Organizer and Chair: Mary C. Brinton, University of Chicago
Discussant: Hiroshi Ishida, Tokyo University, Japan
Social inequality in contemporary urban Japanese society has been a curiously understudied issue. A strong image of meritocracy pervades popular beliefs, fueled in part by the paucity of "hard data" and empirical studies in either Japanese or Western social science that document the extent to which lower- or working-class Japanese parents can truly provide the social and financial resources for their children to get ahead in the highly competitive educational system and enter jobs in large, well-paying companies.
This panel addresses this lacuna by focusing on how Japanese working-class youth in particular fare at the high-school level and beyond. The panelists use both quantitative and qualitative data to explore the reproduction of class within the context of schooling and the youth labor market. Special attention is paid to the "post-bubble" era of the 1990s. During this period, manufacturing and other jobs that traditionally provided stable employment for a substantial proportion of the less-educated have moved overseas, and the domestic labor market has become more bifurcated into low-level service sector jobs on the one hand, and jobs in the high-technology and information sector on the other. We explore the implications of these developments for working class youth.
Reproducing Fraying Social Relations: Japanese Low-Level High Schools
David Slater, Sophia University
The role of education in the process of class formation and reproduction directs our attention to two areas of inquiry: (a) how individuals are redistributed within a class or occupational structure; and (b) the cultural values and dispositions that inform the aspirations and strategies distinctive to different segments of the population. This paper deals with the second of these issues in contemporary Japan. Many observers have noted the homologies of cultural structure that organize both the social relations within Japan's primary and secondary schools and the productive relations within its dominant adult institutions. This structure consists of a dynamic tension between what is often referred to as "groupist" social patterns that define the institutional boundaries of Japanese society, and a more hierarchical structure of authority within a given institution. Schooling has thus contributed to the social order and has legitimated attempts at social control within adult society by preparing students to base their primary social identity on group membership and to respect vertical relations of authority. But as Japan tries to rebound from a period of slowed economic growth, many places, and especially schools at the bottom of the finely stratified secondary school ladder, are showing signs of stress as the consensus supporting collective social identity and hierarchy is increasingly more difficult to secure and maintain. This research attempts to outline how the expectations and strategies of students at two Tokyo metropolitan high schools are shaped by the new permutations of the logic underlying the cultural structure. This logic presents particular occupational futures to the students at these working-class schools.
Class Differences in Educational Opportunity in Japan
Masao Watanabe, Hitotsubashi University, Japan
All complex societies are characterized to a varying extent by the unequal distribution of material and non-material social resources. Japan is no exception. But social class inequality is treated in a rather peculiar way within Japanese academic circles. Backed by the widespread popular belief that Japanese society is unique in its "classlessness," Japanese academics have been quite successful in marginalizing discussion of the concept of class in general and of patterns of class differences in Japan in particular. As a result, class analysis is often ignored or denied by social scientists of all persuasions in Japan.
However, ironically, issues driving class analysis are increasingly becoming evident as the Japanese economy struggles with extended recession. Feelings of unease and unfairness are growing after the burst of the "bubble economy." The aim of this paper is to outline patterns of social inequality in contemporary Japanese society, especially those associated with educational attainment, that demand engagement with the notion of class. I use statistical data to trace social class differences in participation and performance in the educational system, with particular attention to the recruitment of graduates into the most privileged occupational strata. Through this preliminary examination, it is possible to reframe the discussion that has heretofore represented Japan as a "credential society" (gakuseki shakai) in the much wider context of social class analysis.
Managing Class: Japanese High Schools at Work
Mary C. Brinton, University of Chicago
Japan's educational system has been praised as highly meritocratic and efficient by its admirers and criticized as highly inegalitarian by its detractors. In the past few years, Japanese high schools in particular have been lauded by American educational policymakers for effecting a smooth transition into the labor market for those high school seniors who do not go on to higher education. This paper critically examines how the high school-work transition is managed in Japan by raising three central questions: (1) What are the positive outcomes (e.g., low youth unemployment rates) attributed to the school-work guidance process in Japanese high schools by admirers? To what extent can high schools really take credit for these outcomes?; (2) How unique is this system to Japan in contrast with other East Asian countries, and how has it changed with the contraction of the economy in the early 1990s and the movement of low-skill jobs to other parts of Asia? (3) What do Japanese teachers responsible for high school student guidance perceive as the advantages and disadvantages of the system?
To answer these questions, I draw on a survey of Japanese high school seniors' early work experiences as well as extensive interviews carried out at 20 industrial and low-level general high schools in Kanagawa prefecture. The result is a much more complex reality, where individual students' occupational desires are often traded for aggregate stability and "efficiency" in placement into the economy.