The Japanese labor law system established after World War II attached the highest importance to collective bargaining disputes, the rights for which were established by the postwar Constitution and the Labor Union Act. Labour Relations Commissions (LRCs) were created to undertake the task of nurturing industrial relations along with the new labor law and resolving collective labor disputes arising therefrom. Until the beginning of the 21st century, LRCs had been the single statutory institution specializing in labor disputes. As a matter of fact, until the 1980's, LRCs had in many ways played important roles in dispute-prone industrial relations. One can conclude, therefore, that in the first four decades of their 70-year history, LRCs played a dominant role in Japan's labor dispute resolution system.Yet, as the number of collective labor disputes handled by LRCs declined in the late 1980s and the new field of individual labor disputes has been expanding since the 1990s, Japan has transformed its labor dispute resolution system by placing the latter disputes in the center of the labor dispute resolution system. Nationwide administrative services of counseling and conciliation were established by the 2001 Act to offer informal, comprehensive and expeditious services, undertaken mainly by the national labor administration. LRCs were also empowered by the Law to offer counseling and conciliation services, but have not yet fully developed their services to an extent comparable to those of the national administration. Then, the 2003 Act established a new judicial system specializing in individual labor disputes, which rapidly became a popular and efficient system. The success of this labor tribunal system could be said to have further blurred the significance of LRCs in the entire labor dispute resolution system in Japan. While maintaining and utilizing their accumulated expertise in collective labor relations, LRCs have to form and promote strategies to expand their activities for resolving individual labor disputes, which will surely continue to be thecenterpiece of labor disputes in the coming decades."

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