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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Gordon, Andrew. The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Main Argument: Gordon's main argument in this readable, strongly researched account is that the postwar Japanese labor system endured not because of innate economic superiority or better treatment for its workers but thanks to the concerted operation of oppressive political and ideological practices. These practices created a gyroscopic hegemony that was well able to adapt to changing conditions and that was more durable than many commentators in the 1990s realized, but at the same time, its emergence was not a foregone conclusion; alternatives existed.
Historiographical Engagement: Gordon's main sources are the company and union archives of Nippon Kôkan (NKK), as well as interviews with many of the people involved in the events he describes conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Chapters 1-6: Argument, Sources, Examples In these chapters Gordon chronicles the rebirth of Japan and of NKK from the utter devastation of 1945 to the heady days of 1959, when a massive general strike in the steel industry galvanized unions and management, both recognizing that the outcome would be crucial for the future shape of labor relations. Gordon notes that particularly before SCAP's "reverse course" labor unions were accustomed to taking radical action, and that this tradition of militant activism continued in shop-floor activism through the 1950s. Management, initially on the defensive, sought to reassert control principally through campaigns to increase worker productivity and, in cooperation with the state, to re-suture unions to their companies by anchoring the right to strike in the exhaustion of "good faith efforts." At the same time, at the behest of workplace leaders, NKK put in place a companywide QC (quality control) movement and matched it among workers' families with the New Life movement, which sought to educate worker's wives on how to be "modern housewives" who could provide the respite of home for their working husbands. Unions too tried to socialize workers outside of the workplace as part of their demands for higher wages, reforms to worker status, and greater transparency in worker pay as well as more control in the workplace. Ultimately, the 1959 strike in particular was determined by the greater ability of steel industry management to cooperate with each other compared to the weaker ability of each steel company union to stick it out in the strike in solidarity rather than be tempted away by a relatively paltry "base up" (increase in base pay). The unions were remade from within as cooperative unions with the theoretical right of advice and consent but the practical right of telling members what management wanted, with enduring consequences for Japanese democracy at large.
Chapters 7-10: Argument, Sources, Examples Having won the decisive battle in the struggle, management at NKK spent the next 30 years tinkering with the management-cooperative union relationship so as to maintain as much as possible worker support for the company. These efforts had little success at the affective level according to surveys, but at the practical level, the creation of companywide, mandatory QC groups and the maintenance of the semi-fiction of permanent employment (employment is guaranteed in principle, but not pay level or length of employment) did little to increase worker support for the company or for the union. At the same time, economic exigency and changing social conditions required the remaining workers to work harder and longer for less effective wages, leaving them even less time outside work from which to form effective opposition to the company or the union. Gordon in particular shows how the changes wrought at the beginning of the era of cooperative unions were naturalized throughout society by the institutionalization of gendered norms of wage-work, which have since been challenged in a limited but not revolutionary capacity by Japanese women. In his conclusion, written in the late 1990s, Gordon argues that the very adaptability of Japan's corporate hegemony will allow it to endure longer than most would predict.
Critical assessment: This is an excellent, readable (by which I mean, very light on theory), and informative book; I'd read Gordon's history of modern Japan in undergrad, and would unhesitatingly teach from it, and would do the same for this book as well. I particularly appreciate Gordon's insistence that the current Japanese labor system was not a predetermined outcome, but rather the product of specific actions taken by specific people under specific conditions. This is no more than good historiography, but Gordon's combination of sources gives it a particular verve, and his linkage of labor and social norms is insightful--in some ways, this to me is a historical complement to T.J. Pempel's Regime Shift, which looks at some of the same phenomena from a political science perspective. In light of that book and of the class for which I read it, my one question for Andrew Gordon would be, What does "democracy" mean?
I can answer that question based on my own reading of Gordon (i.e. like just about everyone he follows Maruyama Masao's vision of 'democracy' as a society of politically active, independent-minded citizens), but he never defines the term in text, and while I agree with him and with Maruyama to an extent it also seems important to remember that to some extent rather than being illiberal and undemocratic Japan got the democracy it chose for itself, one featuring low citizen input in return for high economic output. Certainly many features of the Japanese political system and the socioeconomic order it created now look inadequate, perhaps more so than ever before, and Maruyama ultimately lost his famous wager on democracy as he defined it. But the Japanese are still citizens, not subjects, and the relation of work and democracy is not necessarily fixed in any country.
