Social security (shakai hoken): income protection for workers

Although Japan first provided medical insurance to some workers in the 1920s, in line with Okochi's view that capitalists would support such moves to protect their own interests, the idea of providing basic minimum guarantees to all citizens in a number of livelihood areas did not take root in Japan until the postwar period. As indicated at the beginning of chapter 7, the Constitution of 1947 built in the compulsion to do so. Influenced by America's Social Security Act (1935), by the wartime Beveridge Report in the UK, by the ILO, and by the recommendations of WHO, Article 25 of the Constitution committed the government to providing social security in a number of areas. With a very limited base from which to start after the war, the government systematized and oversaw a range of private schemes that were already in place. One outcome of that approach was low portability and considerable variation in terms of the benefits offered by each system. By the early 1960s a framework was in place to ensure that all Japanese would have some measure of security in terms of general medical care, accidental injury, unemployment, and special needs in old age.

The government strengthened its commitment to social security and welfare in the 1970s. Tamai (2000) writes that promises made at the time resulted from political opportunism rather than a firm commitment to redistribute economic surplus or far-sighted planning.