The Evolution of Labor Standards in Japan: Human Rights, Scientific Management, and International Economic Conflict

FAIN: FO-50014-05

Gary R. Saxonhouse
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)

This project seeks to understand how Japanese labor standards came to be transformed between the mid-1880s and the mid-1930s, and the extent to which these changes actually improved the welfare of working Japanese. Japan's experience, in particular, can be a laboratory within which competing claims about the relative efficacy of ILO (International Labor Organization) dialogue versus international trade sanctions can be explored.