Anne Allison, Precarious Japan (Durham 2013)
This review was first published in Asian Studies Review, vol. 40, no 2, pp. 308–10.
Review of Anne Allison, Precarious Japan. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013. 256 pages. US$23.95, paper.
In Precarious Japan, anthropologist Anne Allison paints an evocative picture of poverty and insecurity in contemporary Japan. In Chapter 2 she traces the growth in precariousness to the “liquidization” (ryūdōka) of what she calls the “family-based production model” following the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s. This model, she argues, drove economic growth and ensured social stability in the boom years of the post-war from the mid-1950s through to the 1980s. It was based on a gendered division of labour in which male household heads worked as primary wage-earners in stable jobs while women, youth and the elderly supplemented the household income by working for low wages for sub-contracting firms. The collapse of this model, Allison argues, has produced much of the precariousness visible in contemporary Japan.
Allison demonstrates that it is not only stable employment opportunities which have become precarious since the collapse of the bubble economy but also the ties which bind the individual to the broader community. She utilises anti-poverty activist Yuasa Makoto’s (2008) argument that poverty is caused not only by a lack of money but by a more general lack of tame (“reserves”). These “reserves”, which include savings, inner strength, family relationships and community connections help us to survive in times of crisis. Increasing numbers of people in Japan are finding that their reserves have dried up leading to an increase in what Allison calls “social precarity”. Without tame, a single stressor, such as the loss of a job, can cause a cascading series of crises leading to homelessness, chronic unemployment, substance abuse and even suicide.
Allison paints a poignant picture of the plight of the growing ranks of the unemployed, the homeless, the elderly and the mentally ill in contemporary Japan. In doing so, however, she relies too heavily and too uncritically on sensationalist coverage of these issues in the mainstream media. This sensationalist reportage, as sociologist Shibuya Nozomu (2010) and anti-poverty activist Matsumoto Hajime (2008) point out can serve a disciplinary function. The constant repetition of horror stories about poverty in the mainstream media encourages already overstretched workers to work even harder to secure the few stable jobs which are still available.
While Allison attributes the growing precariousness of contemporary Japanese society to the breakdown of the “family-based production model”, a more historical approach might have prompted her to consider the fracturing of other post-war institutions such as religious organisations, socialist and communist parties and trade unions. These institutions provided a degree of representation and support to the excluded during much of the post-war. This omission reflects a more general failure to connect contemporary precariousness with the historic class struggles which shaped the institution of work in Japan. The vicious attacks on organised labour that occurred in the late 1940s and 1950s produced the “family based production model” with its illusory sense of security centred on the family unit. The collapse of this model reflects not only the abandonment of workers by corporations and the state but an exodus from its strictures by workers themselves.
Allison highlights a number of interesting and important projects via which the precarious are self-organising in response to poverty and social exclusion. Detailed interviews with activists such as Yuasa Makoto and Amamiya Karin convey some of the creative responses to precariousness which are emerging in Japan today. Yet Allison tends to present these examples in isolation, giving little sense of the breadth and power of today’s anti-poverty movements. She is relatively dismissive of the “precariat” protest movement, which is relegated to a footnote (p. 213), although activists like Amamiya herself regard it as a critical part of their activism. As a result we are left with an unnecessarily bleak portrait of contemporary Japan.
Despite these problems, however, Precarious Japan is an important work which draws attention to the very real problem of precariousness in contemporary Japan. Allison approaches her sources with a high degree of humility and compassion. She excels in posing questions rather than pretending to provide definitive answers and demonstrates an awareness that “truth” itself is always precarious.
References
Matsumoto Hajime (2008) Bimbōnin no gyakushū (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō).
Shibuya Nozomu (2010) Midoru kurasu o toinaosu: kakusa shakai no mōten (Tokyo: NHK shuppan).
Yuasa Makoto (2008) Hanhinkon: suberidai shakai kara no dasshutsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten).
