¹ The Allied Powers reported, “The fact that procurators’ offices are badly understaffed has contributed to the unfortunate and widely criticized delay in the operation of criminal justice.” Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Government Section, Political Reorientation of Japan, September 1945 to September 1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), vol. 1, 210.

² Bureau of Statistics, Office of the Prime Minister, Japan Statistical Yearbook (1960), 503. The reported dramatic escalation of crime can be attributed to a confluence of factors: acute shortages of basic necessities, the disintegration of social order, pervasive unemployment and poverty, challenges in reintegrating returning soldiers, and the proliferation of a black market.

³ Kenmukyoku, Hōmufu [Ministry of Justice, Prosecutorial Affairs Bureau], Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite [On the filing system] (Tokyo: Hōmufu Kenmukyoku, 1950), 363 Google Scholar.

⁴ Watanabe Tatsuo, “Fairingu shisutemu no tane” [The seed of the filing system], Kenshū 104 (1957): 68–69, 68. The only prior case of a government office implementing a large-scale filing system was the prewar Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the Paris Peace Conference in 1921, a group of officials advocated the switch of the document classification and storage system from the traditional alphabetical order to the decimal filing system. Launched in 1924, it was soon doomed a failure because its use of numerical identifiers made people uneasy by obscuring the topics and categories for document classification. By 1930, the Ministry had discarded the vertical filing method and returned to bound books. See Yagishita, Hiroko, “‘Gaimushō bunsho bunrui hyō no hensen’ ni tsuite” [On “the transformation of the document classification table] Journal of the Diplomatic Archives 6 (1993): 78–95 Google Scholar.

⁵ Hōmufu Kenmukyoku, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 4.

⁶ This present essay employs “file system” rather than “filing system” to highlight its material-medial capacity for active enrollment in the PPO’s modernization. I reserve the latter to explicitly refer to the filing practice. I thank an anonymous CSSH reviewer for bringing this important difference to my attention.

⁷ Kenpō, 3 Nov. 1946, article 37. See also, Yokoi, Taizo, “Kōryū riyū kaiji seido no tōwaku” [The perplexity of the rule of disclosure of reasons for detention], Jurisuto 39 (1953): 6–8, 7Google Scholar.

⁸ Political Reorientation of Japan, vol. 2, 662.

⁹ The historical materials drawn on for this study include publications originally designated for “Internal Use Only” (bugaihi), such as the stenographic proceedings of the file system workshops and internally circulated research materials (Kensatsu Shiryō), as well as PPO monthly reports, Justice Ministry yearbooks, the PPO in-house journal (Kenshū), and various directives issued by the Justice Ministry and official remarks by PPO and Justice Ministry leaders.

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¹⁴ Some of the studies focused on a specific form of inscriptions and markings as active elements of a bureaucratic apparatus. Examples include, for “signature,” Cody, Francis, “Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India,” Cultural Anthropology 24, 3 (2009): 347–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for “seals,” Hetherington, Kregg, The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay (Durham: Duke University Press 2011)Google Scholar; for “stamps,” Suresh, Mayur. “The ‘Paper Case’: Evidence and Narrative of a Terrorism Trial in Delhi,” Law & Society Review 53, 1 (2019): 173–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for “PowerPoint,” Prentice, Michael, “The Powers in PowerPoint: Embedded Authorities, Documentary Tastes, and Institutional (Second) Orders in Corporate Korea,” American Anthropologist 121, 2 (2019): 350–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for “post-its,” Wilf, Eitan, “The Post-It Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation through One of Its Key Semiotic Technologies,” Current Anthropology 57, 6 (2016): 732–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for “format” and “forms,” Riles, Annelise, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sterne, Jonathan, MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; for “bullet points,” Strathern, Marilyn, “Bullet Proofing: A Tale from the United Kingdom,” in Riles, Annelise, ed., Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006), 181–205 Google Scholar; and for “lab books,” Wershler, Darren, Emerson, Lori, and Parikka, Jussi, The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an informed overview of the recent scholarship on the materiality of documents and bureaucracy, see Hull, Matthew, “Documents and Bureaucracy,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 251–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pigg, Stacy, Erikson, Susan L., and Inglis, Kathleen. “Introduction: Document/ation: Power, Interests, Accountabilities,” Anthropologica 60, 1 (2018): 167–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²² Vismann, Cornelia, Files: Law and Media Technology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, xii.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Klose, Alexander, The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

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²⁶ Hōmufu Kenmukyoku, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 66.

