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Public Assistance in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Koji Taira
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Extract

Economic development makes resources available for a variety of desirable social goals. However, many of these goals are not automatically related to the economic mechanism of production and income distribution in a private enterprise economy. The social values that sustain economic development are often hostile to a non-market redistribution of resources. This dilemma between the welfare potential of economic development and the social values that make development possible has long been a subject of intense interest to sociologists. In recent years, economists have been paying increasing attention to the problem.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , November 1967 , pp. 95 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

1 Wilensky, H. L. and Lebeaux, C. N., Industrial Society and Social Welfare (New York: The Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Marshall, T. H., Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (New York: Doubleday, 1965)Google Scholar; Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Titmus, R. M., Income Distribution and Social Change (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962).Google Scholar

2 Galbraith, J. K., The Affluent Society (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1962)Google Scholar; Myrdal, G., Beyond the Welfare State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Ornati, O., Poverty Amid Affluence (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1966)Google Scholar; Eckstein, O., ed., Studies in the Economics of Income Maintenance (Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Wilensky, and Lebeaux, , op. cit., p. 17.Google Scholar

4 Taira, Koji, “Market Forces and Public Power in Wage Determination: Early Japanese Experience,” Social Research (Winter, 1963), XXX, 434–57.Google Scholar

5 Taira, Koji, “Country Report: Japan,” in O. E. C. D., Low Income Groups and Methods of Dealing With Their Problems: Supplement to the Report (Paris: O. E. C. D., 1966), pp. 135–50Google Scholar; “Kōsoku keizai to shakai fukushi” (Rapidly Growing Economy and Social Welfare), Chuō Kōron (Tokyo, January 1967), pp. 202–11.Google Scholar

6 Social movement may be defined as “a group venture extending beyond a local community or a single event and involving a systematic effort to inaugurate changes in thought, behavior, and social relationships.” King, C. W., Social Movements in the United States (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 27.Google Scholar

7 Patrick, H. T. and Schran, P., “Economic Contrasts: China, India, and Japan,” Journal of International Affairs (1963), XVII, p. 173.Google Scholar

8 Lockwood, W. W., The Economic Development of Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954). P. 486.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., loc. cit.

10 Dore, R. P., City Life in Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958), PP. 73–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Quoted in Sakayori, Toshio, Shakai hoshō (Social Security), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1966), p. 117.Google Scholar

12 The most illuminating source on this stage of Japanese public assistance is Kishida, Itaru, Minsei iin tokuhon (Reader for Welfare Commissioners), (Tokyo: Chuō shakai fukushi shimbunsha, 1951)Google Scholar. See also kai, Kyōchō, Saikin no shakai undō (Social Movements in Recent Years), (Tokyo, 1930)Google Scholar; Ministry of Welfare, Social Work, in Japan (Tokyo, 1955)Google Scholar; and Kuroki, Toshikatsu, Nihon shakai jigyō gendaika ron (Modernization of Social Work in Japan), (Tokyo: Zenkoku shakai fukushi kyōgi kai, 1958)Google Scholar, Part II.

13 See also Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Living Conditions, Tōkyōto no shakai fukushi jigyō (Social Welfare Activities of Tokyo), (Tokyo, 1957), pp. 188–89.Google Scholar

14 The Government established an advisory council on social work (kyūsai jigyō chōsa kai) for the Minister of Home Affairs in 1918. There were twenty members in this council appointed by the Prime Minister from among the learned and experienced persons in social work and social research. It was replaced by a new council (shakai jigyō chōsa kai) in 1926. It is of some interest to note that the Government's concept of assistance to the needy changed, as indicated by the titles of the two councils, from “kyüsai” (relief) to “shakai jigyō” (social work).

15 For an interesting biographical sketch of this unique figure in Japanese history, sec the contribution of Father Hirschmeier in Lockwood, W. W., ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Kishida reprints the whole text of the petition, op. cit., pp. 45–47. There is also a partial photograph of the welfare commissioners who assembled in front of the Imperial Palace on February 16, 1931, p. iii.

17 Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, Chapter 5.

18 Totten, G. O. IIIThe Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

19 The standard quantities of rice in 1926 were as follows: (1) 1.8 koku per year to the aged and the permanently disabled, (2) 0.3 sho per day to the sick male and 0.2 sho per day to the sick female, and (3) 0.7 koku per year to the young. kai, Kyōchō, op. cit., p. 973.Google Scholar

20 In 1926, the price of medium-quality rice in Tokyo was 37.6 yen per koku. At this price, the money value of relief mentioned in the preceding note would be 26.3 yen for the young and 67.7 yen for the aged. In 1936, the assistance standard for a family of five persons was 72 yen per capita per annum. For the data on rice prices, see the Bank of Japan, Tōkei hyakunen (Hundred Years of Statistics), (Tokyo, 1966)Google Scholar, Table 28. For the assistance standard, see Kuroki, , op. cit., pp. 212–17.Google Scholar

21 The sources give data on an annual basis. For the purposes of this paper, a full enumeration of year-to-year figures is not necessary.

