Housing and Social Transition in Japan

Yosuke Hirayama, Richard Ronald, Yosuke Hirayama, Richard Ronald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134176298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Bringing together a number of perspectives on the Japanese housing system, Housing and Social Transition in Japan provides a comprehensive, challenging and theoretically developed account of the dynamic role of the housing system during a period of unprecedented social and economic change in one of the most enigmatic social, political, and economic systems of the modern world.

While Japan demonstrates many of the characteristics of some western housing and social systems, including mass homeownership and consumption-based lifestyles, extensive economic growth and rapid urban modernization has been achieved in balance with traditional social values and the maintenance of the family system. Helpfully divided into three sections, Housing and Social Transition in Japan:

• explores the dynamics of the development of the housing system in post-war Japan
• deals with social issues related to housing in terms of social aging, family relations, gender and inequality
• addresses the Japanese housing system and social change in relation to comparative and theoretical frameworks.

As well as providing challenges and insights for the academic community at large, this book also provides a good introduction to the study of Japan and its housing, economic, social and welfare system generally.

1 Introduction

Does the housing system matter?

Yosuke Hirayama and Richard Ronald

Introduction

In the post-war period Japan has experienced some of the most radical social and economic transformations of any modern society, from clambering out of the ruins of military defeat in 1945 to asserting itself as the world’s second largest economy by 1968. Housing and construction have been at the heart of the rebuilding and revitalization of the Japanese economy, a key policy in the state’s socio-economic agenda, as well as a stabilizing factor in social development during a period of rapid modernization. Housing market volatility has also been at the centre of Japan’s economic troubles over the last decades, and emphasis remains on housing and the housing market in strategies to restructure and regalvanize the Japanese economic machine.

This book seeks to put together a number of perspectives on the Japanese housing system in order to provide a comprehensive and multifarious account of the dynamic role of the housing system during a period of unprecedented social and economic change in one of the most enigmatic social, political, and economic systems in the industrial/post-industrial world. We explore the nature of the Japanese housing system, focusing on how it is embedded in the wider structure of social and economic transformation. While Japan demonstrates many of the characteristics of western housing and social systems, including mass home ownership and consumption-based lifestyles, extensive economic growth and rapid urban modernization has been achieved in balance with an assertion of many indigenous social values and practices. The case of Japan illustrates the diversity of modern housing systems as well as the embeddedness of housing in social diversification and broader processes of social change and economic development.

The rise and fall of the post-war Japanese housing system

The Japanese housing system in the post-war period developed in a very particular context. A key element, which characterized the basic course of postwar Japanese society, was the effort made to catch up with western ‘advanced’ nations, particularly in terms of economic productivity, where ‘modernization’ was often equated with ‘westernization’. The formation of the housing system in Japan, as in western countries, was associated with the expansion of housing construction, mortgage markets, the growth of the owner-occupied sector and government intervention in the housing market. Nevertheless, the trajectory of the housing system in Japan has been distinctive and strongly differentiated from that of western societies.

From the end of the war through the 1970s, the massive inflow of population into urban areas and the considerable increase in the number of households put increasing stress on the demand for housing, which led to the acceleration of housing construction. The economy developed at a striking pace with an average annual growth of approximately 10 per cent between the middle of the 1950s and the early 1970s. An increasing number of middle-class families were nurtured by state policies and expected to purchase or build their own home. There was a cycle in which the mass construction of owner-occupied housing stimulated economic growth which, in turn, expanded the acquisition of owner-occupied housing. Since housing prices initially rose rapidly and stably, owning a house, which was accompanied by a considerable capital gain, was an effective means of accumulating a valuable asset. The combination of economic development, a growing middle class and mass home ownership was increasingly regarded as central to social stability. The conservatives formed the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) in 1955 and have almost exclusively held power ever since. Critically, they have been concerned with economic growth through the promotion of mass production of owner-occupied housing, backed by strong connections in business circles, and in particular the construction, housing and real estate sectors.

