Collusion and collaboration

The early Meiji years were a transitional period in the development of employer–employee relations in Japan. The gradual emergence of larger-scale, factory-based industries presented new problems and a new environment for management-worker relations, but many widely accepted precepts from earlier times persisted, and the old legal dictates governing institutions such as guilds, apprenticeship and trafficking in humans (jinshin baibai) were only gradually removed. By the late 1870s businessmen were complaining about the ‘confused’ state of employment relations and excessive worker mobility, which they contended were endangering their prospects of prosperity, and Gordon’s work has shown how many male workers appeared to lack the discipline and commitment required by their employers. ¹ While the business community was not united on how to respond to these concerns, there was a degree of unity on the fact that they needed to be addressed. In the absence of substantive legislation, and also in the conviction that it was not necessarily the role of the state to address some of the most immediate labour issues, employers initiated collective moves to strengthen their position vis-à-vis their workers. Such action was particularly conspicuous in the textile industries, which were fast becoming the largest employers in the mechanised industrial sector, and where, as we have seen, problems of high turnover and competition for labour became increasingly acute from the 1890s. The success of many of these collective strategies is debatable, but controlling the labour market remained a key objective of employer associations in both silk and cotton production.