ABSTRACT
As Chapter 4 shows, Japan has played a pro-active role in the globalization of production (Hatch and Yamamura, 1996; Hasegawa and Hook, 1998). This strategy has had significant reciprocal dynamics, in the shape of the ‘hollowing out’ of Japanese production (Hasegawa and Hook, 1998: Eades et al., 2000) and of pressure on companies within Japan to reduce the cost of production (Ohmae, 1995). Companies therefore are attempting to reduce the costs of labour in the Japanese workforce by increasing the segmentation of the Japanese workforce (Chapters 5 and 7). Although equal opportunities legislation, passed to meet UN commitments, has been passed, companies have generally restructured their labour forces in ways that institutionalize the secondary status of many female regular employees (see Chapter 6). Non-regular employment, in the form of part-time and temporary contract work, has expanded, with the new jobs largely filled by women, who are increasingly entering the workforce, but under conditions very different to those typically enjoyed by male regular employees (see Chapter 7). This has been facilitated by government deregulation of employment in Japan (Araki, 1994, 1998, 1999). However, the government and corporations are not the only actors in the Japanese, or any other, political economy. We need also to consider organized actors outside the state and business.
