New Books on Japan: "Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire"

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET

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Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire (Stanford University Press, 2025)

Presenter: Midori Ogasawara, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Victoria

Discussant: Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Professor of History, University of Colorado

Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Midori Ogasawara (University of Victoria), who will be speaking about her recent book Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire. 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, 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, such as koseki family registers and fingerprinting, and the colonial roots of the troubling and often-invisible surveillance technologies that saturate our digital lives today. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia (Colorado) will serve of interlocutor.