The restructuring of a Japanese style hotels' workforce at the periphery of the Tokyo metropolitan area

Hot spring tourism areas in Japan assemble genderized and marginalized reproductive labor. Lots of casual workers which are not only local female workers but also migrant workers from rural area in Japan who use company dormitories are mobilized in the areas. There are lots of unstable jobs and poverty in the segregated urbanized spaces. We would like to point out that there is a flow that people who stay in company dormitories tend to become an unorganized and unsettled urban underclass. This article will explore the mobilization of a workforce and reintroduction distinction with globalization in the case of one hot spring tourism area in periphery of the Tokyo metropolitan area. In the Japanese style hotel in this case, tourists drastically increased from metropolitan area after the building of a railroad in the 1920s. It became an urbanized and bright-lights district with many shops and hotels. As the area had a workforce shortage, migrant workers from periphery and temporary female laborers from the local area were mobilized. Recently, however, the Japanese hotel has promoted streamlining, controlling and outsourcing. As a result, regular workers have become better geared for employment. At the same time, female trainees from other Asian countries, young dispatch workers, and female part time workers from the local area have been mobilized as marginal laborers. On the other hand, elderly migrant workers were excluded from the labor market. This restructuring of the workforce shows an age distinction in addition to keeping the unequal gender ratio. It has a relation to characteristics of the service industry which is not only for costs but also for a good image for “Omotenasi” (hospitality) unlike in the case of the manufacturing industry. Globalization of the reproductive sphere is progressing most in the marginalized female service sector, and competing with other marginal workers.