My Ph.D. thesis for the University of Tokyo focused on the formation of the Japanese labor market from a historical perspective, paying particular attention to the female labor market in the 19th to 20th century silk reeling industry of the Suwa area in Nagano prefecture. The thesis analyzed the various institutions that developed specifically in that region both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Parallel to this, I moreover conducted research on intermediation in the labor market, concentrating on the role of private employment agencies and the development of public employment agencies between the two world wars. Furthermore, I examined the job descriptions and the results of employment offers made by private employment agencies which had been banned until the 1990s. Other research includes the empirical analysis of recent changes in the Japanese labor market.

The main research projects I am currently involved in include the following: (1) empirical analysis of the effects of employment protection in Japan; (2) empirical analysis of the matching efficiency of Hello Work, the public employment agency; (3) empirical analysis of changes in the Japanese labor market during the 1990s and 2000s. To investigate the effects of employment protection in Japan, I am currently compiling data from case studies on layoffs recorded in law reports, special statistical tables from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the census of layoffs reported by the Tokyo District Court. With regard to changes in Japan’s labor market, I am currently conducting empirical research on the fluctuation in wages of involuntary job changers, comparing age/wage and age/productivity profiles, and analyzing trends in wage distribution during the 1990s and 2000s.