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³³ Saibanshohō [Courts Act], Law Number 59 of 16 April 1947.

³⁴ Kensatsuchōhō [PPO Law], Law Number 60 of 16 April 1947.

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³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid.

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⁴¹ Ueno Yōichi, “Maegaki [Foreword],” for Misawa Hiroshi, Kanchō jimu nō ritsu [Office work efficiency in the public office] (Tokyo: Chūō-sha, 1950), 1–2. As early as 1914, U.S. pioneers like John William Schulze had pointed out the industrial sector’s “lion’s share of attention” within scientific management, and attributed the lag in clerical applications to prevalent perceptions that office was separate from factory work. See Schulze, John William, The American Office: Its Organization, Management and Records (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1914), 9Google Scholar.

⁴² Nihon seisansei honbu, Jimu kanri: jimukanri senmon shiseatsudan hōkokusho (Productivity Report, 29) [Office management: office management special mission report] (Tokyo: Japan Productivity Center, 1958), 220. See also Nihon seisansei honbu, America no jimukanri [Office management in America] (Tokyo: Japan Productivity Center, 1957). It is also noteworthy that a 1906 assertion by Dicksee and Blain that “the office [is] to a business [what] the mainspring is to a watch” and that it is “the nerve center of the entire mechanism,” unexpectedly found renewed resonance in postwar Japan. See Robert, Dicksee Lawrence and Blain, Herbert Edwin, Office Organization and Management Including Secretarial Work (London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1906): 1–2 Google Scholar.

⁴³ Taylor, Frederick Winslow, “The Principles of Scientific Management,” in Shafritz, J. M., Otto, J. S., and Jang, Y. S., eds., Classics of Organizational Theory (Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005[1916]), 64.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Minutes of House of Representatives, Cabinet Committee, no. 2, 24 Mar. 1949. Katsuhiko Onogi, Deputy Chief of Administrative Management Agency, in his report on the on-going readjustment of the administrative structure, told the committee that the measures to improve the efficiency of administrative management included “repealing of the conventional ‘administration by people’ and establishing ‘the administration by the organization.’” At: http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/005/0388/00503240388002a.html.

⁴⁵ Nagashima, Atsushi, “Hitoyori bunsho e bunsho yori fairu e” [From people to documents, from documents to files] Jimunōritsu 2, 8 (1950): 20–23 Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Hetherington, Kregg, “Promising Information: Democracy, Development, and the Remapping of Latin America,” Economy and Society 42, 2 (2012): 127–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Edwards, Paul N., The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, Fred, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Steward Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ This translation is more faithful to its French original phrase.

⁴⁸ Dando, Shigemitsu, Shin keiji soshōhō kōyō: kaiteiban (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1949), 96 Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See, Chiaki Kashiwagi, Keiji Soshōhō [Code of criminal procedure] (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1970), 125.

⁵⁰ Jisaku Taniguchi, “Kensatsu no minshuka” [The democratization of the PPO], Kenshū 100 (1956): 74–79, 78.

⁵¹ Sumio Kishi, “Kenstasu no minshuka” [The democratization of the PPO], Kenshū 101 (1956): 50–55, 55.

⁵² Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (New York: Wiley, 1948). See also Turner, Fred, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006), 24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Yasuhide, Komura, Kensatsuchō ni okeru jimu kanri no mondaiten [The problems of office manegement in the PPO] (Tokyo: Homu Sogo Kenkyujo, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 5.

⁵⁵ Latour, Making of Law, 70–106. See also Kruse, Corinna, The Social Life of Forensic Evidence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For some districts, this transition was a monumental endeavor. Nagoya District PPO, for example, established a dedicated “File Section” with eleven staff members. Within just two and a half months this team converted the bound crime registry books into 163,000 individual cards, all while maintaining their regular responsibilities. Hōmufu Kenmukyoku, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 73–74.

