Poverty and rising living standards in Japanese mining communities: social surveys at the dawn of the growth boom

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the standard of living of industrial workers was a priority of the project to transform Japanese society, based on expertise built up between the wars. Sociologists were particularly interested in the extreme poverty and underdevelopment of the coal industry. The main aim of the 1955 survey on unemployment among miners was not to understand the standard of living of miners with a view to expanding the workforce and collective bargaining, but more broadly to raise national awareness of the scandal of the coexistence of, on the one hand, impoverished populations who received too little help from welfare systems and, on the other, a growing proportion of the Japanese population achieving rising living standards thanks to the strong post-War growth.