Juvenile Delinquency in Japan

Abstract

Even though urbanization, crowding, industrialization, and a high-tech ‘work ethic’ exist in Japan, the country still has one of the lowest delinquency rates among the nations of the western world. However, in this family-centred and somewhat tradition-bound culture, rapid social change in the last two decades has created the potential for increasing ‘secularization’ of various institutional sphereseconomic, political, religious, and scientific. This could manifest a decline in community based measures of social control that has restrained the growth of delinquency, while demonstrating that the industrialization experience does not necessarily support the norms that would sustain consensus and a homogeneous culture. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.