22 This is an aspect of inequality of income distribution which is measured by well-known coefficients like Gini's, Gibrat's, Lorenz's and Pareto's.

23 This question arises again with regard to the index of equality of income share for the postwar period. See infra., p. 17.

24 Marshall, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Chapter IV.

25 Ibid., p. 78.

26 Kuroki, , op. cit., pp. 185–210.Google Scholar

27 This is a part of Japan's postwar progress in formalizing the increasing “rights consciousness” of the Japanese citizenry, on which Walter Gellhorn gives an illuminating exposition in his Ombudsmen and Others (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)Google Scholar, Chapter 9 “Japan.” One of the most celebrated cases in regard to the rights of the recipients of public assistance is the so-called “Asahi Case,” of which a brief summary is given in Koji Taira, “Country Report: Japan,” in O. E. C. D., op. cit., pp. 4–6.

28 This sounds innocuous, however, in comparison with the practice in West Germany in which the welfare authorities recover the cost of assistance to the aged from the adult children of the recipient. Because of this stipulation, many aged poor suffer from unnecessary hardships by choosing not to embarrass their children who are struggling for their own livelihood. I owe this point to Otto Blume's paper, “The Poverty of Old People Under Urban and Rural Conditions,” presented to the International Seminar on Poverty Research held at the University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom, April 3–6, 1967, pp. 7–8.

29 The 1946 version of the Livelihood Protection Law even contained an article which was disturbingly moralistic and apt to give rise to arbitrary actions on the part of the administration. This article, which was eliminated at the time of the revision of the Law in 1950, denied assistance to the following persons: (1) those who had no intentions of working despite their ability to work or who had neglected their responsibility for the maintenance of family livelihood and (2) those who did not conduct themselves in a wholesome manner. See Kuroki, , op. cit., p. 213.Google Scholar

30 See also Higuchi, Tornio, “Income Distribution and Social Security: Interpretation of a Japanese Survey,” International Labour Review (September 1965)Google Scholar, especially Table I on p. 211.

31 See International Labor Office, The Cost of Social Security 1958–1960 (Geneva: I. L. O., 1964).Google Scholar

32 The United States Social Security Administration poverty line of $3,130 per annum for a family of four is on a per capita basis about 27 percent of the U. S. national income per capita for 1965. Of course, the public assistance standards in many states fall far short of this federal poverty index. The similar measure for the United Kingdom for 1964 rises to about 25 percent, which is higher than the relationship between assistance standard and per capita national income in Japan. For international comparisons of quantitative indicators of public assistance and social security, see Koji Taira, “Poverty, Affluence and Public Assistance: International Comparisons,” a paper presented to the International Seminar on Poverty Research held at the University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom, April 3–6, 1967.

33 Quoted from Marshall, , op. cit.Google Scholar See Note 25.

34 Takahashi, Chōtarō, Dynamic Changes of Income and its Distribution in Japan (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1959). PP. 109–28.Google Scholar

35 Ministry of Welfare, Kōsei hakusho (White Paper on Welfare), (Tokyo, 1956), p. 24.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 1962, p. 141.

37 Dore, , op. cit., pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

38 Nihon shakai fukushi gakkai (Japanese Social Welfare Research Association), Nihon no hinkon (Poverty in Japan), (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1958), pp. 200–13Google Scholar. The author of this particular contribution is Professor Seiryō Ogawa.

39 “Katami no semai omoi o shita,” ibid., p. 203.

40 “Kinjo kara toyakaku iwarete,” ibid., loc. cit. A word of caution may be mentioned against reading too much into this and preceding reactions lest someone hastily see evidence of “shame culture” in these examples. Even the “guilt culture” of the West is not free of “shame” in relation to poverty. For example, social insurance is preferred to social assistance in the West because of the “flavor of inferiority and shame” that clings to the latter. See Marshall, T. H., Social Policy (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965), p. 48Google Scholar. For a recent review of guilt and shame in Japanese personality, see Beardsley, Richard K., “Personality Psychology,” in Hall, J. W. and Beardsley, R. K., eds., Twelve Doors to Japan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965)Google Scholar, Door 8.

41 Dore, , op. cit., p. 75.Google Scholar

42 Nihon no hinkon (op. cit.), p. 142Google Scholar. This particular study was by Sadao Yokoyama and Katsumi Hattori.

43 The author owes this paragraph to R. P. Dore, whose helpful observations on an earlier draft of this paper are also inextricably incorporated in the other parts of the present version. For the evolution of social assistance, see Marshall, , Social PolicyGoogle Scholar (op. cit.).