IS THERE A ’JAPANESE-TYPE
WELFARE SOCIETY’?
Joji Watanuki
Abstract In the late 1970s ’the Japanese-type welfare society’ was proposed by the
ruling party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party. This paper examines the
background and content of this proposal. Without being enthusiastically committed to
the ’welfare state’, Japan, under continued rule by the LDP since 1955, has developed
social security institutions in an ad hoc way keeping pace with the growth of the
economy. However, facing the prospect of an unprecedented rapid aging of the
population, Japan has to find a way to balance the cost of social security with an
increase in the needs for it. The LDP’s answer to that was ’the Japanese-type welfare
society’ However, it has been found that there is no easy answer to the problem. It has
been noted in recent years that there is less talk of the ’Japanese type’ and more
introduction of concrete measures.
’Toward
Japanese-type welfare society’ became a favourite slogan of
Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party in the second half of the 1970s.
This slogan raised two sociologically interesting questions. First of all, why
’welfare society’ instead of ’welfare state’? In 1955, when the Liberal
Democratic Party was formed in Japan by merging two conservative parties,
three of its basic documents declared ’building a welfare state’ as one of its
target. Does this mean that after thirty years of economic growth and LDP
rule Japan is now entering into a higher stage beyond the ’welfare state’, the
’welfare society,’ in the sense used by William A. Robson (Robson 1976),
where society matches and supplements governmental action in promoting
welfare? Secondly, what is the meaning of ’Japanese-type’? Like discussions
on ’Japanese-type’ management, talking about ’Japanese-type’ welfare is
stimulating, but tricky. In order to answer these two questions, let me first
review the process of development of social security institutions in Japan.
a
l. Lagged social security but a high degree of
1960
equality - Japan between 1945 to
Between 1945 and 1960 Japan was definitely a laggard in developing social
security. In 1955 Japan was spending only 5.3% of its national income on
social security payments while at that time West- and North-European
countries were already allocating nearly 20% of their national income for that
purpose. Although the history of pension schemes and health insurance for
public servants and employees in Japan goes back to the pre-1945 period, the
creation of a comprehensive health insurance and pension scheme for all
citizens, including the self-employed, came as late as 1960. Moreover, the
benefits paid by this newly created part of social security institutions were
lower than what already existed. In other words, what was created at that time
and has essentially remained the same until now is not a unitary system of
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social security, but a patched-up system of discrete schemes with varied
provision of benefits. However, this lagged development is no surprise, on the
basis of Harold Wilensky’s explanatory scheme for the development of social
security (Wilensky 1975). Firstly, Japan was a poor nation in the 1950s.
Japan’s per capita GNP was only one tenth of the Swedish one and one fifth of
that of the United States at that time. Secondly, Japan was a young society in
terms of the age composition of the population. The ratio of those over 65
years old was only 5% in Japan in 1950, while in West- and North-European
countries that ratio was already 10% (Figure 1 ). Thirdly, among social
institutions other than social security, the Japanese family, in spite of the postwar reform of the inheritance law with the abolition of primogeniture by the
eldest son, was still functioning strongly in providing protection for the aged.
About half of the Japanese families in 1955 were three- generation families.
Taking senior parents over 65 years old, nearly 90% of them were living
together with their children, while comparative figures for 1961-62 in the
United Kingdom, United States and Denmark were reported as 42%, 28%
and 20% respectively (Koseisho 1970 : 35).
Figure I
Persons 65 Years Old and Over: Percent of Total
Population
(1850 - 2040)
Source: Keizai Kikakucho( 1982:4)
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Thus a low economic level, a smaller ratio of the aged in the population and
the persistence of the family can explain the low level of social security
development in the Japan of the 1950s. The question then is, what about the
LDP’s vow to build the ’welfare state’?
