The two leading sociologists of social stratification in Japan argue that most Japanese have attained a level of income in which they no longer suffer from poverty and starvation, a situation in which Japan has achieved an equalization of basic wealth.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,3, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, course: Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, language: English, abstract: Social stratification implies that in every society goods and services are not equally distributed. Some people are wealthy enough to buy a house, others have to pay rent to live in a small apartment. More generally spoken, why are some people rich and others poor? A society without social stratification implies that there are no inferior or superior positions and all human beings are equal and have the same prerequisites when they are born. The opposite is the case. People are born into families of unequal positions, some are born into rich influential families, others have to live under the poverty level. Wouldn’t it be fair for all human beings to have the same starting position when they are born? In every country the reality looks different and that is a reason why social stratification is such an interesting topic. To what extent have inequality and difference an impact on people’s life? Japan and the USA are both highly modernized and industrialized countries. According to World Bank, the USA has the biggest Gross National Product (GNP) in the world followed by Japan. This fact underlines the importance of both nations for the world economy. These figures get more interesting when they are put into relation with the population of each country. The figure “GNP per person” is a measurement for the wealth of a country. In this ranking the USA is in fourth place followed by Japan (Albrecht et al., 2003). These figures might give the impression that both countries are quite similar but there is one major difference. Japan is the only non-Western country that is industrialized. The cultural background is different and that is a reason why a comparison between these countries can be interesting and might lead to surprising results. In this paper I will try to find out what inequality is based on and why these differences occur of varying strength in both countries. In these countries social stratification depends on cultural aspects as well as economical aspects. The cultural background influences the way the society deals with economy. After giving an introduction about basic definitions and concepts of social stratification I will describe and analyse differences in income and education in both societies. To make a comparison useful and clear I will include data from the “Fischer Weltalmanach” and the “Human Development Report 2002” to this term paper.

First Published in 1994. The focus of this study is class and stratification in Japan. There are a few papers on social stratification in Japan that are written in English and make use of the SSM research. The present study uses the latest SSM data. These were collected in 1985, and are themselves becoming out of date, given that Japanese society has been experiencing rapid and radical change, though they remain among the most recent available. The authors are sociologists this book is intended for a general readership.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Post-war Japan was often held up as the model example of the first mature industrial societies outside the Western economy, and the first examples of "middle-mass" society. Today, and since the bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990’s, the promises of Japan, Inc., seem far away. Social Class in Contemporary Japan is the first single volume that traces the dynamics of social structure, institutional socialization and class culture through this turbulent period, all the way into the contemporary neoliberal moment. In an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that include top scholars working on quantitative class structure, policy development, and ethnographic analysis, this volume highlights the centrality of class formation to our understanding of the many levels of Japanese society. The chapters each address a different aspect of class formation and transformation which stand on their own. Taken together, they document the advantages of putting Japan in the broad comparative framework of class analysis and the enduring importance of social class to the analysis of industrial and post-industrial societies. Written by a team of contributors from Japan, the US and Europe this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, as well as those interested in cultural anthropology and social class alike.

This edited book empirically discusses stratification in contemporary Japanese society. It is unique for its examination of social inequality in relation to declining fertility and an aging population. Japan is the most aged society in the world: according to the Statistics Bureau of Japan, people who are aged 65 and above comprised 29.1% of the country’s total population in 2021. Meanwhile, the fertility rate has continuously declined since the mid-1970s. Japan experienced a dramatic change in its demographic structure in a short period of time. Such fast change could be a major factor that generated social stratification. In her industrialization, Japan was thought to share a pattern of social stratification similar to that of developed European and North American countries but with a low degree of socio-economic inequality and a high degree of homogeneity. There is no clear support for this description of Japan, although the country does share a pattern and degree of social stratification similar to that observed in Europe and North America. The social stratification theory has been developed in close relationship to the labor market; however, it is necessary to further examine the social stratification of very aged societies in which a substantial number of the population—namely, retired persons—no longer have any ties to the labor market. In this book, the contributors explore the pattern of social stratification at three life stages: young, middle-aged, and elderly. Included are discussions of various aspects of stratification such as education, work, wealth, marriage, family, gender, generation, and social attitudes.

Through examination of contemporary Japanese society, this book demonstrates that the analysis of class formation is fundamental for a clear understanding of institutions and collective identity such as family, school work, gender and ethnicity.