Inequality and deviance in Japan

It may be a surprise to many why Japanese youth and foreign migrants are paired together in a book on inequality and deviance in Japan. The life situation, however, of these two subculture group's ties in with inequality as a precursor to deviance in a strikingly similar manner. Japanese youth and foreign migrants are powerless and yet perceived to be a major threat to the status quo. Both subcultural groups have consistently been the main targets of tight and restrictive formal and informal social controls propagated by sensationalised accounts of their deviance. Inequality, setting the stage for deviant reactions pertaining to these two subcultural groups, clearly shows that conflict is as an integral and dynamic feature of Japanese society, a contrast to the harmony or nihonjinron (theories of Japanese) perspective.

It is astonishing that so much has been made of societal togetherness in Japan. In scholarly writings and popular fiction, in the mass media, in Hollywood movies, at academic conferences or as a topic of conversation, Japan has been consistently viewed as a society of wa (harmony), racial homogeneity, egalitarianism and group solidarity. Inequality and deviance at best are considered a minor issue and when the subject is approached, attention is given to the uniqueness of Japanese culture that somehow makes aberrant behaviour and class conflict less of a social problem compared to Western countries. This nihonjinron model is challenged in this book, showing that inequality, conflict and deviance in Japan is no less a part of human relations than harmony.

Near the train station, boys and girls from a low-ranked high school in Kanagawa prefecture mockingly wearing a school uniform light up their cigarettes. The boys with school trousers pulled half way down their buttocks, shirts open and unconventional hairstyle try to look cool and give off an ‘I don't give a damn’ attitude. The girls wear conspicuous long shorts under skirts pulled way up near their upper thigh. They have bleached brown and blond hair and pierced body parts. Such dress and rebellion is commonplace among students at their high school, a school with a bad reputation. It is a place where ‘student misfits’, most from the lower class, are sent to by a class tracking school system.