Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies

Institutional and semi-institutional networks between employers and educational institutions have been noted as important mechanisms in the transition from school to work in Japan. At the university level, long-term trust relationships between universities and companies were important ties in the transition of science graduates. During the 1980s and early 1990s, institutionally embedded alumni networks also formed a distinctive transition path between high-ranked universities and large corporations for non-science graduates. However, the lost decade of economic stagnation has been accompanied by changes in the structures of the labor market and the transition process of university graduates. In recent years, the institutional and semi-institutional linkages between universities and corporations show strong tendencies toward disbandment. This paper analyzes these structural transformations in the transition from university to work in Japan. The current deinstitutionalization tendencies are the result of new forms of behavior among the corporate actors as well as the university graduates. These structural changes are not only a result of the economic stagnation and the falling demand for university graduates in the labor market, but also are a reflection of changes in the social values and attitudes of the younger generation of university graduates.

After the fierce class struggles in the first postwar years, a societal model describing Japan as a general middle-class society with outstanding equality in opportunities and outcome became dominant. In recent years, a new societal model of Japan as a divided society has replaced this general middle-class model. Nonetheless, empirical research and comparative studies neither fully support a model of Japan as an exceptionally equal society from the 1960s onward nor do they show a fundamental transformation of contemporary Japan into a socially divided society. This paper argues that the sequence and timing of societal models of inequality in Japan since 1945 reflect the degree of resonance that societal models of inequality have in the lifeworlds of society.

Attitudes concerning social equality in Japan have two completely different sides. An equal income distribution is far more strongly supported in Japan than in any other advanced industrialized nation, but support for gender equality regarding family roles and the labor market is ...

The Japanese surplus in trade and foreign direct investment with Western economies has been a contentious issue in recent years. Switzerland is, however, an exception as it has managed to maintain a small trade surplus and a balanced foreign direct investment sheet with Japan. What are the factors behind the Swiss success story in Japan? This article attempts to find a partial answer to this question by analyzing the recruitment and human resource management of Swiss lack of competitiveness and ignorance of the bulk of Western companies as the main factors behind the unbalanced investment and trade sheet.4 Both sides may have their points.