1884; abolished in 1947), kazoku became a privileged status (made up of five different titles) to be conferred upon those who made a substantial contribution to the Meiji government, or who had honorable familial connections prior to the Meiji era. Before the enactment there were 309 families called kazoku; at the time of enactment, titles were conferred upon 509 people. There were nearly a thousand kazoku immediately prior to its abolition (Sakamaki, 1987).

Although their number may seem rather small, kazoku were influential both politically and economically, since they composed the main body of members of the Upper House (Kizokuin) after the two chamber system was established in 1890. Kazoku were privileged in various other ways additional to their entitlement to membership of the Upper House. For example, titles were hereditary. Property too could be made hereditary, as long as it was deemed necessary in order to retain their family status. They even had access to a special scholarship system exclusively for kazoku. Most kazoku children were sent to Gakushuin, a special educational institute run by the Ministry of the Imperial Household.

2 Capitalist class The governmental policies of developing manufacturing industry and of increasing Japan’s wealth and military strength created, after some financial failures, a bourgeoisie with family-based zaibatsus as leaders. They formed extraordinarily wealthy urban groups. Of particular interest will be the processes whereby zaibatsu were created in close relation to the government (and under its protection), and the social networks which formed power elites in the Meiji era.

3 New middle class The Meiji government brought into being a large bureaucracy, and positions for office workers in large-sized enterprises. At first these white-collar positions were held by people from the class of ex-warriors, and later by those who had achieved a high level of education. Education and meritocratic achievement became the passport for entry into the new middle class.

4 Landlord class The feudal landlord-tenant relationship was reorganized by the means of land reforms which formed a stable financial base for the government. This semi-feudal framework was maintained until other land reforms were implemented after World War II. At the first election for the House of Representatives, held in 1890, only males of twenty-five year of age and older who paid direct a national tax of more than fifteen yen could vote, while males of thirty years and older who met the same requirement were eligible to stand for election. The electorate comprised roughly 450 thousand people, which was only 1.1 percent of the total population at that time. Landlords therefore were quite over-represented in the Diet.

5 Peasant class This class was divided into rich peasants, owner-farmers, and poor tenants. Tenants were involved in a feudalistic patronage relationship with landlords at the sub-institutional level. It is hard to delineate the actual relationship between landlords and peasants in general terms, since it varied more or less from village to village, but the following example will help to illustrate their typical relations, and the typical underlying social order in a rural village (Nakamura, 1990: 87–8).

In a village in Tottori Prefecture, there have been three familial ranks since the Meiji era: danna (the declining but old landlords), oyakata (emerging new landlords since Meiji), and kokata-hyaku-sho (landed farmers, part owner farmers, and peasants). In this village a historically monumental peasants’ dispute arose at the end of the Taisho era. These three familial ranks were each represented by a leader in the dispute.

At the village meetings, danna were supposed to take the top seats, followed by part-owner farmers and then peasants. Danna and oyakata were together called kashirabun (leaders) and were in charge of the management of the village. They possessed hereditary privilege. Common works for the village were decided by kashirabun without any consultation with kokata-hyakusho. The costs were borne by the wealthy and by the landlords, whilst kosaku offered their labour in return. Kosaku seem to have been satisfied with being treated to a drink following the work. (For other typical settings, and for a Western scholar’s view of stratification in prewar Japanese village, see Embree (1939), who employed an analytical class scheme used by Lloyd Warner. See also Suzuki (1940).)

6 Old urban middle class Self-sustaining merchants and artisans formed the old middle class. They usually owned some capital, and a noren (literally, ‘a split curtain’) which functioned as the brand-like symbol of a given shop, and the right to use the symbol. (It also symbolized the reputation and credit of the shop.) Apprentices and clerks, after a certain period of service, were allowed to open their own shops and to use the same noren.

7 Working class Before the 1920s, the central industrial sector was light industry, where spinning and silk manufacture played an important role. Workers were mostly young girls recruited from rural areas nearby. Hosoi (1925) and others showed the misery of their lives and how badly they were treated. It was not until the 1920s that heavy industry developed in Japan. Its development attracted a large number of labourers, again from rural areas, who formed the new working class of wage labourers.

8 The lowest urban class An empirical study of the lowest class, and of the slums which were created during the course of rapid industrialization, was undertaken by Yokoyama (1899). His study is comparable to Engels’ The Situation of the Working Class in England. Kida (1990) identifies and reviews the principal accounts of the lives of the lowest class in Tokyo from the Meiji era to the end of World War II.

Here, on the one hand, are a mixture of status groups which were created at the time of the Meiji Restoration but which have also inherited features from the preceding era. On the other hand are the modern classes which developed concurrently with the processes of industrialization and urbanization. The above list of eight social classes is no more than a statically drawn general picture. A more dynamic analysis, which treats those social classes as manifestations of a historical totality is required. While we shall not go further into this here, it is notable that during the Meiji restoration, status disparity and class disparity existed even at the institutional level. Socio-economic life was strongly determined by political institutions. General suffrage was not realized until the end of World War II. Voting was restricted to those who satisfied qualifications of tax payment, age, and sex. We shall illustrate in passing that such institutional privileges naturally accompanied a ‘class-based culture’ or climate.

The oral history of Hisa Sakamaki [1896–1986], spanning the Meiji and the Taisho eras, as recorded by her daughter, Ozaki (1979), conveys the atmosphere and flavour of high city life (yamanote) in Tokyo. A distinct social group, originally drawn from bushi families, court nobles, high officials of the Meiji government and so on, was forming a unique class culture called yamanote-bunka (high culture) as opposed to shitamachi-bunka (low culture). Ozaki’s account describes language, manners, play and games among children, costume, and family lifestyle in general.

Hisa Sakamaki says:

Nowadays [=1979], court nobles, bushi families, merchants and peasants all seem to live in similar houses and eat similar foods. It is prosaic and uninteresting that more than 100 million Japanese people live lives like in a ‘home drama’ seen on TV…. Since I was brought up in a bushi family [born as a child of a court physician of bushi background], I was strictly trained in the way of bowing. You should bow with your eyes fixed on the face of the other party. Some people bow too profoundly so that the other party can even see the back of their neck; that is the style appropriate for a merchant, not someone from a bushi family. I stuck to the bushi way of bowing even before those who were superior to me…. Laughing in a loud voice was referred to as a ‘horse-laugh’ and regarded as a sign of ill-breeding…. People might think that table manners means saying ‘itadakimasu’ and ‘gochisosama’ at the beginning and the end of meals respectively. But this is not what was meant by table manners. When I was a girl, I was taught that such words were for housemaids, but never for young ladies brought up in a good family.

A description of Hisa Sakamaki’s husband will help to further illustrate the social surroundings of those who enjoyed yamanote-bunka. He was Yoshio Sakamaki [1890–1967], the son of a doctor. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University becoming a government official, first within the Ministry of Home Affairs, and later within the Ministry of the Imperial Household. He was among the reformists by praxis, and was a scholar in the history of law by profession. At forty-four years of age he narrowly escaped death and retired from public office, devoting the rest of his life to the study of the Japanese aristocracy (i.e. the kazoku) while living in extreme poverty. The fact that his unsurpass...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Notions of Class, Status, and Social Mobility
• 3. Aspects of Social Inequality and Difference
• 4. Intergenerational Occupational Mobility
• 5. Labour Market and Career Mobility
• 6. Perceptions of Class and Status
• 7. Political Attitudes and Social Strata
• 8. Women’s Changing Status and Status Identification
• 9. Conclusion
• Appendix
• References
• Index