ABSTRACT
The study of socially deviant behavior is one approach to understanding the social structure of a culture as well as its patterns of socialization and personality formation. Two notable manifestations of increased incidence of deviant behavior in modern Japan during the postwar period are (1) the trend toward a higher rate of juvenile delinquency and (2) an increase in the suicide rate among the youth. These statistically verified general trends stimulate speculations concerning their possible relation to the nature of social change going on in Japan today. Social-class stresses, economic pressures, and shifts in ideology and values are deeply involved, but it seems clear that global theories about such forces beg the question of explaining the processes that create certain statistics of the type uniquely Japanese.
