Published papers

While a value-added tax (VAT), which supports a welfare state, was officially introduced in Japan in 1989, earlier attempts to implement this tax system failed. This study looks in-depth at why Japan was slower than other countries to implement a VAT. The tax authorities’ debates during the 1960s and 1970s are reviewed to understand why other attempts to introduce a VAT failed. Implementing the VAT would require a shift from the ideology centering on a direct tax to acceptance of indirect taxes and justification for a general consumption tax’s superiority over specific consumption taxes. Four influential factors are identified. First, in 1960, the ideology centering on a direct tax made a VAT inherently inferior. Second, in the 1968, “Break Fiscal Rigidification Campaign” created a revenue-neutral path for indirect tax increases but favored specific consumption taxes. Third, the Fundamental Issues Subcommittee conceptualized “high benefit/high cost” in the early 1970s and established the VAT’s superiority over specific consumption taxes based on a study of overseas travel to European Commission countries. However, the VAT was abandoned due to external shocks. Fourth, the attempts to link the VAT with fiscal reconstruction in the late 1970s faced strong opposition from consumers, small businesses, and the ruling party. Failure to introduce the VAT in the 1970s eliminated the possibility of using it to raise taxes in the early 1980s. The findings reveal that Japan’s failure to introduce the VAT closed a door to a “high benefit/high cost” type of Western-style welfare state.

Japan was one of the most equal societies from the 1970s to the 1990s, in terms of income among the OECD countries, despite its small government. This study sheds light on the income policy formation process in 1975 as a critical juncture, when labour unions were demanding wage increases in response to rising prices after the 1973 oil crisis. A common theory holds that the formation of this income policy is explained by labour-management relations; however, this study emphasises an intervention by the Ministry of Finance (MOF). The sharp wage increases resulting from the spring offensive (Shunto) resulted in higher salaries for civil servants through the National Personnel Authority. Consequently, the MOF attempted to intervene in the spring offensive to maintain fiscal discipline. Specifically, the MOF suppressed the wage increase rate by directly persuading labour union representatives and adopting policies to curb aggregate demand. Consequently, the unions refrained from demanding a sharp wage increase. In return, companies maintained employment, and the government–having succeeded in suppressing wages–generated jobs by expanding public work projects. Thus, this relationship between labour, companies, and the government became the basis for the “equal” and small government of the 1990s.

This study examines why Japan's social care reforms of the early 1970s led to a generous elderly care system but only modest and narrowly targeted support for children. Although child allowances and free medical care for the elderly were introduced almost simultaneously, they followed sharply divergent paths. Both policies were initially blocked at the national level owing to fiscal constraints imposed by the Ministry of Finance. They first gained traction in progressive local governments, notably under Governor Ryōkichi Minobe's Tokyo administration. These local precedents prompted the central government to adopt similar measures and shaped the final design of national policies. For child allowances, the central government incorporated local government contributions that exceeded Tokyo's benefit levels, thus reducing the national fiscal burden. For elderly care, the Ministry of Finance tried to impose a 10% beneficiary co-payment, but dramatic international economic shifts weakened its control, eventually enabling fully subsidised medical care. Subsequent shocks, particularly the Oil Crisis, curbed further expansion and cemented a care regime heavily favouring older citizens. By highlighting a two-way iterative dynamic between central and local actors, this study contributes to debates on welfare state formation, historical institutionalism, and policy diffusion, challenging traditional one-directional models of policy diffusion.

This study analyses the formation of a policy system that reduced income inequality in Japan in the 1960s, a period of rapid economic growth. According to comparative research, the Japanese state is an example of small government with income equality. Japan’s income inequality rose in the 1950s, and at that point, the government faced a decision about how to reduce income inequality, and particularly whether to expand social security and government size. This study uses primary materials to analyse how and why Japan became more egalitarian while maintaining a small-government state, focusing on fiscal rules set by the Ministry of Finance, which adopted a balanced budget rule that prevented the issuance of public bonds and limited the tax burden ratio. As reflected in the government’s Income Doubling Plan, this development led to a trade-off among factors, such as social security, public works, and tax cuts, which led to the subordination of social security. Despite public debt issuance in 1965, which was contrary to two fiscal rules, social security did not expand because of fiscal rigidification. Throughout the 1960s, spending on public works and income tax cuts was prioritised over social security, resulting in small government but also income equality.