Comparing Britain and Japan

This volume aims to provide a new perspective on social policy in Britain and Japan, by comparing policies shared between the two countries. Existing comparative research on welfare, welfare states and social policy tends to focus on European and/or English-speaking countries, such as the US and Australia, reflecting the dominance of a ‘western paradigm’ in academic and popular discourses (see Walker and Wong, 1996). However, Japan has an established but somewhat different welfare system from Britain, with well-practised occupational, family and community welfare. Therefore, interesting contrasts can be drawn with East Asia by comparing such dissimilar cultures and socioeconomic situations, despite work on East Asian welfare systems being still at a relatively early stage, since some characteristics regarding policy developments between East and West are common to both.

It has been more than a decade since Esping-Andersen's The three worlds of welfare capitalism (1990) first provoked academic debate on comparative welfare systems. Although this volume does not intend to expand debate on welfare typologies, it is worthwhile looking briefly at where each of the two countries stand. According to his regime typologies – using decommodification (the degree to which the welfare state can help individuals achieve independence from the market and strengthen their citizenship rights) and social stratification and solidarity (the degree to which the welfare state can help build solidarity among citizens) as the main criteria for evaluation – Esping-Andersen classified Britain and Japan in different regime models. Britain was described, along with the US, as being close to the ‘liberal’ regime (characterised by means-tested assistance, limited universal transfers and social insurance schemes). Japan was closer to the ‘conservative–corporatist’ regime model along with Germany and other Continental European countries in which social rights are based on employment and contributions and the responsibility for welfare is placed on families rather than the state.

In most cases, analysis has sought to place Japan into one of a variety of existing welfare regime models conceptualised from a Western framework rather than examining it in its own terms (Goodman and Peng, 1996). Since it does not often sit comfortably in such regime models, a compromise results whereby the Japanese welfare system is described as ‘unique’ or ‘exceptional’. Responding to many critiques, Esping-Andersen (1997) later re-examined the Japanese regime. By highlighting some similarities with familialistic welfare societies of Southern European countries, he suggested that Japan might be a ‘hybrid’ of the liberal–residual and the conservative–corporatist models.