Losing the Union Man: Gender and Class in the Postwar Labor Movement

Abstract

This chapter narrates the generational contest to define working-class masculine identity that emerged during the era of global youth culture and radical political movements that characterized the 1960s and early 1970s. By analyzing the ways in which middle-aged male leaders of Japan’s Old Left unions perceived politically active, young blue-collar men, the chapter shows how generational conflict influenced the ways in which an increasing number of blue-collar men of all ages identified with middle-class cultural and economic forms. One result was the fracturing of the Old Left’s monopoly on class-based ideals of masculinity, which set the stage for a cascade of class and gender confusions that have shaped popular notions of ‘work’ and ‘manhood’ to the present day.