Class, Social Mobility and Social Divides in the UK and Japan

This fourth seminar in the 2010 series, ‘States in Change: National Identity in the UK and Japan’, explored the factors contributing to life chances in both countries. The speakers addressed the current debates on changing societies and social inequalities which, in the immediate aftermath of the UK General Election, resulted in a lively discussion of what policy makers can and should be doing to effect change.

Summary

The chair, Dr Lee Elliott Major, in setting the backdrop to the talk and remarking on education, privilege and class, observed not only that David Cameron is the first Etonian prime minister since Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, but that 62% of the present cabinet had attended independent schools in contrast to just 7% of the total population, and that 69% of the cabinet are Oxbridge graduates. The situation is not so different from Japan where 50% of the Cabinet are Tokyo University graduates and 2/3 of all Prime Ministers up until 1989 were also Tokyo University graduates.

 

Professor Daniel Dorling, the first speaker, began by showing a famous photograph of five boys taken at the annual Eton/Harrow cricket match at Lord’s in 1937, at a time of increasing equality. The photograph, providing a snapshot of class issues in the UK, depicts two Harrovians in formal attire consisting of top hat, waistcoat, floral button-hole and cane and, in striking contrast, three local poorer boys. This photograph has now been used for over 70 years and, in various ways, to tell the story of inequality and class division in Britain as the lives the boys led as well as their backgrounds and life chances can all be extrapolated from it.

 

Dorling went on to say that we are now living in a slightly more unequal and class-ridden society. The differences in life expectancy and earnings between areas in the UK are now wider than they were in 1937. Nowadays, the top 1% of the population have the biggest share of the wealth in contrast to the top 18% in 1918 and the top 10% of Londoners own 273 times the wealth of the lowest 10%, but 259 times less that the richest Londoners who have over £300 million.

 

Class matters, commented Dorling, as it provides an insight into inequality. Disparities in inequality in education, health and life expectancy began narrowing in 1918. Though this trend continued overall until 1973, it peaked in 1937. Gaps in inequality widened from the 1970s onwards, having nothing to do with the introduction of comprehensive schools as is often supposed, as these weren’t in place until the late 1970s once increasing inequality had already set in. Class matters to those who are obsessed with higher education and getting into the elite universities, said Dorling, and class matters as those who have had a privileged upbringing are better off in terms of health and life expectancy; it accounts for a 17 year gap in men’s life expectancy between men at either end of the class scale, and class matters as wages are decreasing in poor pockets of Britain while bonuses for the privileged continue to increase in many business sectors and class matters

 

Dorling pointed out that there has, nevertheless, been a levelling of class prejudice in that to whom you were born and who you could mix with mattered more in the 1970s than in the 1980s. The 1920s’ ban on ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, which broke boundaries in its depiction of social mixing between the aristocracy and working class, was lifted in the early 1960s, marking a change in attitudes to class.

 

In concluding, Dorling quoted from David Willetts’, Minister of State for Universities and Science, book ‘The Pinch’, saying that we’ve seen times when more equality existed ‘and it was not bad.’ Dorling professed an uncertainty as to what the future will bring, but didn’t discard the possibility of a redistribution of wealth as occurred in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

The second speaker, Professor Takehiko Kariya, gave a short history of the debate on social divides in Japan over the last two decades showing how issues of class and poverty have been discussed in the media, academia and politics. Kariya himself had seen signs of inequality in Japanese education in the early to mid-1990s, but this social disparity wasn’t touched on by the media until the late 1990s. The fact that Japan underwent rapid social and economic change in the 1960s and 1970s lent the illusion that society was still moving towards increasing equality. Kariya condensed his account in three stages.

 

Toshiaki Tachibanaki’s 1998 book, ‘Nihon no Keizai Kakusa’ (‘Japan’s Economic Inequality’) triggered the debate on Japan’s slide to inequality by warning of changes in Japanese society, while Toshiki Sato’s 2000 book, ‘Fubyodo Shakai Nihon’ (‘Japan as an Unequal Society’), in looking at issues of social improvement and mobility, showed that it had become harder for the lower middle classes to climb up the social ladder. These books prompted the media to pay more serious attention to these issues in the early 2000s and also generated criticism. An economist by the name of Ohtake took issue with Tachibanaki’s book claiming that Japan hadn’t become a more unequal society but that the ageing population had had a negative effect on economic equality, and other analyses denying social inequality followed on in succession.

 

Despite these divergent views the media continued to concentrate on social inequality which it viewed as increasingly evident given Prime Minister Koizumi’s neoliberal reforms reminiscent of American and British economic policies, the huge national debt left in the wake of the global economic downturn, the long-term economic recession and employment insecurity as the number of full-time jobs plummeted. Since the late 1990s the number of part-timers has significantly increased in Japan and now constitutes 45% of all male workers; the figure is higher in the case of women.

 

The second stage of the debate went on to focus not just on wage disparity but on perceived gaps in future prospects, job security and the opportunities of upgrading skills in order to secure higher wages. The terms ‘lost generation’ and ‘working poor’ emerged at this time as well, highlighting the issues being debated.

 

The third stage of the debate surfaced in 2008, the year of the global economic crisis, exemplified by Makoto Yuasa’s book ‘Han-Hinkon’ (Anti-poverty’), published in April 2008, just before the height of the global economic crisis. The discourse had moved on from discussing issues of ‘inequality’ to using the word ‘poverty’ itself, signalling a fundamental change in mood. The increase in the number of the sacked and unemployed along with increasing poverty, fuelled the overall national gloom affecting the results of the Japanese general election of 2009.

 

In conclusion, Kariya acknowledged the prospects of an uncertain future and an increasing inequality in education and in achievement gaps, lamenting the fact that the growing disparity in Japanese society hadn’t been addressed early on in its development.

 

The lively questions and comments following the talks covered a range of issues including the validity of the term ‘class’ and the greater usefulness of the word ‘status’ to reflect issues such as health inequality, the importance of one’s secondary school and university in terms of social mobility, forms of redistributing wealth and solutions to growing inequality through education.

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