Employment regulation and practices: The production and consumption of non-regular work

Drawing on a holistic conceptual framework that integrates culture and social institutions, this chapter sets out to explore the relationship between employment regulation and practices in the context of non-regular work. It argues that the contours of non-regular work are shaped by two closely interconnected key factors. The first factor has much to do with Japan’s largely unchanged institutional arrangements between the state, capital and labour, which subject a great many workers to management prerogatives and market despotism. The second and more entrenched factor is the prevalence and persistence of cultural assumptions concerning the male breadwinner-female dependent family model, which underpin the state’s regulatory and welfare frameworks, labour market dualism, industrial relations, corporate management and many other areas of Japanese life.