Working Paper（25-020E）Short-run and Long-run Impacts of the Female Labor Force Mobilization in Japan during World War II

During World War II, the Japanese government carried out a large-scale mobilization of the labor force for war production. To move young and middle-aged men into the military and strategic industries where they were essential, the government restricted male employment in certain designated industries where female workers could substitute for male workers. Women were regarded as a major source of labor, in addition to men in “nonessential and nonurgent” industries and (male) students. Exploiting the variation in the regulation of male employment across industries, we conducted a simple regression analysis to investigate the impact of the war on the female labor force participation, using industry-level panel data from 1920 to 1970. We found that the female employment ratio in the industries where male employment was restricted, increased relative to the other industries from 1940, and that this effect continued at least until 1970. This suggests that wartime labor mobilization had a positive impact on female labor participation, and that the impact was persistent. The case study on major banks indicates that major banks indeed made efforts to substitute female for male employees, and that they changed the internal organization and rules to achieve this. In addition, the transition of individual female employees of Mitsubishi Bank from 1936 to 1960, indicates that a substantial number of the wartime entrants remained until 1952, and that Mitsubishi Bank continued the wartime recruiting and human resource management policy, i.e. the recruiting many female employees and appointing them to wider range of jobs, after the war. These findings from the case studies would explain the persistent change in the nation-wide employment structure by gender.

Key words: Female employment, Labor mobilization, War economy, Economic history, Japan

JEL classification numbers: J21, J68, N25, N35, N45

This article was originally published on September 4, 2025, and revised in April 2026.