Rationalization, working conditions and living standards in postwar Japanese coalmining communities

Abstract

After 1945, unionization, the introduction of a new wage system, a huge effort by experts to understand the social and biological lives of miners and their families, the introduction of a new form of solidarity, and closer monitoring of the health of mining community members contributed, along with the development of the welfare state, to the formation of a more stable community around the mines and a more secure life for a new generation of miners recruited en masse just after the war to replace Korean and Chinese forced labor. Yet there is also more to the story than the narrative of a social compromise driven by rationalization and productivity policies that generated an inexorable, universal Fordist virtuous circle leading the working class to security. A close look at the social history of postwar mining communities highlights the divide between the growing stabilization of miners’ lives with the advance of the welfare state and the increasing physical and economic risks they faced with the advance of the industry’s rationalization policies driven by the decline of Japanese coal.