While the post-war Japanese state sought to catch up with the levels of development of western countries, by putting overwhelming priority on economic growth, the nature of development completely diverged from that of European welfare states that had emerged in the immediate post-war period, in terms of the formation of housing provision strategies (Harada, 1985; Hirayama, 2003a; Holliday, 2000; Izuhara, 2000; Ohmoto, 1985; Ronald, 2004). Japanese governments have never set out to expand the social housing sector nor accepted the concept of universal citizenship rights to housing. In the post-war period, while education and health services have developed relatively universally and comprehensively among various public welfare provision programmes, direct provision of housing welfare has been placed in a residual position. Nevertheless, the fact that Japan did not adopt European welfare state models does not imply that the Japanese government has not been concerned with housing provision. The relationship between the state and housing in post-war Japan developed in very specific terms. Centrally, since the period immediately after the war, the Japanese government has sought to nurture the creation of a society and an economy orientated around the middle classes and middle-class home ownership (Hirayama, 2003a).

Private home ownership has been the dominant housing tenure in Japan. According to the Housing and Land Survey in 2003, the level of owner-occupied housing was 61.2 per cent. The home ownership sector was vigorously stimulated by generous state subsidy along with economic development and the growth of the middle class. The ratio of private rental housing was the second highest at 26.8 per cent. However, the government has never directly supported private rental housing. There has been little assistance for the construction of private rental housing and absolutely no provision of rental subsidy. Direct provision of rental housing by the public sector has been residual. The ratio of publicly rented housing was 6.7 per cent.

The housing system in Japan was essentially workable under unparalleled conditions of economic growth and social stability. Over the past few decades, however, the housing context has been transformed by a more volatile, uncertain economy and increasing social fragmentation. Many academics and popular discourses assert that the 1990s generated a turning point for Japan in terms of the overall restructuring of social, economic, political and institutional orders. The housing system is no exception, and has indeed been central to the structure and effect of transformation. The so-called bubble economy, which began with the unprecedented rise in real estate and stock prices in the latter half of the 1980s, collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. Throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s, Japan experienced the worst recession of the post-war period, with an increasing social destabilization of the middle classes. The 1990s have become known as the ‘lost decade’ in Japan. When the bubble burst, land and housing prices fell sharply for the first time since the end of the war, and the security of residential property as an asset was fundamentally undermined (Forrest et al., 2003; Hirayama, 2003b).

Demographic composition has also been dramatically changing due to an unprecedented increase in the elderly and a drop in the fertility rate. While the proportion of conventional family households is in decline, single, elderly-only and couple-only households are increasing. As regards to politics, it has become difficult for the LDP to remain in power without forming reluctant coalitions with the other parties. Public faith in the state has been in decline and value systems have begun to unravel in tandem with the new social and economic realities the Japanese face. Consequently, the nature and function of household formation and the traditional housing system in Japan is undergoing a marked and fundamental transition.

Since the middle of the 1990s, the system of housing production and consumption has been increasingly deregulated, moving clearly towards a greater emphasis on market mechanisms (Hirayama, 2005; Oizumi, 2002). In an increasingly globalized economic environment, the housing system in Japan, as in many other countries, has been experiencing volatile economic conditions, greater social fragmentation and pressure to cut back on social spending and public subsidies. In context of the broader structure of change, there have been similar trends between Japan and other industrialized countries in terms of attempts to promote market-based housing provision. This does not mean that there is a convergence in housing systems among industrialized societies including Japan. The interaction of broader trends and indigenous local contexts in each society will lead to a more diversified variety of housing systems and it is expected that the nature of Japan’s housing system will not be normalized by globalizing forces but will maintain its distinctiveness.

As housing has been the corner stone of the social mainstream, a catalyst of economic growth and the basis for social and welfare relationships, volatility in the housing market, fragmentation of households and value systems, and the growing demographic imbalance between young and old, have put the housing system under considerable strain and begun to test sustainability. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, after more than a decade of economic insecurity and stagnation, the government has begun to take more radical steps in social and economic policies. Housing is again at the centre of transitional initiatives to revive Japanese cities, elevate the global status of the capital (Saito and Thornley, 2003), and revitalize the economy through increased marketization and reconstruction (Hirayama, 2005).

