Introduction: governing deviance in Japan

Abstract

The special issue “Governing Deviance in Japan” brings scholarship on governance into dialog with sociological approaches to deviance in order to explore how normative boundaries are constructed, contested, and rendered consequential. We conceptualize governance as the multi-actor process in which conduct is steered through varying combinations of formal regulation, administrative discretion, societal cooperation, and informal control. Deviance, in turn, is understood relationally, encompassing both negative deviance, defined as violation of established norms, and positive deviance, through which actors challenge existing normative orders and potentially contribute to their transformation. The five contributions examine youth deviance, sexual violence, smoking regulation, anti-racist counter-protest, and ideological deviation in subnational politics. Together, they demonstrate that deviance is not merely governed but partly constituted through governance, while norm-challenging actors can themselves reshape governance arrangements. We identify selective responsiveness as a central feature of this relationship: different forms of norm departure are recognized, classified, tolerated, regulated, or marginalized in markedly different ways. The special issue thus proposes “governing deviance” as an analytical bridge between governance and deviance scholarship and shows how examining moments of norm transgression can illuminate broader processes of political, societal, and institutional change in Japan.