Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2025
This chapter examines employment testing bias and fairness in Japan. Japan’s hiring practices are shaped by its historical ethnic homogeneity, employer discretion, and a legal framework emphasizing procedural fairness over outcome equity. Anti-discrimination laws protect women, older workers, and people with disabilities, but issues concerning nationality, race, and minority groups such as the Ainu and Dowa have historically received less attention. Regulatory bodies, including the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, issue guidelines to ensure fair hiring practices, but these lack effective enforcement. Legal remedies for discriminatory hiring are rare due to the high burden of proof and limited application of disparate impact doctrine. Traditional aptitude and psychological tests remain central in employment selection, with the increasing emergence of artificial intelligence-based hiring practices raising new fairness concerns. In response, some employers are adopting blind procedures, including anonymized resumes. As globalization and labor shortages intensify, Japan’s employment practices face increasing pressure to evolve toward greater inclusion and equity.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.