The labour supply project or labour-only contracting was prevalent in the Japanese labour market before World War II. It often involved intermediate exploitation and forced labour. The Employment Security Law enacted in 1947 strictly prohibited the labour supply project. It also prohibited "indirect employment relationships" or "triangular employment relationships". The government considered them as a kind of the labour supply project. However, the Worker Dispatching Law enacted in 1985 permitted "indirect" or "triangular employment relationships". The government made it lawful for a company to direct and order a worker without employing him/her, and for a dispatching agency to employ a worker but let others direct and order him/her. The client company may in fact dismiss the dispatched worker by terminating or revoking the contract with the dispatching agency. The client company does not have any responsibilities as an employer to the dismissed dispatched worker. The "indirect employment relationships" make it easy for the client company to adjust its work force. In this way it became possible for a client company to avoid most employer responsibilities. In other words, the Law allowed that the dispatching agency commercialized surrogate services of employer responsibilities and the client company bought the services from the agency. The Worker Dispatching Law originally limited the types of work for which a worker could be dispatched and the period for which a client company could utilize a dispatched worker. Since the latter half of the 1990s, the Law was revised several times as a part of the labour market deregulation agenda. It liberalized, in principle, the designated work to which the worker could be dispatched, except for construction, security service and longshoring. The revision also extended upper limit of the period that the client company could use a dispatched worker in the same workplace. Nowadays, "indirect" or "triangular employment relationships" prevailed in most industrial sectors, such as manufacturing, information and communications, transport, wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, eating and drinking, public sector and so on. Not only dispatching agencies but also labour-only subcontractors assign many workers to the factories of big firms, legally or illegally. Quite a lot of temporary dispatched workers work for the clients for a short-time contract, including one-day contract. The big dispatching agencies or labour-only subcontractors built the information networks for job applicants and clients. Job applicants can book in them by mobile phone, wherever they are. It means the agencies or subcontractors succeeded in collecting the data of "the industrial reserve armies". Today, the number of the employees in "indirect employment relationships" is estimated at more than 3 millions. Client companies require the dispatching agencies or labour-only subcontractors to reduce a fee for dispatching workers. The agencies simply supply the clients with the low-paid workers who are not guaranteed social security or their minimum rights stipulated by the Labour Standards Law. Thus it seems the labour supply project is actually restored. However, it doesn't mean reversion to the feudalistic employment relations, but the expanded commercialization of surrogate services of employer responsibilities. Under tough competition for lower cost, some agencies or subcontractors tend to avoid carrying out the surrogate services. In some cases nobody exercises the employer responsibilities. The "indirect employment relationships" have absorbed the unemployed population, thereby, on the surface, reduced the unemployment rate. But they actually brought about a lot of irregular or precarious employment.