The LDP has continued to talk about promoting social security or social
security institutions and an overall health insurance and pension scheme was
actually created in 1960 under LDP rule. But the LDP has been cautious in the
use of the term ’welfare state’. When we check all policy speeches at the Diet2
made by successive Prime Ministers from 1955 until the present, all of whom
have been from the LDP, the term ’welfare state’, all in the context of
promoting it by the way, was used only three times, i.e. by Tanzan Ishibashi on
4 February 1957, Nobusuke Kishi on 11November 1957 and Hayato Ikeda on
30 January 1961. In all other policy speeches by Prime Ministers, including the
above persons, at the Diet the terms ’social security’ or ’social security
institutions’ were preferred to that of welfare state. Prime Minister Ikeda in
particular, with his ’income-doubling plan’, which starting in 1960, was
explicit in his belief that the improvement of social security and economic
growth were mutually interdependent. The more economic growth, the more
social security and vice versa.
‘catching-up’ of social security in the 1960s and 1970s
Japan the decade of the 1960s was that of sustained high economic
growth with an average annual growth rate of more than 10% in real terms,
the result of which was the triplication of the economy within a decade. Japan
had ceased to be a poor nation. Her GNP per capita had grown from US $800
in 1960 to US $1,900 in 1970. What happened to social security then? There
had certainly been an improvement in the level of social security benefits
throughout the 1960s precisely matching the rate of economic growth. The
amount of social security benefits had grown by roughly five times in current
value (i.e. three times in real value) corresponding with the growth of the GNP
in the 1960s. However, its ratio to national income remained roughly 6%
throughout the 1960s (Table 1). That is, the increase in social security benefits
was quite incremental and proportional to the growth of the GNP.
Incrementalism and proportionalism had been conspicuous characteristics of
governmental budget-making, especially for Japan during this period
(Campbell 1977). The governing LDP, especially under Mr. Sato who served
2. The
For
LDP President and Prime Minister from 1964 to 1972, had been cautious in
social security institutions. Mr. Sato used the term ’social
development’ instead of social security or welfare state. He included
everything from social security to regional development under social
development. As a matter of fact under his government the income gap
between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors had been narrowed through
massive expenditure to support agriculture, which contributed to the overall
maintenance of economic equality (Kabashima 1985 : 322-330). Various
governmental supports for agriculture, especially the rice price support
as
expanding
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scheme, contributed
productivity
protecting the farmers from the widening gap of
agriculture and non-agriculture. Thus agricultural
to
between
TableI
Trends
Source: Koseisho ( 1970)
of Social Security Payments
in Japan
( 1986).
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support in this period could be regarded as a kind of social security institution
geared to farmers in the vortex of rapid economic growth.
However, by the end of the 1960s various pressures for greater improvement
of social security institutions had accumulated. Without a change of party in
power and without commitment to any unitary and systematic ideal of the
welfare state, an improvement of discrete institutions of social security was
prepared by the bureaucrats and promoted by all political parties including
the LDP. This, of course, was attained with the background of sustained high
economic growth up until the first oil crisis of 1973. All this resulted in a series
of improvements in the early 1970s: introduction of childrens’ allowances
(1971), free medical care for the aged (1972) and substantial levelling of
pensions, especially for employees in the private sector (1973). After these
improvements, those who wanted to defend Japan against the criticisms of her
laggardness in social security started to argue that: 1 ) now Japan has a whole
set of social security institutions including children’s allowances; 2) as for the
level of pension benefits, the amount of pension given to average retired wage
earners reached a level equal to that of West- and North-European countries.
However, it has to be noted that: 1 ) the children’s allowance is given from the
third child only, and moreover, it is means-tested; 2) as for the amount of
pension, since self-employed people are under a separate system with a shorter
history, those retired people with a career in self-employment, either
continuously or partially, are getting far less benefit than the model pension
for average wage earners; 3) moreover, as the previous Figure 1 shows, in the
1970s Japan was still a young society and even if Japan’s pension benefit for an
average retired wage earner should have been equal to or, as sometimes
argued, even higher than those of West- or North-European countries, the
total cost of pensions would be far less. All those arguments in defence or
criticism of Japan’s improvement in social security during the 1970s were
not totally wrong. As a result of all these factors social security benefits in
Japan started to rise steadily in the 1970s, but not as explosively as is shown on
Table 2. The ratio of social security benefits to national income reached the
10% level in the middle of the 1970s and the 15% level in the middle of the
1980s. However, as Professor Tadashi Fukutake, the ex-Director of the Social
Development Research Institute (a semi-governmental body for research on
social security in Japan), observed, in West- and North-European countries,
’when the ratio of persons over 65 years old reached the level of 10%, social
security benefits usually reached roughly 20%’ (Fukutake 1983 : 69). Thus he
complains that Japan is still spending too little on social security.
