ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how social order is produced and maintained in Japan. By social order we mean the degree to which people follow explicit and implicit rules of behavior. The book explains why social order is high in Japan. However, rather than relying on ill-defined concepts of culture or tradition, it focuses primarily on understanding specific social psychological processes that occur in small groups, and how these social control mechanisms produce both desirable and undesirable consequences at higher levels of social aggregation. It attempts to integrate a wide range of scholarship on Japan, ranging from studies by criminologists to religious studies to the most current social psychological studies. The way a society is organized, both in terms of the characteristics of its institutions and the interaction patterns that emerge at the small-group level, has profound effects that are often unintentional and nonintuitive.
