Beginning this month, the city government of Tokyo is offering its employees a four-day workweek, hoping to increase the population and create a healthier work-life balance in a country notorious for long hours at the office.
UVA Today turned to University of Virginia professor Len Schoppa, an expert on Japan, to learn more about the new policy. Currently teaching a course on Japanese politics, Schoppa had just been discussing the new option with his students. He has also written about how Japan has previously tried, but failed, to turn around its declining population.
Q. Can you talk about the decline in Japan’s population and how long it’s been decreasing?
A. The population trend is sort of like a mountain. Japan’s population was rising rapidly ever since World War II ended and the baby boom began there. Then, it reached a peak in about 2007. Around that time, it was kind of like a level plateau. The birth rate in Japan now is 1.2.
Q. What does that figure 1.2 mean? Can you explain that?
University of Virginia professor Len Schoppa’s research examines Japan’s politics and economy in a comparative context. “I have an ongoing interest in the political economy of low fertility rates in Japan,” he said. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
A. The total fertility rate is a measure of how many babies a woman has during her period of being fertile. (For example,) how many babies did someone have when they were 21? How many did they have when they’re 22? When they add up all those numbers, it gives them a number for the year, which might be something like 2.1 – 2.1 babies per woman. If a society has 2.1 babies every year, forever, it will stay the same population every year because you’re replacing the previous generation with a new generation of the same size.
Q. Can you describe the new policy in Tokyo?
A. In the city of Tokyo, the metropolitan area is governed by a local government. But it’s a very, very large local government. It has decided that for their own workers, they’re going to offer them the opportunity to have a four-day workweek in the hopes that this will help them have more of a work-life balance, reduce the amount of time people are spending commuting and give them the time to spend with their family so that maybe they’ll want to have a larger family.
So, it’s 10 hours a day for those four days. But that would actually more closely resemble what they’re already working five days a week.
Tokyo is a very densely populated urban area. Its fertility rate is the lowest in Japan. It’s only about 1.1.
Q. Can you describe the work culture in Japan and explain why it’s so intense?
A. Because the labor market is bifurcated into good jobs with good pay and benefits and poorly paid, poor-benefit jobs, people (in the good jobs) have this kind of job security. The job security means that they can’t easily just quit and go to another, similarly paid job. The main opportunity to get into a good job comes when you’re in your 20s. The labor market is designed so once you start on a career with a particular employer, your employer is going to expect to keep you on for the rest of your career.
Even though (the government) has tried to use government policy to constrain overwork, large numbers of the mostly male workers who work in these career jobs are working until 8 o’clock at night, every night. And then they have a one-hour commute at the other end. And so it’s 9 o’clock before they get home. And you do those five days a week.
The government is hoping (the four-day workweek) will become a model for the private sector.
