Abstract
Recently, many issues pertaining to labor and economic education have gained public attention. A major concern regards the institutionalization of academic disciplines at universities, and the use of textbooks, one of the main means through institutionalization is promoted. But in Japan, surprisingly, there have so far been few studies about textbooks for undergraduate education in the area of (labor) economics. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to explore the past and present of labor economic education in Japan through a survey of textbooks, and to provide some implications for the future. Specifically, we firstly confirm the development of the textbooks of labor economy, and background factors regarding this development. Secondly, we survey the labor economy textbooks published in postwar Japan. Quantitatively, we confirm the numerical attributes of the textbooks, such as number of pages/chapters/revisions, publishers, publication years, and attributes of authors. Furthermore, we identify the types of textbooks (neoclassical, institutional and eclectic) and fluctuations in shares over time. Qualitatively, focusing on major textbooks, we compare them through title-topic cross tabulation and point out several observable tendencies and problems, such as decreases in industrial relations topics, legal/policy issue topics and definition of basic categories, reduced emphasis on macroeconomic issues and disproportionately heavier emphasis on microeconomic issues.
