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Historically, Japanese labor unions have organized the core of the labor force in Japanese companies. The increase in the number of nonregular employees in the labor market and the decrease of the unionization of core regular workers is imposing new challenges on the mainstream labor movement. Against this backdrop labor supply takes on a new dimension, notably as a result of a falling birth rate and the role of foreign workers. The latter takes on a distinct significance in this context. This article will provide an assessment of the latent and more obvious difficulties facing the unionization of foreign workers by focusing on the experience of labor activists in Kanagawa City Union, in Kanagawa Prefecture just south of Tokyo. This minority union organizes many Latin American workers, among whom Peruvians form the most numerous group. The second issue surrounds the precarious nature of workers’ employment. The third and final matter addresses the character of the response by mainstream labor, especially Rengo, to this and other community unions. Finally, how and to what extent can the distinctive structure of such marginal unions provide a new dimension to the analysis of the problems casual workers are facing in society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, some of the socially, economically and politically marginalised have developed robust social and labour movements that engage with mainstream society. These movements have developed strategies challenging the conditions of the excluded, while also highlighting pathways to establish, or enhance, individual and collective participation in the labour market and the wider society. Two distinct though related, social and organisational forms of these movements are elaborated – firm-centred and community centred respectively. The former especially has a combative past in the labour struggles of the 1950s in what are known as sa'ha shōsū-ha kumiai (left wing Minority union, or, Minority-faction union). However, this does not mean Minorities are inherently leftist in orientation. In the 1940s and 1950s, during a period of radical union hegemony, a collaborative form of second unions developed assisting the purge of radical leaderships. Our focus here is on a contemporary radical democratic current. While articulating concerns of those in full time employment outside the political mainstream they may also represent ethnically and otherwise socially marginalised workers. The community unions, a form of what are known as ‘new-type union’, shingata kumiai (this term will be used here to describe the community unions) articulate the concerns of those socially and economically marginalized in the community and the wider labour market. Controversially, the term ‘Minority union’ is used to depict the different forms of oppositional social movement union in a broader sense than is typically understood in the literature. This is because they share a common concern with the articulation of Minority social and political interests in the context of the employment relationship and the local community. In considering the character of these social movement unions the article seeks to add to what Price (1997 ) describes as ‘bottom up history’ which we term ‘sociology from below’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to delineate and assess three key approaches to the implications of Japanese involvement in Great Britain and to suggest an alternative to the so-called 'Japanization' school in its various incarnations. Far from seeking to provide anything approaching a definitive account of the full range of participants involved in the discussion over the nature of Japanese inward investment in Great Britain, let alone the character of the debate at an international level, my main priority is to attempt to draw out some basic themes by assessing the continuities and discontinuities in the various positions delineated. These are broadly conceived, far from definitive and of course open to elaboration and debate. The range of material drawn is thus deliberately limited so as to focus primarily on the key participants, if progenitors, mostly in Great Britain.

The article offers information on the 14th International Congress of Endocrinology (ICE2010), a biennial meeting associated with the International Society of Endocrinology (ISE), to be held in Kyoto, Japan from March 26 to 30.