3. The
’Japanese-type welfare society’
As early as the 1960s, when Japan was definitely a laggard in social security,
there were arguments justifying a low level of public social security using terms
such as ’Japanese-type social welfare’ or ’Japanese-type welfare state’,
asserting that in the case of Japan more security was provided by the family
and other private institutions than by governmental institutions.3However,
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Table 2
Household
Type of Persons 65 Years Old and Over
(percentages)
Source: Keizai Kikakucho (1980) for the figures of 1950 and
1965. Koseisho (1986) for those of 1970-1985.
such typifying term was used in the 1960s in official statements made in
political speeches, party or government documents. The most frequently used
phrase in this respect was the ’promotion of social security’ or ’development of
social security institutions’. This indicated that at the governmental level
’catching up’ was a target for Japan in this respect as well, and high economic
growth made it possible by incrementalism, even without a change in
no
government.
In the middle of the 1970s, i.e. after the institutional catching up of social
institutions in the early 1970s and lower economic growth after the
1973 oil crisis, the LDP politicians started to talk about ’welfare society’ and
’Japanese- type’. When we check the policy speeches by Prime Ministers at the
Diet in the 1970s, we find such phrases as the ’realisation of a welfare society’,
’Japanese-type welfare policy’ (Takeo Miki on 23 January 1976), ’authentic
welfare society’ (Miki on 21 January 1978) and ’Japanese-type welfare society’
with adjectives such as ’fair’, ’gracious’ and ’active’ (Masayoshi Ohira on 25
January 1979 and 25 January 1980). As for the meaning of welfare society,
Miki was most explicit when saying that it is ’the minimum security by the
government plus the spirit of self-help’. But this was simply the neoConservative idea of ’small government’ and, although he said this before
Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan, he did not make it clear what he meant by the
Japanese type. On this point Ohira was more explicit in his speeches. He
emphasised the role of the family as the basis of the ’Japanese-type welfare
society’ and the study group formed by him presented a 204-page report
security
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entitled ’How to Strengthen the Basis of Families’ in May 1980, shortly before
his sudden death. However, again it is nothing new, and nothing particularly
Japanese. The emphasis on the role of the family is common to Conservatism whether old or new. In a more systematic document prepared by the
government, the ’New Seven-Year Economic and Social Plan’, a feature of the
Japanese welfare society emphasised in addition to the family was that a more
positive role should be played by neighbourhood and community (Keizai
Kikakucho 1979 : 10-11). It stated that ’The further direction to be taken by
the Japanese economy and society, which have caught up with the level of
Europe and North America, is not to seek the model in advanced countries
but to seek the realisation of a Japanese type welfare society, so to speak,
where, based on self-help of individuals and solidarity of the family,
neighbourhood and community, efficient government guarantees appropriate
public welfare, thus utilising the creative vitality of the free economy’.
A document entitled ’Japanese-type Welfare Society’, published by the
LDP (Jiyuminshuto 1979), included an emphasis on the role of private
companies in providing social security to Japanese society in two senses. One
is the function fulfilled by Japanese life-long employment, seniority wage and
the lump-sum retirement allowance system of private companies in providing
security at successive stages of the life-cyle of wage earners. Another role to be
played by private companies, it was argued, is that of agents which offer
various kinds of security as commodities, starting with life insurance and
various personal social services. In this document the role of the family was
heavily emphasised, but those of neighbourhood and community are,
strangely enough, omitted completely. Further, in discussing the role of
private companies, the latter feature (i.e. private companies providing security
as a commodity) is not peculiar to Japan at all. The United States has been a
pioneer in this regard and, as a matter of fact, American insurance companies
have started to penetrate the Japanese market in selling a variety of security
commodities.
