ABSTRACT
There has been a resurgence of interest in issues of social inequality in Japan, beginning in the 1990s. Popular books describing the increased level of income inequality and the barriers to mobility have become bestsellers. Toshiaki Tachibanaki, a noted economist, argues in his book, Japan’s Economic Inequality (1998), that the extent of income inequality in Japan has risen sharply and has even reached a level equivalent to that of the United States. Toshiki Sato, a sociologist, claims in his book, Japan as an Unequal Society (2000), that entry into upper white-collar employment has become more closed since the 1990s. The public perception of and concern about inequality has recently showed a dramatic increase. An opinion survey conducted by the Mainichi newspaper reports that about two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the statement: “Japan is becoming an unequal society where children’s occupational and income attainment is determined by parents’ income and family environment.”1 Similarly, the great majority (75 percent) of the respondents to a national survey on life trajectory agreed with the statement that income inequality in Japan is too large.2 The survey also shows that the responses vary by education and social class. University graduates and the professional-managerial class are the least likely to agree with the statement, and those with a high school education or less and the non-skilled manual working class are the most likely to agree that income inequality is too large in Japan (Ishida 2008).
