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Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan.

Article Excerpt
Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan David Leheny Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 2006. 248pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-4418-0 $35

In this book, David Leheny considers a feeling of anxiety prevalent in 1990s Japanese society, through which he argues that international norms and domestic interests overlapped in Japanese policies on the sexual exploitation of children and public safety. This was an anxiety that rose from within Japan, which nobody could name, but surely meant something for the society (Leheny calls it 'vague anxiety'). At least, there was a publicly visible source of the anxiety, that is, young Japanese people who were selling sex for money in their after-school time, or were retreating to their subjective worlds and attacking/killing people for personal salvation/ gratification?

Youth culture and the crisis of school education became a nation-wide problem in 1990s Japan, with the re-education of young people's hearts becoming an important component of educational reform. Leheny argues that Japanese policymakers made use of international norms to enforce stricter laws to police new social disorders caused by young people. Additionally, the 'glocalisation' of international norms of criminal justice, which initially arose from pathologising youth, eventually framed the Japanese view of terrorists, namely, foreign criminals and North Korean sailors who are not a globally recognised problem. Subsequently, Leheny examines the link between norms,...

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