One of the pledges in the Democratic Party of Japan's 2009 manifesto was boosting the national minimum wage to ¥800-an-hour as soon as possible. As with many of the DPJ's pledges, this one has also had a harsh reality check. Prefectural governments set their own minimum wages, which means if the central government wants to boost it for everyone it has to deal with national labor groups and associations of small and medium-sized businesses. The Minimum Wage Council did manage to increase the national minimum wage so far this year by an average of ¥15, the highest increase ever, but the national average is still only ¥713 (from Okinawa's ¥629 to Tokyo's ¥791), far below the ¥800 target.
In order to understand the change, one first has to realize that the meaning of the minimum wage in today's world has also changed. Originally, it was formulated as the first wage for new school graduates who would still live with their parents. It was the foundation for a wage structure that assumed salaries would increase with age, so that by the time a worker was in his 30s (this structure was built for men) he was earning enough money to raise a family and buy a home.
However, the 1990s economic downturn changed all that. By the end of the decade one out of every three workers was a non-regular employee whose wages remained stagnant regardless of how long they worked in the same job. As it stands now one out of every five heads-of-household in Japan earns less than ¥2 million a year. A person who works full-time, meaning 40 hours a week, for the minimum wage of ¥713 an hour earns about ¥1.5 million a year before taxes. There are currently 12 prefectures where minimum wage workers earn below what a person receiving welfare gets from the government. That, in fact, is the definition of "working poor."