Work and conservatism in Japan
07/05/2026
Article by Bernard Thomann
According to the Japanese Prime Minister, the Japanese must work ever harder. This productivist discourse must be placed within the long history of Japanese conservatism and its relationship with liberalism.
[1] See Bernard Thomann, "From the liberal 'rupture' to national refoundation. What future for the 'Japanese model' under Abe Shinzō?", La Vie des idées, March 1, 2007. ISSN: 2105-3030.
[2] See Bernard Thomann, "Are Asian economies converging toward Anglo-Saxon capitalism?", La Vie des idées, May 23, 2012. ISSN: 2105-3030.
[3] "Rengō kaichō ga dai hanron! Shinbun ha detarame de kō puro' yōnin ha shite inai", Daiyamondo onrain, 10/08/2017.
[4] Charles Weathers, Scott North, Shinji Kojima, "Abe Shinzō's campaign to reform the Japanese way of work", Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, volume 1, issue 23, number 3.
[5] Yonaha Yū, Dōitsu rōdō - dōitsu chingin ha pāto yūki haken rōdō sha no taigū o kaizen shita ka, Panel Data Research Center, Keio University PDRC Discussion Paper Series, 3/2025.
[6] While the objective of "Abenomics" was to pull Japan out of deflation and restart growth, the results were very mixed: wages stagnated, job insecurity exploded, and public debt reached more than 260% of GDP.
[7] Seizon no tame no korona taisaku nettowâku, "Seizon hoshō o tettei seyo", Sekai, June 2020, pp. 88-122.
[8] The archetype of this type of economist was Heizō Takenaka, the architect of postal privatization and certain labor market deregulation measures, a minister between 2001 and 2006 and professor at Keio University who studied at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
[9] Fuji Satoshi, Naze, Nihonjin no 9 wari ha kanemochi ni narenai no ka, Tokyo, Poplar Publishing, November 2021.
[10] Hara Taketo, Kōeki shihon shugi eibei-gata shihonshugi no shūen, Tokyo, Bunshun shinsho, 2017.
[11] Return on equity (ROE) having traditionally been low in a Japanese capitalism that had long relied primarily on indirect bank financing, but from the 1990s onwards governments had encouraged an ROE of at least 8%.
[12] Oguma Eiji, "'Liberal' and pacifism in postwar Japan: their given conditions and historical background", Japan Policy Forum.
[13] Uno Shigeki, Endō Masahisa, "Haigaishugi no kiki ni hoshu ga hatasu beki 'sekinin'", Chūō kōron, 2/2026, pp. 20-31.
[14] Saeki Satoshi, "Nihonryū no hoshushugi to ha nanika?", Seiron, 02/2026, pp. 52-62.
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Bernard Thomann is a professor at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco, Paris) and director of the Institut français de recherches sur l'Asie de l'Est (Inalco, Univ. Paris Cité, CNRS). He served as French director of the Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo from 2019 to 2023.
Professor Thomann conducts research on the history of labor and social policies in contemporary Japan. He is notably the author of the following works: "Le salarié et l'entreprise dans le Japon contemporain - Formes, genèse et mutations d'une relation de dépendance (1868-1999)" (The Employee and the Company in Contemporary Japan: Forms, Genesis and Transformations of a Relationship of Dependence), Les Indes Savantes, 2008, and "La naissance de l'Etat social japonais. Biopolitique, travail et citoyenneté dans le Japon impérial (1868-1945)" (The Birth of the Japanese Welfare State: Biopolitics, Labor and Citizenship in Imperial Japan), Presses de Sciences Po, 2015.
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