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As a means by which the countries in Europe and North America will cancel the gender pay gap after the 1980s, the principle of equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value, in other words, the pay equity strategy (PE) has been adopted. However, several researchers have redefined this strategy in recent years. This paper aims at considering the process and background of deployment of PE strategy and the meaning of this redefinition and including the implication to Japan. All the EU Member States already prohibit direct/indirect discrimination based on sex by legislation, They consider of wage differentials which are not justified by the objective base as wage discrimination, and equal work or the same value labor equal pay is applied. The state law which specified PE has been introduced in many states of the United States and Canada is introduced. However, the question and the objection are taken out to the effect of PE strategy based on the job evaluation system (JES) which is a means to measure the equal value in Europe and North America by expansion of deregulation of the labor market in the 90s, and the trial which pursues the new possibility of PE strategy has appeared. The one is a measure of Canada or ILO which strengthens the law about the existing PE and raises the effectiveness of PE strategy. Not only the measure against wage discrimination but the opinion of Hartmann who emphasizes various strategies based on the gender discriminating analysis incorporating housekeeping, child-rearing and a life cycle has appeared. In recent years, Jill Rubery has proposed that attention should be paid to workplace environment, a wage structure and many factors that affect indirect discrimination Gender Mainstreamed Analysis of Pay Gaps. Rubery perceives the difference in the wage structure between each country, and analyzes their differences and GPG. Consequently, it became clear that the difference in GPG and a female wage level are influenced by the difference among many elements which determines the structure of wages, such as labor agreement, the minimum wage system, and a salary system. Therefore, it is inadequate just to carry out legislation, regulation, and surveillance, and a measure to the element which determines the wage structure of each country is needed. In Japan, the enactment of PE is still a subject. Since many researchers point out that gender discrimination remains strongly entrenched in the workplace, gender-specific measures are still important. Furthermore, we should also observe the structure of wages as a reduction measure of gender pay gap from now on so that Rubery may suggest. A minimum wage level (the percentage to an average-wages level is 36.5%) in Japan is quite low as compared with Western countries. The level of a minimum wage has not gone up but the inequality of wages is expanded. As the part-time worker of less than 115% of wages of a minimum wage frame has reached 28% of the whole part, improving of a minimum wage is also a concern of female laborers' subject. Since the scope is wide and the regulation of the minimum wage is strong, its effectiveness is high as a reduction measure of gender pay gap. More attention should be paid to the measures which pull up the minimum wage from a new viewpoint.

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In the last ten years Japanese neo-liberal labor policies have drastically brought about the insecurity of labor conditions and the lifecycle change in youth. As the result of these two changes the existing pattern of socialization became functionless and a new type of the youth question has appeared as follows. As the most important characteristic of the new youth question, first of all, we could appoint that the drastic increase in the non-standard employment, which amounts now to 33% of the whole fulltime laborers aged 15〜24 and to 38% of the female laborers same aged, has made youth labor conditions worse. Labor conditions of and infringements on the non-standard employee having been fixed on low level and many kinds of unfair labor practices having been ignored, youth labor conditions have been reduced as a whole. So the treatment of the youth laborers, both non-standard and standard, is spiraling down. Secondly, the poverty of youth is another youth question that should be forced to take prompt measures urgently. The poverty of youth, which is caused by the quite inadequate wage level about the same as public assistance payment, is on the increase. Youth laborers without the parent's support have no choice but submit tamely to low wage, sometimes lower than public assistance payment. For example day laborers, who are engaged by temporary employment agencies and forms a part of the youth working poor, are a typical case. It might be estimated that the amount of the youth working poor including the latent has reached the million mark at present. The complex and disguising character of youth poverty makes hard to overcome the poverty problem in youth. This complex and disguising character means such poverty as contiguous to the affluence of the consuming society, slight but widespread psychiatric disorders triggered by poverty, the social isolation peculiar to the youth and so forth. By reason that the cultural individualization in Japanese societal culture is extremely potent and the social exclusion mechanism to the youth, both formally and informally, is so powerful, the social isolation of the youth has been reinforced and accelerated in contemporary Japan. These characters could be taken advantage of attributing the responsibility of the youth poverty not to social faults but to the personal incompetence. Third; the characteristic of the lifecycle change in youth, to sum up, consists in the appearance of a pattern of the low grade lifecycle on which many non-standard laborers are forced to be. Contrast to the recommended lifecycle as the supposed standard one, this low grade lifecycle is made up of a not-legitimated transition, low wage job wandering and the makeshift self-support, the low rate of marriage and so forth. Although being regarded simply as a drop out from the legitimated pattern of lifecycle: what a lifecycle should be, this de fact standard for non-standard youth laborers can form, in turn, a perspective and potentials for a better life experience. On the one hand non-standard laborers minimize their aspirations and their wants according with their lifecycle perspective. But on the other hand their strategic behaviors to minimize their hardships also mean a pursuit of a sort of alternative lifecycle: a pursuit that could stand against the neo-liberal labor and transition policy.

