Social Inequality in Japan

Social inequality is a central issue of modernity in the intersection between the idea of a market economy, with competition as an irreplaceable element, and democracy, with equality as one of its fundamental principles. In postwar Japan, after a period of fierce conflicts, a shared growth model that included a redistribution from urban centers to the rural peripheries was established as a highly successful solution to this inherent contradiction. Upward mobility and increasing incomes, as well as the support of the countryside, led to a narrative of Japan as a general middle-class society and made it exemplary regarding social and political stability. However, since the late 1990s, due to missing growth and social stagnation, this model is no longer functioning, and a new narrative of Japan as a gap society has become dominant. Since 2000, Japanese governments have tried to establish alternative models of neoliberal growth, welfare growth, and Abenomics, but these have not been able to emulate the success of the former shared growth model.