Not long before representatives of the world’s richest nations convened in Toyako for the glitziest event in the history of this remote Japanese fishing community, a very different scene unfolded just a few hundred kilometres south. Angry day labourers in Nishinari, Osaka, threw stones and firebombs at riot police, overturned a car and set fire to garbage, venting their frustration at their inability to find work.

The violence, which involved an estimated 200 people and went on for two days last month, was a long way from the serene facade that Japanese society normally presents to the world. But the riots were just one extreme manifestation of the social cracks that are appearing in a country that has often, if half-jokingly, been referred to as the world’s most successful socialist state.