‘THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN JAPAN 33 lives or for a certain period of service should always have been banned as inhumane. The traditional practice of life- time service under the guise of apprenticeship is actually human traffic exploitation. Therefore, such practices are strictly prohibited from this time on. However, as a result of the new freedom to sell land, to migrate, and to make occupational choices, the communal regulations were relaxed, the family system became unsettled, and traditional so- cial relationships as a whole were loosened. The relationship be- ‘tween artisan and apprentice ts an examiple. Not only was the ap- prenticeship, which was similar to bondage, abolished, hut also the system itself was no longer maintained. The master-apprentice relationship became loose compared with earlier periads. Ac- cording to a government survey, the relationship, between employer and employee com- pletely changed after the Restoration and old practices were broken, The attitude of the employee to the employer; the apprentice to the master, became like the day laborer. The employee and the apprentice have come to believe that work is only for wages. They are ne longer concerned with the interest of the employer or the master, they try to obtain higher wages, they are unsettled and in the habit of moving from job to job, and they have no time to master one job for a lifetime: Such practices exert a great influ- ence upon industry in gencral.'* The fact that the traditional master-apprentice relacionship was broken does not mean that a contract relationship between ‘employer and employee was established. Since the existing status relationship remained, the sense of responsibility for carrying out terms of a contract did not develop. Rather, workers frequently left their employers and migrated from job to job (for a more de- tailed description of job mobility, see Chapter 4). In large plants, such a§ arsenals, where turnover of skilled work- ers often interfered with operations, a fixed-term cmployment sys- 15, Dajdkan tate [Cabinet ordinance), No. 25. 16, Kips ik [Proponts on camara inddry] wo 18 (Tokyo: Miaity of ‘Agriculture and Gommerce, 1083), p. 9236 MIKIO SUMIYA tem was introduced to mect this problem. Typically, an employ- ment contract for five or seven years was concluded with certain workers to whom higher wages were paid under an agreement that they were “not to withdraw from the company for any reason.” However, even this type of contract was not fully observed. The disruption of social relationships and the breakdown of traditional values occurred not only in employment relationships but also in society as a whole. The Meiji government, whose goal was the formation of an integrated mation-state, regarded as-ur- gent the stabilization of social relationships. Ir sought to establish a value system compatible with the political system which located the center of authority in the emperor. Such a system was based on the Meiji Constitution and the Imperial Rescript on Educa- tion, which, in substance, restored and legitimated a hierarchy of authority, The idea of hicrarchical relationships between master and servant, teacher and student, husband and wife, parent and child, and so forth, was disseminated through school and military education. On the basis of such stabilized social relationships, in- dustrialization began to develop at the beginning of the 1890s. Industrialization and Its Social Effects By about 1890, Japan had completed preparations for full-scale economic development, and industrialization quickly followed. ‘The production index rose from 4.5 to close to 200 between 1880 and 1930, and the number of industrial workers increased from about 400,000 in 1895 to almost 3,000,000 in 1930. Because an industrializing society requires workers whose skills are com- mensurate with its technological level, the society creates institu- tions to train skilled workers and develops an administrative sys- tem to supervise their employment and production. Western tech- nology, which was the base upon which Japan industrialized, produced many similarities between Japan and Western coun- tries, often more apparent than real, in institutional and admin- istrative arrangements. Not only the Western apprenticeship andTHE EMERGENCE OF MODERN JAPAN 37 foreman systems but even the idea of American craft unions was introduced. Further analysis, however, reveals that the apprenticeship and foreman systems and the craft unions were all affected by the characteristics of Japanese industrialization, and cach system de- veloped along lines quite different from the Western pattern. Re- garding the apprenticeship system, for example, many of the new skilled jobs had not previously existed in Japan. Since no norm had been established for skill, content, and term of apprenticeship, training was not clear. As a result, the length of a worker's experi- ence rather than the content of his training became the principal determinant of his qualifications as a craftsman. Although daily wage rates were established for artisans, there were no set rates for industrial workers, so from the beginning the skill of each worker was evaluated and ranked on the basis of experience and dexterity. Because apprenticeship standards were not established, job cate- gories were never created. The lifetime employment and length-oF-service wage systems, however, are to be regarded not as traditional social relations but rather a3 innovations that developed in response to new needs. These are among many aspects of contemporary Japanese indus- trial relations that were created during the process of industrializa- fon. Before examining this development process im detail, it is: use- ful to point out a few of the problems that underlay Japan's eco- nomic growth. The rapid spread of education was seen very early as.an important need, and at the beginning of Japan's industrial- ization, four years of education was made compulsory. The per- centage of males enrolled in school exceeded 80 percent by the end of the 1890s; and at the beginning of the twentieth century the rate for males age 6-10 years reached 95 percent and that for fermales 90 percent." In 1908 compulsory education was extended to six years. One factor favorable to economic development was the exist- ence of a single common language. The spread of education fa- cilitated the ability of the people to understand the new culture 17, Ministry of Education, Esommir Decelofment and Eidecatiom in Japan.88 MIKIO:SUMIYA and to: communicate their understanding. However. while educa- tion became a powerful means of conveying the will of the nation or of the enterprise, it also generated new social problems by awakening the workers’ personal and social consciousness, Another noteworthy factor was the employment of female fac- tory workers, who until the 1930s comprised a majority, reflecting the prominent position of the teatile industry. Most of the young, women workers migrated from the villages to work for relatively short periods in order to supplement family incomes. For these workers, a special labor administration system was developed that emphasized company dormitories.** In order to understand con- temporary industrial relations, however, we should direct our at- tention to the male workers. The Development of Unions ‘The’ first labor union similar in organization and function to ‘Western unions appeared in Japan subsequent to the onset of the Sino-Japanese War in 1897. Its origins can be traced to the Japa- nese who had gone to California to work and there formed a group to study the developing American labor movement. Some then returned home with the outbreak of the war, and among them was Fusataro Takano, who had met President Samucl Gompers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and had been appointed the AFL organizer for Japan. Takano, by winning the cooperation of the intellectuals and appealing to the workers, succeeded in establishing a union among ironworkers, Shortly thereafter unions were formed among railway engine drivers and printing workers. These unions not only were American-type craft unions in or- ganization, as Takano advocated, but also followed the AFL. ex- 1B. See Nikon ahihonstugi to rédi-eendai (Japanese capitalism and labor problems} by Mikio Sumiys, Kenichi Kobayashi, and Tsutomu Hyéd6, 1997, esp. ch. 2, ace. 3. (Tokyo: University of Tokyo: Press, 1967), 19. Concerning the relations among Takano; the AFL. and Japanese labor move- ment, see "Takano Figsatar} to rédd-and6" [Fisatard Takano and the Labor Move- meat} by Mikio Sumiya, in Krizzigetu-recc’§, April 1963, and Nikon sh uadahi a Aitutama [A chapter in the Meiji labor movement) by Hyman Kublin, 1959.