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Increasingly, the process of global economic restructuring is involving national or local agriculture and food, and accordingly, agro-food issues are becoming unable to be explored apart from those transformations. Reflecting such a situation, this paper aims to contribute to those efforts seeking effective framework for contemporary agro-food research, by reviewing the development of U.S. and European agro-food studies which have been evolving since the impacts of "globalization" on agriculture began to unfold in the 1970s and the 1980s. The standpoint of this paper is to re-evaluate the significance of food regime approach among those agro-food studies. Food regime approach is the one which addresses the periodic shifts of international food order governing the systems of food production and consumption beyond national borders. The first paper on food regimes written by Friedmann and McMichael is regarded as a seminal piece which led the new tide of "political economy of agriculture" in the late 80s to the 90s. The main interests of the studies in this age of "political economy of agriculture" were in industrialization and globalization of agriculture and the development of global agro-industry. However, as growing concern on food security and environmental problems created another trend for the alternative movement to globalization such as fair trade and local food movement, "political economy of agriculture" tradition including food regime approach began to be criticized as emphasizing macro structure and describing globalization process deterministically by advocates of the new "food network" approach. This approach claimed to be able to explain contingency and diversity in globalization process mainly possible at local level. Against such a common understanding of the history of recent U.S.-European agro-food studies, however, I reveal that food regime approach is still not out of date and criticisms of food regime approach are inappropriate. Contrary to the criticisms as being structuralistic or deterministic, profound understanding of the methodology of food regime analysis demonstrates that food regime analysis is multidimensional and recognizes contradictory logic among different dimensions, for instance world market and state system. Food regimes need to be understood as a totality which is composed of contradictory but interrelated parts. Therefore, food regime approach and current food network approach are the same in that they avoid deductive or deterministic understanding of the process of globalization. What is different between them, from my point of view, is whether they have positive attitudes to man's recognition, especially dialectical recognition. The significance of food regime approach, therefore, is the ability to challenge the realities of the world by active recognition, while avoiding deductive and deterministic explanation about realities, such as globalization.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between production and income distribution in Japanese manufacturing after WW II. For the purpose, we adopt a structuralist Goodwin model proposed by Barbosa-Filho and Taylor (2006). Goodwin (1967), described a mechanism of business cycles from the view point of distributive conflict between capitalists and workers. Barbosa-Filho and Taylor extended the original Goodwin model. The characteristic of their model is to focus on a fluctuation of capacity utilization. In their model, capacity utilization (u) and the labor share (ψ) are determined by, (u^・ψ^・)=(φ_u θ_u φ_ψ θ_ψ)(u ψ). On the (u.ψ) plane, they draw two curves. First is an effective demand curve (u^^・=0). If it has a negative slope, it shows that demand is "profit-led". Second is a distributive curve (ψ^^・=0). If it has a positive slope, it demonstrates a "profit squeeze". Following this model, Barbosa-Filho and Taylor proceed to VAR econometric estimation for US economy. As a result, it is shown that (φ_u θ_u φ_ψ θ_ψ)=(- + - -) in USA. Therefore, in US, the effective demand curve's slope is negative, and the distributive curve's is positive. This econometric result suggests that "profit-led" effective demand and "profit squeeze" are observed in US economy. And then, there are stable counter-clockwise cycles involving capacity utilization u and labor share ψ. In this paper, we try to apply Barbosa-Filho and Taylor's analysis to Japanese manufacturing after WW II. We estimate coefficients (φ_u θ_u φ_ψ θ_ψ) in Japanese manufacturing by VAR model. As a result, it is shown that Japanese manufacturing after WW II has following structure: (φ_u θ_u φ_ψ θ_ψ)=(- - - -). φ_u<0, and, θ_ψ<0 demonstrate that this dynamic system has stability. φ_ψ<0 implies that effective demand is profit led. About above three coefficients, estimation for America and Japan are same. But values of θ_u are different. In Japanese manufacturing, θ_u is negative in contrast to American one. We think that institutional differences between America and Japan cause this result. In Japan, quantity of the input of labor is adjusted to the output fluctuation less elastically than US. As a result, the labor share tends to fluctuate counter-cyclically to business cycles in Japan. Based on the values of coefficients mentioned above, it is shown that the effective demand curve and the distributive curve have also negative slope, and that (u, ψ) sinks to the point of inter-section of two curves, in Japanese manufacturing. Accordingly, we must think that Japanese business cycles are caused not by (φ_u θ_u φ_ψ θ_ψ), but by other factors. As we have said, the structures which combine production and income distribution are different between US and Japan. But the dynamic systems of the two countries have also stability, and suggest that various institutions can exist.

