ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the core of the Japanese model was characterized by a stable style of labor management, which rested on lifelong employment, seniority wage escalation system, and company-based trade unions among big businesses. The Japanese model of company-based trade unions did not resist the introduction of new technologies in work places and helped to maintain Japan's industrial global competitive power despite the appreciation of the yen. In addition, the privatization of three state-owned enterprises in 1985, Japan National Railways (JNR), Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT), and the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation, was a typical neoliberal policy which dealt a heavy blow against traditionally militant trade unions in the public sector. Feminization of the labor market mobilized masses of women to workplaces without social arrangements to facilitate marriage, childbirth, and child raising and, together with severe working conditions, caused a sharp decline in the birth rate per woman in Japan.
