Over the last ten years, wages in Japan declined 10% even as the profits of big corporations doubled.
The average manufacturing worker saw a month’s pay disappear from his annual earning last year. Meanwhile, none of the Democratic Party’s electoral promises — the removal of the Futenma base, health care reform to relieve the hardship of the elderly, labor law reform to diminish the exploitation of contract workers hired thorough employment agencies, and so on — has been kept.