The puzzle of Japan’s welfare capitalism: a review of the welfare regimes approach

ABSTRACT

There has been little consensus on Japan’s welfare regime since Esping-Andersen’s [1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press] unclear categorisation of Japan as his only non-Western welfare state. This article is the first attempt to analyse academic research published in both English and Japanese. It presents a review of 40 collected studies (including 15 Western, 6 Asian and 19 Japanese articles), reached a wide variety of conclusions, defining Japan as eight different types: We point out that while the majority of Western studies tend to run statistical models including Japan among otherwise ‘Western’ welfare states with little theoretical justification, Japanese scholars tend to focus on Japan as a single case. The two very different approaches may have something to learn from each other, as in thesis + antithesis = synthesis. Now that we are aware of very different approaches to and conclusions about Japan’s welfare regime, the topic appears ripe for greater co-operation between scholars.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan
• welfare regime
• review
• East Asian welfare model
• classification
• Eurocentric research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Martin Powell is Professor of Health and Social Policy at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham. He has published over 100 peer reviewed articles, and has research interests in welfare regimes. He has published recent articles on the theoretical foundations of welfare regimes, and welfare regimes beyond the original ‘welfare capitalism’ nations such as Korea and Turkey.

Ki-tae Kim is associate research fellow at Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA). He received his Ph.D. in Social Policy at University of Birmingham under the supervision of Professor Martin Powell. The title of his doctoral thesis is ‘The relationship between income inequality, welfare regimes and aggregate health’. He used to work as a staff reporter at The Korea Times (2000–2006) and The Hankyoreh (2006–2012). After getting the Ph.D. in 2016, He worked a postdoctoral researcher at Ewha Womans University and Soongsil University (2017–2018). His research interest is inequality, income policy, health policy, health inequality and welfare state. He published books such as ‘Report on Korea’s health inequality’ (Sharing House, 2012, in Korean) and ‘Hospital business’(Cine21 Books, 2013, in Korean) and journal articles including ‘The relationship between income inequality, welfare regimes and aggregate health: A systematic review’ (European Journal of Public Health, 2017, 27(3), 397–404) and ‘Revisiting the income inequality hypothesis with 292 OECD regional units. International Journal of Health Services’ (International Journal of Health Services, 2019, 49(2), 360–370).

Sung-won Kim is an Assistant Professor of Faculty of Letters and Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo. Japan. He received his Master’s degree (2002) and Ph.D. degree (2007) in Sociology from the University of Tokyo. He worked for the Institute of Social Science of the University of Tokyo (Assistant Researcher, 2007–2009), Faculty of Economics of Tokyo Keizai University (2010–2015), and Faculty of Sociology and Social Work of Meijigakuin University (2016–2017). From 2018, he has joined the University of Tokyo. His research interests are in East Asian welfare state, social policy and employment policy, and comparative methods. His main publications include Late-coming welfare state: Korean and East Asia in comparative perspective (University of Tokyo Press, 2008), Modern theories of welfare states (Minervashobo, 2010) and Welfare state in Japan and Korea (Akashishoten, 2014).