Colonial Surveillance - by Midori Ogasawara

About the Book

"In order to compete with Western powers, Japan began to rapidly modernize its governing institutions, in the process creating a national population registration and identification bureaucracy, the Koseki system, in 1871. A few decades later, when Japan began to extract natural resources from and militarize Northeast China during its colonial expansion, new identification technologies were introduced to control a growing population of colonial subjects. Against the historical backdrop of these pioneering identification systems in Japan, Midori Ogasawara invites readers to delve into the little-known genealogy of modern-day identification systems, and the colonial roots of the surveillance technologies that saturate our digital lives today. Based on archival research in Japan and China, as well as interviews with the families of Chinese survivors of Japanese colonialism, this book explores the emergence of Japanese identification systems and the transformation of identification techniques in its colonies and occupied areas. Taking a historical and sociological perspective informed by surveillance studies, Ogasawara shows how biometric identification became a powerful means of population control and racialization of ethnic others, a process that helped the Japanese government to classify the Chinese as "desirable" or "undesirable" and to reduce whole persons to mere resources. Tracing it from the Koseki system to colonial surveillance in Northeast China, Ogasawara uncovers the troubling history of identification technology in modern Japan"--

Book Synopsis

In order to compete with Western powers, Japan began to rapidly modernize its governing institutions, in the process creating a national population registration and identification bureaucracy, the Koseki system, in 1871. A few decades later, when Japan began to extract natural resources from and occupy Northeast China, fingerprint identification was introduced to track the movement of local populations. Taking a historical and sociological perspective informed by surveillance studies, this book shows how biometric identification became a powerful means of policing and racialization of ethnic others in Japan's empire.

Based on archival research in Japan and China, as well as interviews with the Chinese survivors of Japanese occupation, Midori Ogasawara explores the transformation of identification techniques from Japan to its colonies and the lasting impacts of colonial surveillance on everyday people. Against the historical backdrop of Japan's colonial expansion in the pseudo-state of "Manchukuo," Ogasawara invites readers to delve into the little-known genealogy of modern-day identification systems, and the colonial roots of the troubling and often-invisible surveillance technologies that saturate our digital lives today.

Review Quotes

"A gripping and poignant historical sociology of Japanese surveillance practices, domestically and, particularly, in colonial incursions in Chinese 'Manchukuo.' Midori Ogasawara breaks new ground in combining intriguing ethnographical fieldwork with thoughtful modifications of surveillance theories to grasp both the stark realities of identification and state scrutiny and their differential impact on families and individuals in Japan and China. Readers are drawn right into the exacting research experience, deepened further by the striking photographs." --David Lyon, author of The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life

"Identification practices were crucial to Japanese imperial domination and persist in varying forms to the present day--Midori Ogasawara's study of Japan's systems of identification and surveillance provides a major contribution to our understanding of this history." --John Torpey, Graduate Center, City University of New York

"This book does not simply build upon but innovates a way of thinking about identification and surveillance systems demonstrably at the bedrock of modern society. An absolutely original contribution to the study of Japan and its empire." --Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, University of Colorado Boulder

About the Author

Midori Ogasawara is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.