Dr. Kuwata, a former member of the Upper House, with whom I frequently discussed the labour situation, declares the Factory Law to be "palpably imperfect and primitive." At the end of 1917 there were, according to official figures, 99,000 female factory operatives under fifteen years of age and 2,400 under twelve. Some 20,000 of these children were employed in silk factories. What protection have they? Before passing this page for the press I have shown it to a well-informed Japanese friend and he says that he has never seen any newspaper report of a prosecution under the Factory Law. Obviously a Factory Law under which no one is ever prosecuted is not operative.[[153]]
It is excellent that Japan has sent a large permanent delegation to Switzerland to establish a system of liaison with the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. This company of young men will keep the Japanese Government well informed. There is undoubtedly in Japan, under Western influence, a steady development of sensitiveness to working-class conditions and a rapid growth of modern social ideas. But the Government and the Diet will not step out far in advance of general opinion, the most will naturally be made by the authorities and trade interests of bad factory conditions on the Continent of Europe and in some industries in the United States, and the majority of a public which has been carefully nurtured in the belief that a profitable industrialism is the great desideratum for Japan will not be restive. Real factory reform is not to be expected until an enlightened view is taken by Japanese in general of the exploitation of girls for any purpose. It is not in commercial human nature, Eastern or Western, that factory directors and shareholders should forgo without a struggle the advantage of possessing cheaper and more subjected labour than their foreign rivals. Some influence may be exerted in the right direction by the fact that those who are profiting by cheap and docile labour may themselves be undersold before long by cheaper and still more docile labour in China. [[154]] And in 1922 Japan is under an obligation, accepted at the Washington Labour Conference, to stop women working more than eleven hours a day and to abolish night work. Meantime the labour movement makes progress. It is significant that many of its leaders are under the influence of "direct action" ideas. They hope little from a Diet elected on a narrow franchise and supported by a strong Government machine backed by the Conservative farmer vote. Although, however, there does not seem to be as yet a junction between the labour movement and the unions of the tenant farmers, who have their own interests alone in view, the future may present unexpected developments. As I write, the labour movement is conducting a trial of strength with the great Mitsubishi and Kawasaki enterprises and is presenting a stronger front than it has yet done.
This Chapter would give an unfair impression of the relations of capital and labour in Japan if it included no reference to the well-intentioned efforts made by several large employers to improve the conditions of working-class life and labour. Sometimes they have followed the example of philanthropic firms in Great Britain and America. As often as not they have been inspired by old Japanese ideas of a master's responsibilities. Many leading industrials have believed and still believe that by the conservation and development of old ideas of paternalism and loyalty the trade-union stage of industrial development may be avoided. This conviction was expressed to me by, among others, Mr. Matsukata, of the famous Kawasaki concern, who has made generous contributions to "welfare" work. My own brief experience as an employer in Japan made me acquainted with some canons in the relationship of employer and employed which have lost their authority in the West. Given wisdom on the part of masters, the prolonged bitterness which has marked the industrial development of the West need not be repeated in Japan, but whether that wisdom will be displayed in time is doubtful. The Japanese commercial world has been commendably quick to learn in many directions in the West. It will be a serious reflection on the intelligence of the country if the lessons of the industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States should not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty which the foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts as silly as they are useless[[155] ] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large proportion of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have been made by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be placed on the statute book in order to be enforced. But if he be honest he must also recognise the handicap of specially costly equipment[ [156]] and of unskilled labour and inexperience under which the Japanese business world is competing for the place in foreign trade to which it has a just claim. Such conditions do not in the least excuse inhumanity, but they help to explain it.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [144] It is a chastening exercise to read before proceeding with this Chapter an extract from Spencer Walpole's History of England, vol. iii, p. 317, under the year 1832: "The manufacturing industries of the country were collected into a few centres. In one sense the persons employed had their reward: the manufacturers gave them wages. In another sense their change of occupation brought them nothing but evil. Forced to dwell in a crowded alley, occupying at night a house constructed in neglect of every known sanitary law, employed in the daytime in an unhealthy atmosphere and frequently on a dangerous occupation, with no education available for his children, with no reasonable recreation, with the sky shrouded by the smoke of an adjoining capital, with the face of nature hidden by a brick wall, neglected by an overworked clergyman, regarded as a mere machine by an avaricious employer, the factory operative turned to the public house, the prize ring or the cockpit."
[ [145] See [Appendix XL].
[ [146] Number of factory workers, a million and a half, of whom 800,000 are females. For statistics of women workers, see [Appendix XLI].
[ [147] The Minister of Commerce has himself stated that the sericultural industry is rooted in the dexterity of the Japanese countrywoman.
[ [148] This section of the Chapter was written in 1921.
[ [149] In Japan in 1918 there were, per 1,000, 505.2 men to 494.8 women.