The thesis aims to explain the role played by the Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ) in Japanese Labor Politics since the 1990s. During the political reform of Japan, I examined the influence upon linkages and aspect between DPJ and Japanese Trade Union Cofederation-RENGO (JTUC) in labor politics.
Organized labor power in postwar Japan was a weak, but it was not socially excluded, labor conflict was able to resolve its tension within regime. However, in Japan, the neoliberal deregulation process rapidly has progressed since 1990s. More than that, Japan as an exception nation - even if the labor power is weak, the country's distribution is fair and equal - could not be established any more.
DPJ is a political party that was born and grow during the political reform process of the 1990's when labor conflicts were sharpened and globalization crisis were emerged. This research tried to clarify whether the liberal DPJ, which was born in the process of rapid deregulation in Japanese labor politics, pursued a policy towards workers and why it was related through association.
In this paper, I tried to extend the DPJ's research by revealing the relevance between the Labor Sector and the DPJ, leaving the existing DPJ's research focused on policy execution during the DPJ administration. Through such analysis, I tried to clarify that the fixed support base of the DPJ is in labor force centering on JTUC. Overall in the postwar political history in Japan DPJ and JTUC Association have a strong unity as well as the Social Democratic Party of Japan·General Council of Trade Unions of Japan block, and there was historical and rational reasons(exchange of mutual interests) for the linkages.
I revealed that 'group politics' has still influenced on political party politics and DPJ did not meet the case on 'Weakening Social Base of Political Party trend'.
Since the 1990s, the DPJ cooperating with the JTUC, had undergone a revision process of the Labor Standards Act (1998 and 2003) and Worker Dispatching Law(1999, 2003, 2012, and 2015), as well as contributed to labor-friendly policies in DPJ's administration during the third year and three months.
The number of seats and the strategy of DPJ were important variables in the direction of labor law change and labor welfare direction. In other words, I tried to reveal that the process of Japanese labor policy decision had changed more Partisan, and that participation of organizational labor through political parties had become more important than the past in this paper.
In conclusion this thesis showed you that a Japanese society and the DPJ has been contributing to becoming a 'political party system with labor' constantly and achieving meaningful results of organizational labor through the first change of government after the war, but the power of the DPJ was relatively weaker than the LDP and the period of majority was short. Therefore I concluded that postwar Japanese labor force was politically vulnerable so we should search for the cause of the party's weakness which representing the interests of organized labor. After all this study shows that it is important that the organized labor is represented through the party system.