Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (review)

As a nonhistorian working on contemporary Japanese social problems, I welcome this work on state responses to wayward youth in the period from 1895 to 1945 particularly for what it tells us about the roots of the contemporary Japanese state’s treatment of juvenile delinquency. Author David Ambaras stresses underlying continuity from era to era, and the uneven mixture of reform and punishment, paternalistic tolerance and moral panic he describes will have a familiar ring to readers living in Japan today. Bad Youth is informed by a strong awareness of class issues, and the state’s attempt to spread values perceived as “middle class”—thrift, diligence, sexual continence, etc.—is shown throughout to interweave with more patriotic/nationalistic concerns. Often the story seems to be one of the middle class telling the working class how to behave. Sometimes, too, the “lower classes” were viewed in much the same way as the “lesser races” of the Japanese empire: class and colonial consciousness are seen as complementary modes of thought here.

The book opens with a crisp introduction and a background chapter in which the Tokugawa state is seen struggling to control the Tenmei Riots of 1787—allegedly led, partly at least, by children and youths—and responding in 1791 with Japan’s first ever edict directed specifically at youth. The tradition of youthful street gangs is shown to have strong Tokugawa-era roots, and social control systems such as the goningumi neighborhood associations are characterized as targeting unruly youth.

Chapter 2 covers the later Meiji era. It has some vivid accounts of working-class Tokyo street-children and their bosses, and describes the attempts of social reformers to establish reformatories and special elementary schools for the poor that mingled Christian compassion with a more Spartan view of moral correction. Meanwhile, the Meiji reformers, although keen to import Western learning, also saw a risk that it could lead to “too many Japanese with Western hearts” (p. 67). Hence Ambaras devotes his third chapter to the Meiji state’s response to “degenerate students.” Whether the students were effete dandies (nanpa) affecting European styles (haikara), or tough guys (kōha) with rough, Tokugawa-style dress (bankara), they excited curiosity and mistrust, as did the new wave of female students who were inevitably suspected of loose sexual morality. The nervous authorities attempted to ban students from political activity, though students were far less likely to end up in institutions than the working-class youths in the previous chapter.

Chapter 4 covers the Taisho era, an optimistic period in which many middle-class reformers thought they could transform society by intervening in the upbringing of youth. Ambaras devotes particular attention to the Juvenile Law (Shōnen Hō) of 1918 and the juvenile courts set up under it. The approach was paternalistic, stressing protection rather than punishment. A Justice Ministry official’s assertion that the courts’ activities would be a form of social work, and that hearings would be held in family-like, intimate settings (pp. 105–6), reminds one of the unthreatening environment of today’s family courts. Two-thirds of the cases referred to the Tokyo Juvenile Court were not even viewed as serious enough to open (p. 106).

Chapter 5 follows the blossoming of Taisho-era “modern boys” and “modern girls,” and increasing government unrest about the suspected spread of modern, immoral, foreign ways. But as with the Meiji-era students, moral outrage did not generally translate into repressive action, at least until 1938, when Japan was already at war and the Tokyo police started rounding up students in cafes, billiard halls, department stores, etc. (p. 162). The state is seen as increasingly repressive, though it is a pity Ambaras does not tell us what kind of punishment was inflicted on students after they had been rounded up.

One suspects they were better treated than the working-class teenagers pressed into working...