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Japanese Labor Economics as Economic Analysis

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The Labor Economies of Japan and the United States. By EvansRobertJr. New York: Praeger, 1971. xix, 277 pp. $17.50.
Economic Development and the Labor Market in Japan. By TairaKoji. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. xviii, 282 pp. $10.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

M. Bronfenbrenner
M. Bronfenbrenner
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

A review article on two books, each of which proposes to apply standard economic anlaysis to an aspect of economic life (labor markets) and a society (Japan) where years of conventional wisdom has suggested that such analysis may be out of place. Robert Evans, Jr.'s Labor Economies of Japan and the United States compares numerous aspects of the allegedly impersonal labor market of the United States; he finds the differences surprisingly small and the parallels surprisingly large. Koji Taira's Economic Development and the Labor Market in Japan is primarily a series of studies in the quantitative economic history of Japan, concentrating upon the labor market. The two books overlap to a great extent, and combine to question if not overthrow the anti-economic notion that standard analysis is out of place in dealing with labor problems even in a country with the anti-economic traditions of pre-Meiji Japan.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , May 1972 , pp. 605 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1972

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References

1 Their most representative work is Industrial Democracy (London: Longmans, 1894)Google Scholar.

2 See the four volume History of Labor in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1918–1935) with Commons as principal editorGoogle Scholar.

3 This and the remaining quotations in this paragraph are from Selig Perlman's influential and authoritative generalization of Wisconsin, doctrine, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1928), pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

4 Marxism may also be credited with major influence upon this branch of scholarship. Friedrich Engels' Misery of the English Wording Classes in 1844 comes to mind, although it antedates the collaboration between Marx and Engels, and although its comparisons are temporal (with pre-industrial conditions) radier than spatial (across geographic frontiers). After die publication of Capital, discussion of comparative labor markets placed great stress on confirming (or disconfirming) the Marxian thesis of “increasing misery of the proletariat” (in various interpretations) as capitalism developed.

5 This was the view of Professor Perlman, the reviewer's senior colleague (at Wisconsin) during most of the Occupation period. Perlman was particularly disappointed that some of his prize students interpreted his prize doctrines as justifying the imposition of Samuel Gompers' ghost upon Japan.

6 For a drastically different interpretation of the infighting within the Labor Division, the reader may turn to the (privately printed) monographs of Richard L. G. Deverall, successively director of SCAP's labor-education program and A.F.L. representative in Tokyo. These include Red Star over Japan (Calcutta, 1952), ch. 2–4Google Scholar , and The Great Seduction (Tokyo, 1953), ch. 13–15Google Scholar.

7 The “diaperology” text on Japan is Benediet, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946)Google Scholar.

8 Levine, op. cit. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958); Abegglen, op. cit. (New York: Free Press, 1958).