After the fierce class struggles in the first postwar years, a societal model describing Japan as a general middle-class society with outstanding equality in opportunities and outcome became dominant. In recent years, a new societal model of Japan as a divided society has replaced this general...

The paper investigates the effectiveness of the median voter as a decisive agent in the process of redistribution. According to the previous literature, it tests several assumptions finding interesting results: The positive relation between inequality and redistribution is confirmed, but the...