Thus the idea of a Japanese-type welfare society is rather confused. In
summary, it expected the three social institutions of the family, community
and company, to play a greater role in social security functions. In particular
discussions emphasis is placed on different institutions. And what is common,
when welfare society is mentioned, is that government expenditure for social
security is set at a lower level than in the welfare state. But, it was assumed or
hoped, that the total security functions fulfilled by governmental social
security institutions and other social institutions would be greater than a mere
’welfare state’ and the role of the family is commonly emphasised. Although
the family is a universal institution in all societies, what is peculiar to Japan in
comparison with other industrialised countries is the persistence of threegeneration families, i.e. a high ratio of the elderly living with their children.
The most recent figure for this is 64.6% in 1985 (Table 2), which is much
higher than that in the other industrialised countries of Europe and North
America, although, if we compare it with other less industrialised societies,
...
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this figure is not particularly high and therefore not a particularly Japanese
feature. But if we only compare industrialised societies, we can say that a high
ratio of elderly people living together with their children is peculiar to Japan,
and this is the Japanese advantage to be encouraged in order promote security
for the aged. However, as we can clearly see from Table 2, this asset for the
security of the aged has been constantly diminishing at the rate of 1 %
annually. This means that, by the end of this century, about half of the elderly
over 65 years in Japan will live by themselves. Moreover, experts warn that
there have been signs that the strain from co-living with aging parents has
increasingly become a burden for daughters-in-law who, according to East
Asian patrilineal societies like Japan, are expected to care for the aging
parents-in-law, especially in the absence of adequate public and voluntary
help for nursing care for the elderly. Caring for senile and/or bed-ridden
elderly people is tragically exhausting work. The Swedish type of welfare state
spends a great deal of money in building homes for the elderly and employing a
large number of public social workers to visit the elderly living in their homes.
In the British type of welfare state, greater effort is made by voluntary
organisations and workers to care for the elderly in their homes. The evidence
shows that in Japan too great a burden is placed on families to care for the
aged and this has already surfaced in a higher suicide rate of persons over the
age of 65 years, which is higher than that of Sweden, and episodic reports of
exhausted daughters, both natural and in-law, in caring for their parents.
Among the Japanese specialists on welfare for the aged, there has been
serious discussion on how to provide and finance personal social service for
the aged. On the one hand, if we want to follow the Swedish model of welfare
provision by a government agency, the expected cost for social security would
become astronomical because of the size of the population and the rapid pace
of aging.4 In this respect, we have to learn from Britain where communitybased activities reportedly function fairly well.
At this point neighbourhood and community, the second component of
’Japanese-type welfare society’, comes in. However, unlike the case of the
family, where we may partially rely on the remaining strength of Japanese
traditional family, it is difficult to say that neighbourhood and community are
particularly strong in contemporary urbanised Japan. As a matter of fact, the
LDP document mentioned above did not mention the role of neighbourhood
and community at all (Jiyuminshuto 1979). Strong neighbourhood and
community as a legacy of traditional society does not exist there to be utilised,
but needs to be created anew.
Concerning the role of the company in the Japanese-type welfare society,
too much emphasis on it carries a certain risk for the following reasons.
Firstly, not all wage earners have been given the privileges of life-long
employment, seniority wage system and large lump-sum retirement allowances. Those workers who move around, temporary and part-time workers,
are excluded from such security. Secondly, there is a difference in the level of
benefits provided by companies according to the size of the company.
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Excessive encouragement of company welfare would widen this gap. Thirdly,
with the prolongation of life expectancy more senior people want to work.
More jobs for senior people will have to be created, which will be difficult to
accommodate within the framework of the system hitherto of life-long
employment and seniority wage system which has been based on early
retirement.
4.
Epilogue
On this account we can conclude that no solid basis for a future perspective
for social security is found in the idea of ’Japanese-type welfare society’. With
the increase in the aged population, especially the bed-ridden or senile, the
family requires more and more back-up from outside, especially from public
personal social services. Neighbourhood and community solidarity are yet to
be recreated and encouraged. But the question is how? The Japanese
employment system is facing the necessity of transformation with the increase
in the aging population. As a matter of fact, the LDP itself, and recently two
Prime Ministers, Zenko Suzuki (as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1982) and
Yasuhiro Nakasone (as Prime Minister from 1982 to date), ceased to talk
about the ’Japanese type’. Mr. Suzuki, in his policy speech at the Diet, simply
emphasised the rapid aging of Japanese society and the necessity to be
prepared for it. The concrete measures he mentioned specifically, along with
reorganisation of the pension and medical care system for the aged, were
improvement of personal social services for the aged living in their own home,
without a mention of any ’Japanese type’ (26 January 1981 and 25 January
1982). Mr. Nakasone, who is an eloquent politician by Japanese standards,
used the rather strange adjective ’robust’ to apply to welfare and culture, and
called for ’building up robust culture and welfare’. He was preaching self-help
and solidarity, and encouraged voluntary activity and participation by more
people in various areas, including social welfare (24 January 1983). In his most
recent policy speech in connection with social security, he particularly
mentioned promotion of employment for the aged in a section on social
security (27 January 1986).
