AbstractOutsiders often believe that Japan's current success is partly due to her labor-management practices. But in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Japan suffered from very damaging strikes, just as she was trying hard to recover from World War II. Management-union co-operation is the key to Japan's current industrial relations. This came from ‘economic unionism’ (as opposed to ‘political unionism’), which provided a framework for exchange of information and problem-sharing.