ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the tremendous change has occurred over the lost decades, in public mood, socioeconomic practice, and state policy. The chapter begins with the workplace and moves on to address matters of gender and social equality, with brief mention of education and demography, addresses the topics more fully by Seike Atsushi in on demography and Kariya Takehiko in on the Japanese education system. The discourse of socioeconomic deadlock and decline ranges across several related topics: employment systems and corporate management; the situation of youth in education and the transition to their working lives; the situation of women in the labor force and in families; the decline in birth rates, the ageing of society, and the plight of the elderly; and a rise in economic or social inequality. A purported rise in economic and social inequality is another aspect of the social-industrial complex of lost-decade problems that merits consideration.
