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Japan Social Welfare
The futures of Japan's health and welfare systems are
being
shaped by the rapid aging of the population. Medical
insurance,
health care for the elderly, and public health expenses
constituted
about 60 percent of social welfare and social security
costs in
1975, while government pensions accounted for 20 percent.
By the
early 1980s, pensions accounted for nearly 50 percent of
social
welfare and social security expenditures because people
were living
longer after retirement. A fourfold increase in workers'
individual
contributions was projected by the twenty-first century.
A major revision in the public pension system in 1986
unified
several former plans into the single Employee Pension
Insurance
Plan. In addition to merging the former plans, the 1986
reform
attempted to reduce benefits to hold down increases in
worker
contribution rates. It also established the right of women
who did
not work outside the home to pension benefits of their
own, not
only as a dependent of a worker. Everyone aged between
twenty and
sixty was a compulsory member of this Employee Pension
Insurance
Plan.
Despite complaints that these pensions amounted to
little more
than "spending money," an increasing number of people
planning for
their retirement counted on them as an important source of
income.
Benefits increased so that the basic monthly pension was
about
US$420 in 1987, with future payments adjusted to the
consumer price
index. Forty percent of elderly households in 1985
depended on
various types of annuities and pensions as their only
sources of
income.
Some people are also eligible for corporate retirement
allowances. About 90 percent of firms with thirty or more
employees
gave retirement allowances in the late 1980s, frequently
as lump
sum payments but increasingly in the form of annuities.
Japan also has public assistance programs benefiting
about 1
percent of the population. About 33 percent of recipients
are
elderly people, 45 percent were households with sick or
disabled
members, and 14 percent are fatherless families, and 8
percent are
in other categories.
Japanese often claim to outsiders that their society is
homogeneous. By world standards, the Japanese enjoy a high
standard
of living, and nearly 90 percent of the population
consider
themselves part of the middle class. Most people express
satisfaction with their lives and take great pride in
being
Japanese and in their country's status as an economic
power on a
par with the United States and Western Europe. In folk
crafts and
in right-wing politics, in the new religions and in
international
management, the Japanese have turned to their past to
interpret the
present. In doing so, however, they may be reconstructing
history
as a common set of beliefs and practices that make the
country look
more homogeneous than it really is.
In a society that values outward conformity,
individuals may
appear to take a back seat to the needs of the group. Yet
it is
individuals who create for themselves a variety of
life-styles.
They are constrained in their choices by age, gender, life
experiences, and other factors, but they draw from a rich
cultural
repertoire of past and present through which the wider
social world
of families, neighborhoods, and institutions gives meaning
to their
lives. As Japan set out to internationalize itself in the
1990s,
the identification of inherent Japanese qualities took on
new
significance, and the ideology of homogeneity sometimes
masked
individual decisions and life-styles of postindustrial
Japan.
* * *
A good general introduction to Japanese society is
Edwin O.
Reischauer's The Japanese Today. The Kodansha
Encyclopedia of Japan contains articles on numerous
aspects of
Japanese society. The Japanese government publishes
excellent
information on a variety of subjects in English, as well
as
Japanese-English statistical reports, such as the Nihon
tokei
nenkan (Japan Statistical Yearbook). Japan's physical
setting
and its relation to society are discussed in Martin
Collcutt and
others' Cultural Atlas of Japan. Hori Ichiro and
others'
Japanese Religion and H. Byron Earhart's
Japanese
Religion: Unity and Diversity provide good
introductions to
religious life.
Analyses of Japanese culture and values can be found in
Japanese Society by Robert J. Smith, Long
Engagements
by David W. Plath, The Monkey as Mirror by Emiko
OhnukiTierney , a variety of articles in Japanese Culture and
Behavior edited by Takie Sugiyama Lebra and William P.
Lebra,
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict,
and
Conflict in Japan, edited by Ellis S. Krauss and
others.
Social organization is described by Nakane Chie in
Japanese
Society, Ezra F. Vogel in Japan's New Middle
Class,
Harumi Befu in Japan: An Anthropological
Introduction, and
Joy Hendry in Understanding Japanese Society. (For
further
information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of January 1994
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