Mapping the Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Dataveillance Discourse in Japan

We argue that dataveillance in Japan is fueled by techno-nationalist imaginaries that promise socio-economic renaissance by strengthening digital capitalism. Japanese nationalism is based on a techno-optimist imaginary which feeds enthusiasm for digitalization. We develop this argument by observing four discursive layers of dataveillance: (1) Society 5.0 - the governmental AI and ICT blueprint, (2) mass media, (3) AI vendors, and (4) the ethical, scientific, and legal areas. We distinguish four types of promises that legitimate dataveillance: personalization, automation, cloud convenience, and security. While we note critical voices in media and, especially, academia and jurisprudence, overwhelmingly, technology companies and the retail industry contribute to a technological infrastructure of dataveillance that reflects the underpinning imaginaries of the Government's plan. Japan's technopolitical discourse entangles production and consumption as based on an ideology of limitless resource exploitation through the newfound resource of data. Human lives are understood as biometric data in a dialectic of production and consumption. We agree with recent surveillance studies that an emerging economy based on digital platforms entrenches the disparities of capitalism. This digital rendition of capitalism reenforces the imaginary of the Japanese nation-state through data colonialism: it concretizes a top-down vision of the nation into a dataset.