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Mapping Japan Through the Koseki 自己と他者の配置−−戸籍を通して日本を見る

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Mapping Japan Through the Koseki 自己と他者の配置−−戸籍を通して日本を見る Volume 9 | Issue 29 | Number 2 | Article ID 3565 | Jul 19, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Geographies of Self and Other: Mapping Japan through the Koseki 自己と他者の配置−−戸籍を通して日本を見る David Chapman Geographies of Self and Other: population documentation (hukou)3 in China has Mapping Japan through the Koseki been based on the household as the fundamental social unit. As part of the Taika David Chapman reforms in the seventh century, along with many other governmental structures adopted Abstract: from China, Japan employed the same system of household registration koseki( seido) to This paper traces the social history of the enhance and centralise the powers of the household registration system (koseki seido) in Yamato imperial court. Once the inhabitants of Japan from its beginning to the present day. The the Yamato-controlled territories were identified paper argues that thekoseki has been an they could be conscripted, taxed and controlled. essential tool of social control used at various Population registration has been practised in stages in history to facilitate the political needs Japan ever since and although it has undergone and priorities of the ruling elite by constructing numerous changes and, in recent times, been and policing the boundaries of Japanese self. supplemented by other legislation, thekoseki This self has been mediated through the has endured the course of Japanese history principles of family as defined by the state and through to the present day and still maintains has created diverse marginalised and excluded primacy in identifying who has legal Japanese others. The study includes social unrest and status. agency of these others in furthering understanding of the role of thekoseki in In this paper I trace the social history of Japanese society. The paper also contributes household registration from the late Tokugawa understanding of nationality and citizenship in period and argue that the koseki has been an contemporary Japan in relation to the koseki. essential tool of social control used at various times to facilitate the political needs and Keywords: koseki, nation-state, family,priorities of the ruling elite. This has mostly household, nationality, citizenship, self, other, been achieved through the construction and identification, documentation, self, other, Japan policing of the boundaries of a ‘legible’ Japanese self as mediated through the family unit. I also Introduction aim to reveal more about thekoseki by examining the agency exercised by the diverse It was not until the sixteenth century that others created in constituting akoseki -defined ‘documents of origin and identity came to be self. Finally, this exercise is also meant to reveal demanded as a matter of course’ innew understanding of the workings of 1 Europe. The earnest documentation ofnationality and citizenship in contemporary populations in Asia however, began in China Japan. four thousand years ago during the Xia Dynasty.2 Unlike the west, where registration is Despite the koseki system’s fundamental role as based on the individual, since its inception a conduit between state and subject, it remains 1 9 | 29 | 2 APJ | JF peripheral or absent in many discussions of power can be exercised and realised. James Japanese society and English language research Scott10 argues that a central problem of on the topic is scarce. Existing research usually statecraft is making society ‘legible’. He focuses on a specific historical period proposesand that, provides only part of the overall picture.4 There are some studies that provide interpretations of [c]ertain forms of knowledge and control require legislation relating to the Householda narrowing of vision. The great advantage of Registration Law (kosekihō) and the closely such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp related Nationality Law (kokusekihō).5 A recent focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far study on law reform and family law,Japanese more complex and unwieldy reality. This very Family Law in Comparative Perspective6 has simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon contributed new and important knowledge and at the centre of the field of vision more legible provided a long awaited update in this area. and hence more susceptible to careful 11 Other research has examined legislation that measurement and control. interacts with the Household Registration Law such as the Civil Code Minpō( ), Constitution In short, it is in the interest of state authorities (kenpō) and the Nationality Law thatto simplify and ‘know’ their population and to perpetuates a patriarchal and hetero-normative minimise complexity. Household registration family structure. The research in this area has and the process of identification and addressed the marginalization of women and documentation have been key in strategically homosexuals resulting from such legislation and governing the population as Japan moved from its interpretation.7 In the 1980s, Satōa feudal-like state and on to a modern nation Bunmei8 provided perhaps the most exhaustive and expanding empire. Moreover, it has been accounts of the history of Japan’s household one of the principal means of regulating and registration system. Sato argued thatdefining the relationship between various ruling historically the koseki was responsible for the authorities and the lowest levels of marginalization of many quarters of theorganisation. It has been the most enduring Japanese population. And, a recent book by social contract between the Japanese polity and Endō Masataka9 provides a detailed study of the the Japanese subject. The same fundamental koseki and nationality during Japan’ssystem has remained as the definitive colonization of Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria. mechanism for identification serving the various ruling authorities through until present-day Identification and Documentation Japan. Even after the official introduction of the western notion of ‘nationality’ as a category There are many reasons why governments within the Japanese legal system in 1899, as I identify and document a population. Forwill explain below, the koseki has remained the example, authorities require such organised ultimate bureaucratic identifier of status systems for tax collection, the management of (mibun) as Japanese. conscription, the tracking of subjects/citizens (surveillance) and the differentiation betweenIn the same way that other nations have those who belong and those who do not incorporated population registration, the koseki (citizens and non-citizens/nationals and non- system has been used strategically and nationals, residents and migrants). Moreover, efficiently to centralise power and control in internal systems of registration andJapan by variously codifying the population identification map out the space ofaccording the to the needs of the incumbent controlling authority and provide a network of authority. Throughout Japan’s recent history the social organisation and a means by which state koseki system provided mechanisms of 2 9 | 29 | 2 APJ | JF exclusion and inclusion creating numerous Tokugawa/Edo Period (1603-1868): others whilst defining the Japanese Surveillance,self. Division and Immobilisation Moreover, the mandatory recognition of legitimate citizenship through membership of a Political unification and centralised control registered household fixes the individual to an became a priority during the Tokugawa period entity defined, controlled and recorded directly and population registries were utilised as broad by the state and any relationship with the state tools of tax collection and social control. therefore is mediated through the family unit. In Unification required a compliant and cohesive modern times this seems to be in conflict with population and the Bakufu administration Article 13 of the Japanese Constitution that turned to population registries as the solution in states, ‘All of the people shall be respected as making the inhabitants ‘legible’ and individuals’. This approach has also established controllable. a system that contributes to the marginalisation of those outside of the heteronormative family There were four major forms of population structure.12 registration used during this period. They were the ninbetsuchō (Registry of Human In constituting a legally recognised Japanese Categories), shumon aratamechō (Religious self defined in familial terms, bureaucraticInquisition Registry), gonin gumichō (Five processes often come into direct conflict withHousehold Registry) and thekakochō (Death individuals and groups that identify themselves Registry). The first to appear were the differently to state-defined categories. Thisninbetsuchō, adapted from the registries15 kept paper also introduces the various ways in which by Hideyoshi.16 They were later adapted by the individuals and groups have attempted to Chōshū clan17 in southwestern Japan based on a exercise agency directed at the koseki system, Confucian patriarchal hierarchy similar to the in some instances seeking to undermine state original koseki household registries of the authority and disrupt control. The study of the Yamato period. In the mid-1600s, the Tokugawa tension and discord generated by thekoseki regime took control of the registry and recorded system at different points in history provideshouseholds based on social status (mibun) and further insight into Japanese society and the categorised them according to occupations such workings of systems of authority and power. as warrior, farmer, artisan and merchant shi-( The approach in this paper is twofold: to nō-kō-shō).
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