Juvenile Delinquency in Japan: Reconsidering the "Crisis" (Brill's Japanese Studies Library)

How to explain juvenile delinquent behaviour in the Japan of the nineties? Are its reasons really fundamentally different from those in other societies? Juvenile Delinquency in Japan, written by leading Japanese and German scholars, for the first time looks comprehensively into the phenomenon. It does so from a variety of disciplines; law, sociology, education, and Japanese studies. Thus it explores the legal provisions, conditions of schooling, family life, and social change in society as a framework for understanding delinquent behaviour in Japanese high school students. It becomes clear that reasons for delinquency are the same in Japan as in other societies. Fundamentally different, however, are the high sensitivity to delinquent behaviour and the tremendous efforts to prevent nonconformist behaviour. Annotation Fourteen contributions from Japanese, Swiss, and German scholars look at the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency in Japan from a variety of academic disciplinary perspectives. Each paper presents research results on the causes of juvenile delinquency during the 1990s in Japan and discusses how Japanese society has responded to its increased incidence. The papers were originally presented at a symposium on German and Japanese juvenile delinquency held in 2001 at Martin Luther U. in Halle, Germany. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Edited By Gesine Foljanty-jost. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.