<論文>産業・労働に関する歴史社会学的研究の概観 : 戦後日本の展開を中心に

Abstract

The study on labor, especially on that in the modern industrial factories, is often made with the purpose of finding a solution to its 'misery'. This purpose, however, tends to lead the study to inquire WHAT IT SHOULD BE, rather than WAHT IT IS, and to take the realities for negative. This tendency could also be observed in the labor study in modern Japan. For the study in both pre-war and post-war Japan, one of the most important aims is the amelioration of working conditions and labor environments. To place the focus on the labor is, in many studies, to intend to solve the labor problem, from whatever point of view. The former aimed it to prevent the socialistic ideology from spreading over the Imperial Japan, and to ensure the labor in order and zeal. The latter, by contrast, has often aimed the betterment of working conditions for the 'liberation' of workers. In this current of studies on the theme, The Historical Study of the Labor Management in Japan written by Hiroshi HAZAMA in 1964 can be regarded as epochmaking one in the sense that the actual conditions of workers in the modern factories in Japan from the beginning of Meiji era to the beginning of Showa had been closely studied on the basis of exhaustive research into documents accumulated in the academic world, the administrative agencies, and the industrial world itself. It threw light on the historical origin and the actual state of the paternalism or Onjo-shugi, which had been praised as the Japanese characteristic concept of labor management time after time in the pre-war studies, and which can be seen as one of the origins of the argument as to Japanese Management System. This study took a role to promote the closer and more positivistic point of view to the labor world. With the fruit of Hasama's work as one of the momentum, some labor studies follow afterwards that have tried to inquire to the workers' subjective realities which had played important parts in molding the characteristic style of management, or Japanese Management System. An approach in this way is significant in labor studies because it enable to find the compatible properties of the modern Japanese labor management with workers' collective mentality. The sociological study on the Japanese modern industrial labor world with the use of the historical and positive point of view can be considered as valid to realize the way of life and thought of workers in our modern society through the seize of relations they had in their everyday-work.