ABSTRACT
This chapter uses document collection, participatory observation, interviews with public officials and local stakeholders, and informal conversations with San’ya residents between July 2018 and March 2020 to analyze San’ya’s ongoing transformation. Building on the literature on local variations in welfare provision, it conceptualizes San’ya as a distinct local welfare sphere that sheds light on the socio-spatial heterogeneity of the changing Japanese welfare regime. San’ya has developed forms of public social security provision for day laborers that are specific to the area. Japan’s postwar welfare regime has been based on the principle of “welfare through work.” The Japanese welfare regime has long been found to be highly fragmented in terms of a broad variety of formal and informal, public and private means of social security provision. San’ya’s trajectory illustrates how the principle of “welfare through work” has been deeply engrained in the postwar Japanese welfare regime far beyond the realm of regular employment.