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In historical developments of capitalism, how catch today's capitalism tendency that is called 'globalization' is one of the major assignments in the study of contemporary capitalism. Because today's tendency of 'globalization', and what's more, the movement of capitalism after the First World War cannot be explained sufficiently by the Marx's or Uno's prospects. In this paper, the theory of 'black box' that has been suggested by Shigekatsu YAMAGUCHI is considered. YAMAGUCHI has suggested a method of the principles of political economy which is developed through the behavior of homo economicus, and is called 'Differential and Genetic Method (DGM)'. Generally speaking, the expected role of the principles of political economy is to explain the essence of capitalism which can refer to all types of capitalism. But he emphasizes another role of the principles. It is the role of analytical standards of actual capitalism. In his opinion, the principles of political economy, which are developed by DGM, can function as these two roles. So he adopts DGM to construct the principles. But he points out that a single employment of DGM cannot extract the character of independency of pure capitalistic society. Therefore he places 'black box' into the realm of the theory of pure capitalism for quasi-independency of pure capitalistic society. And he calls it the principles as the theory of pure capitalism. But I think that the meaning of 'analytical standards' is changed by introducing of 'black box' into the theory of pure capitalism. In a single employment of DGM, the meaning of 'standard' is the phase of generality. But in the theory of pure capitalism that holds 'black box', the meaning of 'standard' is the phase of special characteristics. In this paper, I notice the gap of the meaning of 'standard' that is found in YAMAGUCHI's theory, and consider appropriate method of the principles of political economy which can be set as an analytical start point of actual capitalism.

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A number of studies which apply a microeconomic approach to other social science are increasing in recent years. These studies are widespread to politics, sociology, anthropology and generally called Rational Choice Theory (RCT). There are many studies especially in politics, and researchers who support RCT assert how well RCT work in political analysis. Rational Choice Theory is fundamentally based on the idea that an actor will generally choose an option he supposes is the best when he has several options to choose, and logically explains political phenomena as a consequence of rational action of individual. In politics, the methodology of RCT started to be applied to political analysis in 1950s, mainly set in America, and be introduced by economic researchers like K. J. Arrow, J. M. Buchanan. Therefore, RCT had strong influence from these economic researchers and was close to microeconomic approach especially at the beginning. RCT originally has 6 characters which are as same as microeconomic method; (1) methodological individualism, (2) deductionism, (3) purpose-rationality, (4) preference hypothesis, (5) constraint hypothesis, and (6) utility maximum. These characters show that RCT has similarity to neoclassical economic theory of 1930s through ideas of K. J. Arrow and J. M Buchanan. However, recent studies of rational choice analysis criticize these above assumptions because they are too unrealistic to apply to social life and are apart from neoclassical economic theory. According to this criticism, RCT changed its methodology to looser assumptions. Moreover, RCT in politics is combined with new institutionalism which occurs in late-1970s to 80s in America. RCT in 1980s to 90s emphasizes an importance of governments, rules and customs in each situation. Although RCT still has plausible solutions to answer political problems, it shows us a limit of neoclassical methodology to apply to social science.

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