Social Mobility in Japan, 1868-2012: The Surprising Persistence of the Samurai

Using rare surnames to track the descendants of two formerly elite groups in Japan – the Samurai, and the Kazoku of 1869-1946 – we estimate social mobility rates in Japan 1900-2012. We would expect that the dramatic social changes of Meiji Japan 1868-1946, and postwar Japan 1946-2012, would create substantial social mobility. However, we find high rates of persistence of the descendants of the former elites – in particular the Samurai across a wide range of modern social elites: business, education, medicine and law. Social mobility rates are comparably slow, or even slower, than those found in similar studies for the USA, UK, and Sweden. True social mobility rates are everywhere much lower than conventionally estimated.