In resent years, poverty has become the key issue in the field of social science in Japan. There have been an increasing number of researches being made on empirical research, theory studies, critical policy thinking, and alternative proposal in poverty, which has been neglected for years. It seems that news articles about poverty problem have been around us everyday on the news media such as TV news, newspaper, magazines.
It is the US sub-prime crisis happened in 2008 that drew Japanese people’s attention to poverty problem. It triggered massive unemployment among the young and middle-aged, which brought about the impact and crisis to Japanese society recognized as “the middle class society” or “society without poverty.” In fact, as there was a political recognition that Japanese government did not deal with unemployment and poverty problem effectively in 2008, the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan lost the long-term seizure of power in 2009. The most important policy task for the current ruling party in Japan, the Democratic Party, is expected to solve unemployment and poverty problem.
The purpose of this paper is to examine Japanese welfare policy since the American sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008 and regime change in 2009 with particular attention to situation of unemployment and poverty policies, the related problems, and reform trends in recent years. The paper gives a general overview of the American sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008 and regime change in 2009 in the second part and is followed by analysis of structural problem and current situation of Japanese welfare policy, which was disclosed by the American sub-prime mortgage crisis and Japan’ regime change in the third part. Finally, the forth part looks at welfare reform policy of the current Japanese ruling party of the Democratic Party and discusses what can be suggestive in Korea.