Stigmatization of the Japanese Youth through the Discourse and Representations of Juvenile Delinquency (1997-2010)
Five murders in Japan committed by juvenile criminals attracted immense attention from the media in the years 1997 and 2000. A new discourse about juvenile delinquency followed these incidents, stipulating that juvenile delinquents had become more cruel, more violent, more abnormal, and more numerous than ever before. However, the discourse developed on its own, taking a radical ideological turn : it began to apply not only to juvenile delinquents, but labelled the entire population of Japanese youth as dangerous, incomprehensible, and abnormal while seeming to be proper and normal members of society. The discourse strongly influenced the Japanese society ideologically and legally, and labelled its youth as a threat to the nation. This study presents the development of this particular discourse that led to the negative portrayal of the Japanese youth in the first decade of the 21st century. Key concepts used as characteristics of this cohort are examined, breaking down the discourse into sociocultural and ideological reasoning and systems.