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Social Change in Postwar Japanese Society
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11784 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,016 Words |
| Author
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Hideo Ibe
Hideo Ibe is President of the Japan Foundation for Research
and Development of Pension Scheme. |
Although much attention has been given to Japan's postwar economic development, its social changes are not so often discussed. Yet these are the key to understanding economic performance. As the economy developed from agriculture to industry, a society of farmers and private managers was replaced with an employer-based urban life-style. Nuclear families often consisting of parents and one child took the place of traditional extended families. The ie (clan) system that had existed before the war has disappeared and long-cherished values of loyalty and filial piety have given way to the spirit of individualism.
The most striking change in postwar Japanese social structure is the disappearance of a rigid class society. Although differences in income have created several economic strata, an individual's aspirations are unrestricted. Ability and education - rather than birth, lineage, or family occupation - determine position. Previously, status was determined by class of origin, and upward mobility was exceedingly limited though possible. In those times, inherited status would determine morals, amount of education, and life-style. Clothing and language reflected social position. Today, economic position or class cannot be so easily determined from a person's outward appearance.
Japan had been a rigid society with extremely distinct classes since the Tokugawa period (1603-1867). In addition to the four main classes - samurai (warriors), farmers, craftsmen, and merchants - was a complex ranking system based on age and occupation. Remnants of this class society persisted through the Meiji period (1868-1912) when strict protocol governed relationships between parent and child, elder and younger, husband and wife, man and woman, landlord and farmer, and employer and employee.
In her classic study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), Ruth Benedict portrays Japan as a traditional class society that is fundamentally different from the democratic society of the United States. In Human Relationships in a Vertical Society Professor Chie Nakane divides societies into two types: those that determine position on the basis of qualification and education, and those in which class is based on birth, occupation and residence. Japanese society is classified according to the latter principle; Western society is based on the former. While an employer in the United States would be concerned only with his employee's qualifications, in Japan the employee would be expected to invest his entire personality into his company. In the former system, relations are on a horizontal plane, in the latter, seniority creates a strict
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