Thoughts on the Nature of Labor in the 1890s and early 1900s in Japan

Abstract

This essay attempts to analyze the nature of labor in Japan around the turn of the 20th century. This is done with emphasis on the following : 1)the qualitatively indiscriminate handling of labor as an object. 2)The quantitative adjustments made on the basis of the existence of a relative surplus of labor, in the process of social reproduction. In other words, I will examine the handling of labor in that era and the nature of reproduction in terms of the notion of labor force as a commodity controlled by capital. But I will also show the extreme restrictions placed on the "individual" unit in Japan through capital's handling of labor and clarify the nature of these restrictions. I will analyze the concept of the household (ie) in Japan as a manifestation of the Marxist notion of the "individual." Thus doing, I hope to explain the extreme restrictions placed on the ability of the "individual" to resist or curb the inclusion of labor by capital in modern society in Japan. Chapter 1 examines the layered structure of occupational groups (doshoku shudan), and those social reproduction and handling of labor mainly in heavy industry. Section 1 focuses on the phenomena of the labor contractors (oyakata), the apprentice system and the travelling workers (watari shokko). It investigates the network of interpersonal restrictions which united the oyakata bosses and travelling workers in that era. Section 2 begins with the often mentioned fact that craft guild organization was relatively loose in comparison to the craft guilds of Europe. But section 3 makes the point that even in Japan occupational groups which were fairly exclusive in nature did exist, and that traditional character and mode of expression of their informal regulations must be studied. In summary, Section 4 pulls together these three sections and explains that artisans in indigenous crafts also fell into the category of labor organized into occupational groups. Through this analysis, the extremely restricted traditional Japanese characteristics and particular mode of expression of the "individual" in the process of reproduction, and the handling of labor as a commodity by capital, are made clear. Chapter 2 examines the hierarchical composition of major occupational groups among unskilled laborers and the poor. The informal regulations of occupational groups clarified in Chapter 1 are shown to have existed among major unskilled workers such as coolies at work on the railroads. I point out the existence of several tens of these occupational groups, as subdivisions of major sections of the labor force, arranged in hierarchical order. Also, in Section 2, I look at those workers unable to maintain such a group structure who sunk into the category of the poorest laborers. Chapter 3 examines the category of supplementary income laborers. This group was built upon the existence of branches of the household (ie) system, inextricably linked to the household system in rural villages, a system which served both as a means of reproduction and of handling labor. On the basis of the above analysis, Chapter 4 begins by explaining the unique character of the "individual," "individual property," and modern society built upon these concepts. In Japan these are seen to historically arise from the extreme restrictions placed on the labor force as controlled by capital (or existing as a premise to its formations), in a larger structure of reproduction and handling of labor based on the rural household unit. Section 1 points out that the household (ie) itself, in Japan a unit on one hand existing as the fusion of its members and on the other hand facing the society as the "individual" possessor of property, functioned in fact as an "individual." Further, Section 2 tries to make clear the particular structure in which this household handled the labor it

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