From Introduction:

During most of the post-WWII period, regardless of objective social position within the enterprise and employment system, most Japanese citizens have identified in social surveys with the middle-class. One of the aims of this article is to discuss the methodological artifacts which have led to this seeming disconnect between objective social position and the subjective experience of belonging to the middle-class. The main difference lies in the ways in which social surveys, conducted by the Cabinet Office annually in Japan, and sociological survey programs, both national and international, have designed the response categories. These are discussed in the first section of this essay.

Three sets of changes in employment and firm organizations have however, begun to close the gap between objective social position and subjective perceptions thereof. In the past twenty years, the Japanese employment system has undergone a number of fundamental changes. First and foremost is the de-regulation of employment contracts and the subsequent rise in non-standard employment to more than a third of the workforce (...).

A second and related factor concerns changes in the integration of small firms into vertical firm alliances, which had guaranteed workers in subcontracting firms relative security, despite the absence of long-term employment in this sector. From the 1990s onward, the exposure of subcontractors to more competitive and international markets have led to a decline in social protections, both for the owners of these businesses and their workers. Finally, within the large firm sector, changes in working time regulations and shifts to more performance components in wage scales has increased competition and insecurity within the most protected domain of the Japanese employment system. These changes have affected a new convergence in objective social position and the subjective identification of class status in Japan, though the overall aggregate measure of ‘middle identification’ remains unchanged. The second section of this essay discusses these changes, in what sociologist Kikkawa calls the ‘quiet transformation of status identification’ (chû ishiki no shizuka na henyô).