Abstract
This chapter explores the historical image and issue of Japanese juvenile delinquency as it specifically relates to pre-1945 East Asia. In the West, such behaviour was often easily labelled under the rubric of “juvenile delinquency” but as we will see, such a simple classification does not allow for the sort of historical investigation that is required when looking at the issue of empire and youth in East Asia. Unfortunately, while acknowledging this heuristic problem, we have precious little other vocabulary in our lexicon to describe the situation. Thus, I will retain the term “juvenile delinquency” but offer specific commentary on new ways of linking delinquency with politics and Japanese imperialism in China and Korea, concerning the symbols and rhetoric of pre-war and wartime Japanese youths on the Chinese mainland. Such an examination should hopefully bring to the forefront some of the pitfalls in too liberally appropriating the same terms across geography and history. The history of juvenile delinquency has often been written from a purely national perspective, or criminological orientation, with less in the way of comparative or transnational studies.1 In other areas such scholarship attempts to reveal a pattern of Westernization, where non-Western nations learn from the West. Particularly lacking are studies which explore the construction and understanding of juvenile delinquency in the cultural sphere of East Asia and, equally important, how this delinquency was woven into the fabric of empire.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Albert Feuerwerker, “Japanese Imperialism in China: A Commentary”, in Peter Duus, Ramon Hawley Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds), The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–;1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 432.
Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–;1932 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), p. 1.
For more on class and children in Japanese history, see Mark Jones, Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010).
Hany Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History Culture, and Community in Internar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 34
Richard F. Calichman, editor and translator, Overcoming Modernity, Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 1–41.
Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920–;1960”, Journal of African History, 47 (2006), p. 125.
David Howell, “Making Sense of Senseless Violence in Early Meiji Japan”, in David L. Howell and James C. Baxter (eds), History and Folklore Studies in Japan (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2006), pp. 57–75.
David Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-century Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), p. 98.
Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists — The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–;1960 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 15.
Michael Lewis (translated and annotated), A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembô, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 15–27
Michael Lewis (translated and annotated), A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembô, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 16.
Michael Lewis (translated and annotated), A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembô, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 48.
Sheldon Garon, “Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-Society Relations”, Journal of Asian Studies, 53, 2 (May 1994), p. 350.
Mark Driscoll, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–;1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 29.
Mark Driscoll, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–;1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 62.
Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan”, The American Historical Review, 107, 2 (April 2002), pp. 396–397.
Erik Esselstrom, Crossing Empire’s Edge: Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), p. 5
Andre Schmid, “Colonialism and the ‘Korea Problem’ in the Historiography of Modern Japan: A Review Article”, Journal of Asian Studies, 59, 4 (November 2000), pp. 953–954.
Seiji Noma, The Nine Magazines of Kodansha (London: Methuen and Co., 1934), pp. 184–185.
David R. Ambaras, Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 146.
E. Herbert Norman, “The Genyosha: A Study in the Origins of Japanese Imperialism”, Pacific Affairs, 17, 3 (September 1944), pp. 261–284.
Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists — The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–;1960 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 55.
Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 115.
Carter Eckert, Korea Old and New, a History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 215.
Teny Crowdy, The Enemy Within: A History of Spies, Spymasters and Espionage (London: Osprey Publishing, 2006), p. 216.
Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–;1910 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), p. 202.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Barak Kushner
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kushner, B. (2014). Empire’s Little Helpers: Juvenile Delinquents and the State in East Asia, 1880–;1945. In: Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence, 1850–2000. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349521_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349521_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46792-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34952-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)