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Paper short abstract

The paper analyzes how the Japan Productivity Center used various types of resources to deplete the basis of mobilization for the radical labor movement from the early 1960s through the 1970s reflecting on the impact this had on social movement activity more generally.

Paper long abstract

The paper discusses how the radical part of the Japanese labor union movement was coopted and how striking disappeared from its repertoire of contention. The Japanese labor movement was dominated by a relatively radical labor federation, Sōhyō, from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Correlating with the decrease of social movement activity from the mid-1970s, however, labor unions increasingly refrained from strike activity. This change went together with a shift of the center of gravity of the labor movement from the more radical Sōhyō unions to labor unions embracing cooperative labor relations. In the paper, I analyze the activity of the Japan Productivity Center, a foundation aiming to “modernize labor relations”. In the language of the JPC, this meant excluding radical labor movement leaders and coopting and controlling the union rank and file.

I analyze how the JPC manipulated various types of resources and drew on different social fields to weaken the radical part of the labor movement and deplete its resource base of mobilization. Economists, mostly informed by developmentalist ideas (Bai Gao) provided academic legitimization and arguments to the JPC. In academia, they stood in opposition to Marxist scholars supporting the radical labor movement. Based on developmentalist arguments about the progress of the Japanese economy during the high-growth era and the ideal form of labor relations, the JPC developed a program of ideological schooling based on nationalism and company identity for labor unions aimed at stripping the radical labor movement of its legitimacy. Paralleling this ideological effort, the JPC built extensive networks among conservative union leaders, foremen and other workplace leaders and managers. These were utilized to combine ideological schooling with targeted wage discrimination against radical union leaders and members ousting them from key companies and industry federations in the private sector from the mid-1960s through the 1970s.

While most scholars, tend to see the labor movement as distinct and unrelated to new social movements like the environmental movement, the paper argues that the labor movement set the precedent for similar processes of coopting and excluding radical elements in other fields.