Housing and social transition in Japan

Housing research in the international academic arena has been developed and dominated mainly by western-based researchers, and so housing theories and empirical research have developed in terms of western norms. The experiences of Japan as well as other non-western industrialized countries, however, demonstrate considerable diversity among modern housing systems and the ways in which housing is intertwined with broader processes of social and economic change. In most cases of comparative housing research led by western researchers, the housing situations in non-western societies have been tacitly characterized as ‘unique’, ‘enigmatic’, ‘exceptional’, ‘ethnic’, ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘lagging cases’, and been seen as useful as long as they reinforce dominant theories.

Although there has been a growing body of housing research and literature within Japan, like many industrialized societies outside the occident, it has been largely ignored unless it has been expressed in English or appeared in European and North American literatures. The specific consideration of housing and social change in Japan in English has been dominated by historical approaches or an emphasis on Japan’s special architectural and urban characteristics. Normative comparative understanding of Japanese housing systems and practices remain largely undeveloped. Critically, in understanding the increasing diversity of housing systems in the modern world, comparative approaches must be more diversified, based on insights on housing practices and networks in each society, and grounded in indigenous context.

Beyond housing, there is little consensus on how to approach the analysis of social change in Japan more generally. Western models of interpretation of Japanese society have arguably been ethnocentric, based on assumptions about social structures and subjectivities. Models like those of Nakane Chie (1973) of the ‘Vertical Society’, Ruth Benedict’s (1947) ‘Moralist’ model and Chalmers Johnson’s (1982) ‘Developmental State’ continue to exercise influence despite empirical and theoretical flaws and the scale of social and economic change in Japan in recent decades. Within Japan, discourses of ‘Nihonjinron’ or theories of Japaneseness, which emphasize the unique aspects of Japanese culture, have until recent years also dominated perceptions of social processes, and while some have been critical of exclusivist currents (Dale, 1986), others have identified the benefits of applying an approach free of the universalism and ‘pervasive rationalism of western social thinking’ (Clammer, 1995).

This volume analyses housing in the case of Japan with the aim of contributing to the de-construction of the dominant norm in housing studies and the diversification of the understanding of relationships between housing and social change. Perspectives will be drawn together from Japan-based authors engaging with Japanese society in terms of housing as one of its most central and dynamic elements, and central to contemporary issues concerning social change and emerging social inequalities. Our approach reflects debates that are currently being played out within the Japanese policy sphere and academic forum with particular reflexivity to comparative theoretical discourses concerning housing and society, and political and economic developments globally. The main purpose of this book is to consider different elements of the housing system and different aspects of related social change in Japan in context of their implications for understanding housing and social transformation in general as well as the consequences for Japanese society itself.

Western political-economists have focused on recent social change in Japan in terms of reform of the institutional structures which maintain the core character of ‘Japanese economic nationalism’ (Schaede and Grimes, 2003), while social theorists have focused on the effects of economic change on consumption and patterns of identification (Clammer, 1995, 1997). Our approach to social change in Japan, by focusing on housing as a point of interaction between macro socioeconomic forces and micro subjective relations, incorporates structural elements as well as social relationships and identities. Each chapter deals with different elements of the housing and social system, from individual, family and cultural processes to policy, political economy and state responses. Moreover, each chapter engages with theories and literatures derived both within and without Japan.

In advanced industrialized societies, housing defines social relationships and signifies the class and status of the household or neighbourhood. Housing and the home is a source of identity and identification (Rapoport, 1981) and has been emphasized as a critical locale for the ‘self’ and ontological security (Saunders, 1990). Furthermore, housing shapes economic relationships between individuals, households, institutions and the state, especially where family-owned properties constitute a household’s largest investment and asset, and reservoir for individual and family welfare exchanges and services. The housing system also mediates the relationship between capital, the most mobile element of the economic sphere, and land, the least mobile (Stephens, 2003), and thus links domestic economic processes with national and international ones.

