Seniority-based hierarchy (jouge kankei) is omnipresent in Japanese group dynamics. How one
comports depends on one's status and position vis-à-vis others. To-date no study shows what
constitutes this hierarchy where and when individuals growing up in Japan first come into
contact with it as well as how they learn to function in it. This book fills in the lacunae.
Considering jouge kankei as a social institution and adopting a discourse analytic approach
this volume examines the ways in which institutional jouge kankei as an enduring feature of
Japanese social life are created and reproduced. The monograph analyses how seniority-based
relations are enacted legitimised transmitted and reified by social actors through language
use and paralinguistic discursive practices such as the use of space objects signs and
symbols. It also looks at how established rules could be challenged. The empirical data on
which findings are based are gathered through 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2015 to
2018 in Japanese schools with certain types of data (school club etiquette books and uniforms)
being presented and analysed for the first time. This volume also shows continuity and change
of jouge kankei from school to work.