⁵⁷ Krajewski, Markus, Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548–1929 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stäheli, Urs, “Indexing–The Politics of Invisibility,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, 1 (2016): 14–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Burke, Colin B., Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ I thank the late Michael Silverstein for pointing this out to me. For studies of how the governmental rationality of scientific management was spatially enacted through architectural design and the office furniture and space, see Guillén, Mauro F., The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical: Scientific Management and the Rise of Modernist Architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Alexandra Lange, “White Collar Corbusier: From the Casier to the Cités D’affaires,” Grey Room 9 (2002): 58–79; Martin, Reinhold, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Irvine, Judith T. and Gal, Susan, “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation,” in Kroskrity, Paul, ed., Regimes of Language (Santa Fe: School for American Research, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Latour, Making of Law, 260.

⁶¹ Hōmufu Kenmukyoku, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 60.

⁶² Weber, Max, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 1404.Google Scholar

⁶³ See Anita von Schnitzler’s compelling analysis of the water meter, which technologically replaced and materialized the government’s plea to the residents to pay for services; Democracy’s Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

⁶⁴ For the similar point but on a different scale, see Benjamin Bratton, “Introduction: Logistics of Habitable Circulation,” in Paul Virilio, ed., Mark Polizzotti, trans., Speed and Politics (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006[1977]), 7–25, 12.

⁶⁵ This is a rare mode of visualizing/spatializing an organization. A tree-like organizational chart, a visualization of an office marking its hierarchy, while still rare, started to appear as early as the 1920s. And the horizontal, network-like organizational chart was far less available until the 1960s.

⁶⁶ Bratton, “Introduction,” 83.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 81.

⁶⁸ See note 27 for the definition of “channel.”

⁶⁹ Bratton, “Introduction,” 170–71.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 175.

⁷¹ Ibid., 176.

⁷² Kawaguchi, Kotaro, “Kensatsu jimu ni okeru fairu seido,” Jimu to Keiei 1, 3&4 (1949): 20–23, 22Google Scholar.

⁷³ On 13 May 1950, in his address at the conference for Deputy Chief Prosecutors (16 May 1950), Takahashi also deplored the lack of the prosecutor’s will to work on the file system by drawing on an episode he heard from an assistant officer about prosecutors failing to file the Registry Slip and instead keeping it inserted in the non-prosecuted record, which prevented the officers from completing the file. Hōmufu, Fairingu seido ni tsuite, 84.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 77.

⁷⁵ For a theoretical discussion on the generic specificity of “memos,” see Guillory, John, “The Memo and Modernity,” Critical Inquiry 31, 1 (2004): 108–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁶ The concept of “index” or “indexicality” originates from Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic theory of sign relations, which categorizes signs into three distinct types: icons, symbols, and indexes. While the relationship between a symbol and its referent is arbitrary and governed by convention, and the relationship of an icon is predicated on resemblance, an index maintains a physically contiguous, causal, and existentially co-present relationship with the object it signifies. Importantly, this indexical relationship is not contingent upon “the interpreting mind,” as Peirce elucidates; Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks, eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931–1934, 2.299). To illustrate, a smoky sky serves as an index of a wildfire, irrespective of whether an individual perceives and interprets it as indicative of a nearby wildfire. As Peirce further notes, “the index asserts nothing”; it merely indicates the presence of the object it indexes (ibid., 3.361).

⁷⁷ Hōmufu, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 12. See also Alan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (1986): 3–64, for the history of the finger printing card system.

⁷⁸ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).Google Scholar

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⁸⁰ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 281.

⁸¹ Hōmufu, Fairingu shisutemu ni tsuite, 383.

⁸² Ibid., 384.

⁸³ Ibid., 18–19.

⁸⁴ Latour, Bruno, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 215 Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 14–15.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 17–18.

⁸⁷ While “nagare sagyō” is conventionally translated as “assembly line,” its literal translation would be “flow work.”

⁸⁸ Latour, Science in Action, 23–24.

⁸⁹ I thank an anonymous CSSH reviewer for bringing this insight to my attention.

⁹⁰ Saikō-kensatsu-chō kōhōbu [Supreme Court Prosecutors Office Public Relations Department], Atarashii kenstatsu no shimei [The missions of the new public prosecution] (1949), 95–97.