Relay Column: Homework & Sandals – Legal Protection for Creators Out of Consideration for the Act of Choosing Clothes (Hinako Komamura)

Do you have any particular preferences regarding the clothes you wear? Also, how do you go about choosing your outfits?

The criteria for selecting clothing varies from person to person, encompassing aspects such as design, color, silhouette, texture, types of fabric used, brand, production location, and price range. Of course, there are many who may not have an interest in clothing or fashion at all.

I believe many people pay attention to current trends when choosing their clothes. If one wants to follow trends at a low cost, they might consider checking out fast fashion brands. In particular, nowadays, when looking at online shopping sites of fast fashion brands, one can find items at shockingly low prices that are typically sold in apparel shops within shopping malls.

No matter how inexpensive a product is, there must be some profit for the seller. Concerns arise in my mind regarding whether the wages of the workers who manufacture those products are being paid fairly and whether there are any issues with their working conditions.

In terms of factory labor for textile products, there is a wealth of research, beginning with the study by Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson (Elson and Pearson 1981=2002). Therefore, I will proceed here with my own research interests in mind.

I am particularly interested in all forms of labor, both paid and unpaid, carried out by women in the domestic space. In the fashion industry, this might include sewing jobs such as piece work. Although the population involved in piece work is decreasing, there are still people engaged in sewing and similar forms of piece work related to clothing, as well as existing job listings and recruitment.

The image many people have of piece work refers specifically to a subset of home-based labor, formally known as domestic labor. Domestic workers are defined as "those who usually use their home as a workplace, receiving parts or raw materials from clients such as manufacturers or wholesalers, and manufacturing or processing goods, often alongside family members, in return for wages" (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2022). While there are other forms of domestic labor beyond piece work, I will omit those for brevity in this article.

Since domestic workers do not operate under employment contracts, labor standards laws do not apply. However, there is a domestic labor law in place. According to Article 1 of the Domestic Labor Law, the law aims to contribute to the stability of workers' lives by ensuring the thorough issuance of domestic labor notebooks, securing wages, ensuring minimum wages, and implementing safety and health measures.

However, a survey conducted in 2020 on the actual condition of domestic labor found that the average hourly wage for all domestic labor was 520 yen, significantly below the minimum wage as of December 2022 (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2021). It can be said that there remains doubt as to whether the legal protections for workers under the domestic labor law are sufficient.