Composing “Child” in Japan’s Criminal Justice System: A Relational-Constructivist Approach
This paper examines how the figure of “Child” is composed within recent reforms of Japan’s criminal justice system—specifically, the 2021 revision of the Juvenile Act and the 2023 reform of laws on sexual offenses. Drawing on discourse from legislative councils, expert hearings, and official research reports, the study employs Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Latour’s notion of composition to explore how legal, bureaucratic, and expert actors collaboratively assemble varying representations of “Child.” Instead of presuming a fixed or essentialist notion of childhood, the analysis focuses on how institutional assemblages actively constitute multiple, contingent versions of the child. The paper concludes by reflecting on how such practices of composition may destabilize traditional legal categories and challenge the structural coherence of the criminal justice system.