Japan’s system of housing is particularly central to economic development as well as family welfare, employment, security, inequality and social-class relations – perhaps more so than any other advanced industrialized economy. Indeed, Japan’s brand of capitalism and modernity is peculiar by western expectations, which offers substantial opportunities to examine the relationships between housing and society in conditions which contrast substantially with those assumed in mainstream housing and urban studies (Ronald, 2004).

‘Transition’ is an important way of considering social processes and the dynamics of modernity, and how different elements of the social system interact and develop. During conditions of turbulence the Japanese government has in the past turned to housing policy as a means to stabilize families and influence economic recovery and growth. In the early post-war era, catching up with the economies and societies of the West was the main objective of social and economic policies. Since the collapse of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, however, the direction of policy and social development has become unclear and ‘fragmentation’, ‘confusion’ and ‘anxiety’ have become the zeitgeist watchwords, while the government has begun to rally around ‘marketization’ and ‘deregulation’ as solutions to apparent crisis. As ‘transition’ also implies a state of transformation to an undefined future state, it is particularly apt in consideration of the state of the Japanese housing and social system at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

For early post-war generations, housing provided stability and, due to the expansion of home ownership, a means for families to accumulate substantial capital assets. Since the 1990s, however, the natures of housing markets, global economic pressures and changes in employment structures have led to increasing instability. The vicissitudes of the Japanese housing market have become entangled with global patterns of volatility, instability and transformation. Japan stands on a unique axis as a mature industrialized economy with modernized social and economic structures and institutions similar to western societies, but also as a non-western, culturally distinct society located at the heart of the Asian politicaleconomic nexus. Japan’s position in the world economy and its growing integration with East Asian economies has mediated a specific pattern of development in recent decades where housing markets and housing investments are playing an increasing part in the security of households, bolstering economic growth and the restructuring of markets and finance.

The nature and pattern of social transformation in Japan, therefore, provides the opportunity to gain critical and substantial insights into the effects of globalization and social change on a specific housing system and society. How Japan is changing has become a central topic of socio-economic analyses as Japan resisted global rules for its domestic markets for decades and appears to be continuing to attempt to manage the effects of globalization via practices of ‘guided markets’ and ‘managed competition’ (Schaede and Grimes, 2003). Even Japan’s recent renewed commitment to restructuring, deregulation and the principles of neoliberalism, appears constrained by bureaucratic processes and conflict between the conservative and more radical elements within the ruling political elite.

How local elements interact with globalization is largely unpredictable and the forces of globalization, whether they are ideological, social or economic, are leading to different types of developments in different parts of each society. The effects of wider changes on the housing situation are thus subject to the social, economic, political and institutional contexts of particular countries, and Japan has demonstrated some specific and peculiar outcomes in relation to the housing sphere. Essentially, the Japanese housing system is undergoing drastic changes due to the increasing uncertainty of economic conditions and the fragmentation of the social structure, and its new direction is unclear at present. More universally, the combination of broader changes and indigenous contexts are leading to the production of more diversified housing systems. As a new housing system emerges in Japan, it will be influenced by wider trends but with localized effects, and will move along a new trajectory radically divorced from the earlier context of policy and system development. What is increasingly apparent, and what is a central message of this book, is that housing matters and has become critical in the shaping of socio-economic relationships and changes at multiple levels across and beyond Japanese society.

Examining the housing system

This book considers the dynamic relationship between the housing system and social transition in terms of numerous elements and perspectives. Each chapter deals with a particular aspect of housing and change in Japan and can be read as an individual paper in its own terms. However, there are a number of key phenomena that are consistently addressed in determining the post-war trajectory of housing and society. Rapid economic growth and urbanization have been fundamental contextual elements, as well as the growth of the company system, political stability and the formation of a middle-class social mainstream and ‘standard family’ model.

In the post-economic-bubble environment of the twenty-first century there are three critical dimensions which have become more definitive in shaping social changes. The first is demographic, as Japan has begun to demonstrate the effects of societal ageing (the over-65-year-old age group accounted for 19.5 per cent of the total population in 2004) and declining fertility (the fertility rate, indicating how many children an average woman is expec...