Further reading: Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan and Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (volumes 1 and 2 of his so-called "labor trilogy"), Fabricating Consumers (forthcoming), Nihonjin ga shiranai Matsuzaka mejaa kakumei
Main Argument: Gordon's main argument in this readable, strongly researched account is that the postwar Japanese labor system endured not because of innate economic superiority or better treatment for its workers but thanks to the concerted operation of oppressive political and ideological practices. These practices created a gyroscopic hegemony that was well able to adapt to changing conditions and that was more durable than many commentators in the 1990s realized, but at the same time, its emergence was not a foregone conclusion; alternatives existed.
Historiographical Engagement: Gordon's main sources are the company and union archives of Nippon Kôkan (NKK), as well as interviews with many of the people involved in the events he describes conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Chapters 1-6: Argument, Sources, Examples In these chapters Gordon chronicles the rebirth of Japan and of NKK from the utter devastation of 1945 to the heady days of 1959, when a massive general strike in the steel industry galvanized unions and management, both recognizing that the outcome would be crucial for the future shape of labor relations. Gordon notes that particularly before SCAP's "reverse course" labor unions were accustomed to taking radical action, and that this tradition of militant activism continued in shop-floor activism through the 1950s. Management, initially on the defensive, sought to reassert control principally through campaigns to increase worker productivity and, in cooperation with the state, to re-suture unions to their companies by anchoring the right to strike in the exhaustion of "good faith efforts." At the same time, at the behest of workplace leaders, NKK put in place a companywide QC (quality control) movement and matched it among workers' families with the New Life movement, which sought to educate worker's wives on how to be "modern housewives" who could provide the respite of home for their working husbands. Unions too tried to socialize workers outside of the workplace as part of their demands for higher wages, reforms to worker status, and greater transparency in worker pay as well as more control in the workplace. Ultimately, the 1959 strike in particular was determined by the greater ability of steel industry management to cooperate with each other compared to the weaker ability of each steel company union to stick it out in the strike in solidarity rather than be tempted away by a relatively paltry "base up" (increase in base pay). The unions were remade from within as cooperative unions with the theoretical right of advice and consent but the practical right of telling members what management wanted, with enduring consequences for Japanese democracy at large.
Chapters 7-10: Argument, Sources, Examples Having won the decisive battle in the struggle, management at NKK spent the next 30 years tinkering with the management-cooperative union relationship so as to maintain as much as possible worker support for the company. These efforts had little success at the affective level according to surveys, but at the practical level, the creation of companywide, mandatory QC groups and the maintenance of the semi-fiction of permanent employment (employment is guaranteed in principle, but not pay level or length of employment) did little to increase worker support for the company or for the union. At the same time, economic exigency and changing social conditions required the remaining workers to work harder and longer for less effective wages, leaving them even less time outside work from which to form effective opposition to the company or the union. Gordon in particular shows how the changes wrought at the beginning of the era of cooperative unions were naturalized throughout society by the institutionalization of gendered norms of wage-work, which have since been challenged in a limited but not revolutionary capacity by Japanese women. In his conclusion, written in the late 1990s, Gordon argues that the very adaptability of Japan's corporate hegemony will allow it to endure longer than most would predict.
Critical assessment: This is an excellent, readable (by which I mean, very light on theory), and informative book; I'd read Gordon's history of modern Japan in undergrad, and would unhesitatingly teach from it, and would do the same for this book as well. I particularly appreciate Gordon's insistence that the current Japanese labor system was not a predetermined outcome, but rather the product of specific actions taken by specific people under specific conditions. This is no more than good historiography, but Gordon's combination of sources gives it a particular verve, and his linkage of labor and social norms is insightful--in some ways, this to me is a historical complement to T.J. Pempel's Regime Shift, which looks at some of the same phenomena from a political science perspective. In light of that book and of the class for which I read it, my one question for Andrew Gordon would be, What does "democracy" mean?
I can answer that question based on my own reading of Gordon (i.e. like just about everyone he follows Maruyama Masao's vision of 'democracy' as a society of politically active, independent-minded citizens), but he never defines the term in text, and while I agree with him and with Maruyama to an extent it also seems important to remember that to some extent rather than being illiberal and undemocratic Japan got the democracy it chose for itself, one featuring low citizen input in return for high economic output. Certainly many features of the Japanese political system and the socioeconomic order it created now look inadequate, perhaps more so than ever before, and Maruyama ultimately lost his famous wager on democracy as he defined it. But the Japanese are still citizens, not subjects, and the relation of work and democracy is not necessarily fixed in any country.
Further reading: Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan and Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (volumes 1 and 2 of his so-called "labor trilogy"), Fabricating Consumers (forthcoming), Nihonjin ga shiranai Matsuzaka mejaa kakumei