The Dialectics of Locks in Urban Japan

• In Event: STS and Security Studies: Expertise, Infrastructures and Practices - II

Abstract

Now, the exhortation to lock your door, is one commonly heard in Tokyo. That wasn’t always the case. Only a few decades ago, as late as the early 1990s, locks were shoddy pieces of metal, more symbolic than useful. Then, with rising crime rates, they became a national headline. This paper takes as its focus the lock’s changing status in the late 1990’s and beyond, as they came to embody a new imperative for safety in the city.

Locks are never 100% full proof. Sturdy though they may seem, an accomplished burglar learns to exploit their vulnerabilities; a skilled lock manufacturer adapts accordingly, countering with improved security measures. In this game of tic for tac, the resulting lock physically integrates ideals of safety with narratives of the criminal other. In early 1990s Japan, their weak construction reflected low crime rates and little public concern over burglaries. Based on 15 months of anthropological fieldwork in Tokyo, this paper shows how, a decade later, locks were redesigned to address a new narrative. In the mid-1990s, the media attributed an alarming rise of home robberies to the spread of a Chinese, lock-picking, crime ring. Lambasted in the media for their inability to fend off burglars, locks, at first, came to symbolize the danger of foreign criminals. Then, they were redesigned to neutralize the perceived threat. This paper considers how Japan’s locks today embody, mechanically, the social threat they are meant to dispel.

Author

• Misha Bykowski, Stanford University