Military education beyond the total institution: raising scandals in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces

Although the concept of ‘total institutions’ has largely fallen out of fashion in the broader sociological literature, it remains the dominant theoretical framework among studies on education and training in military organisations. This article argues that the top-down assumptions that characterise this framework have obscured the ways in which the formation of military culture can evade formal hierarchies and civilian oversight, contributing to the cultural divide between military and society routinely scrutinised in liberal democracies around the world. It does so by examining the case of Japan, whose Self-Defence Forces have recently been engulfed in a spate of scandals, particularly surrounding a government investigation identifying more than a thousand instances of power abuse. This article asks how the Japanese military could develop an organisational culture so apparently at odds with society despite the country’s notoriously strict system of civilian control. Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork at the National Defense Academy, Japan’s pre-eminent military academy, this article shows how everyday life in the barracks on campus amounts to a powerful socialisation force beyond the control of civilian authorities. It shows how this informal socialisation, characterised by hierarchical and highly ritualised relationships between students, prizes unconditional subordination and normalises abusive treatment. Challenging the ‘total institutions’ framework, this article thus proposes instead to conceptualise institutions of military education and training as sites of contested authority, where learning is a decentralised process that unfolds in ‘communities of practice’.