Both Suzuki’s and Nakasone’s speeches were dry and free from the term
’Japanese-type’. Their position is rather universal, i.e. common to neoConservative ideas of ’small government’. The final report by the Investigation Commission on Governmental Reform, which was created under the
Suzuki Cabinet and which completed its mission under the Nakasone Cabinet,
set the target of restraining the total ratio of tax and social security
disbursement to a level much lower than the current European level of more
than 50% of the national income, in spite of a predicted rapid increase of the
aged (that ratio in Japan was 36% in 1985). Interestingly that report kept the
word welfare society, but the adjective attached to it was changed from
’Japanese-type’ to ’active’.
Going back to the two questions raised at the start of this paper: as for the
second question, the proposer, the LDP itself, has not been adhering to
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’Japanese-type’. Too much emphasis especially on the role of private
companies to which one belongs as a source of welfare will result in the
negation of the principle of universality, which has been regarded as one of the
keystones of social security institutions. Concerning the first question, what
the LDP had in mind is a ’small government’, collecting less than 50% of the
national income in both taxes and social security disbursement. Faced with
the expected growth of the ratio of the aged and the concomitant increasing
needs for social security, especially for personal social services, what has
become a magic term for an apparent solution to two conflicting factors is the
’welfare society’ instead of ’welfare state’. However, government responsibility for the provision of a minimum basis is not denied by the LDP. As
mentioned above, the use of the term ’welfare state’ has been rather rare, but
promotion of social security or social security institutions has been
emphasised repeatedly both by the government and the LDP, and this will
remain so in future. But faced with the daunting prediction of a rapidly aging
society, no-one, not even opposition parties, can be sure that the state can take
all the responsibility to fulfil the needs arising from the hyper-aged society of
Japan beyond 2000 A.D. Stripped of the moral preaching of self-help and
solidarity, what is meant by welfare society is a strategy of welfare provision
by a combination of government measures, informal sectors such as family,
neighbourhood, voluntary associations and market mechanisms, which has
become a strategy common to all welfare states. Behind the calls for a ’welfare
society’ instead of a ‘welfare state’, there is the Japanese Conservatives’ wish to
keep Japan’s currently smaller government into the future too. Can Japan do
that, in the coming hyper-aged society? That is yet to be seen.
Notes
1
2
3
4
Party Programme, Characters of the Party and Preamble to Party Rules of the Liberal
Democratic Party.
In Japanese, shiseihoshin enzetsu, which is delivered at the start of the ordinary session of the
Diet in January.
A book written by an influential economist entitled ’Japanese-type Welfare State’ which was
published in the 1960s (Sakamoto 1967).
According to a calculation made by Professor Naomi Maruo, a specialist on social security
who is familiar with social security in Sweden and Japan, assuming the ratio of the aged in
Japan will have reached the current one in Sweden (15), and assuming that personal social
services for the aged should be provided at the current Swedish level, the Japanese government
would have had to increase the number of public home helpers by fifty times, i.e. to one
million, and homes for the aged (including serviced housing) by twenty or thirty times (Maruo
1984 : 186-189).
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Biographical Note: Joji Watanuki was born in 1931. He graduated from the Umversity of Tokyo
and currently holds the position of Professor of Sociology at the Institute of International
Relations, Sophia University, Tokyo. His field of interest within sociology is political sociology.
His publications mclude Politics In Post- War Japanese Society (University of Tokyo Press, 1977).
Address: Naka-Cho 2-12-11-606, Musashmo-Shi,
Tokyo 180, Japan.
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