Women workers and flexible specialization: the case of Tokyo

Restructuring in flexible specializtion in the post-yen-shock era (since 1985) has created new and different employment opportunities for women in Tokyo and has led to a more flexible use of women workers so that corporaions can maintain flexibility (e.g. in developing new products and dversifying businesses) for quicker response to market changes or for the creation of new market demand. This paper explores effects of restructuring on the female labor market in the information industry in Tokyo's informaion-industry district. The central arguent is around the skill formation of women and a flexible workforce. The paper concludes with some thoughts on relations between flexible specialization and patriarchy.     

Gender, state, and industrial policy in Japan

This paper argues that state policy for working women, particularly Japan's sex-blind industrial policy has had negative effects on women in both the labor market and the family.     

Japan’s approach toward Asian regional security: from ‘hub-and-spoke’ bilateralism to ‘multi-tiered’

This article argues that Japan’s growing activism in promoting multilateral regional security arrangements since the early 1990s stems from the country’s adoption of the ‘multi-tiered approach’; a new policy perspective that packages different types of coordination among region states, including bilateral, multilateral, and minilateral or subregional, in a layered, hierarchical manner. The significance of the approach explains why Japan has retained its enthusiasm for promoting multilateral arrangements, despite continuous criticism of their effectiveness and significance, as well as the marked decline in Japan’s economic power to support financially the country’s activism in regional institution-building. Meanwhile, the multi-tiered approach also explains Japan’s effort to maintain and strengthen its bilateral security relationship with the United States during the last decade. Four factors – a perceived change in the regional security order, growing self-recognition of major-power status, the legacy of history, and constitutional constraints – worked essentially to lead Japanese policy-makers to settle on a multi-tiered approach as a desirable policy choice in shaping the country’s security policy in post-Cold WarAsia.