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LANGUAGE, INFORMATION, AND TECHNE
Miyako Inoue (Stanford), Copies of Truth, the Rise and Fall of Machine Stenography in the Postwar Japanese Courtroom
Tuesday February 12, 2013 | 04:15 -06:00 PM | Building 200 Room 307

This presentation provides a historical account of the invention and adoption of the Japanese stenographic typewriter in the 1950s’ Japanese courtroom, and its demise in the mid 1990s. Under the tutelage of the General Headquarters of the American Occupation, post-war Japanese judicial criminal procedure abruptly changed from the prewar inquisitorial system based on the European continental civil law tradition, to an adversarial system modeled after Angelo-American common law. The judges, prosecutors, and attorneys, who had been trained in the prewar inquisitorial procedure characterized as “trial by dossier” were forced quickly to retool themselves for the adversarial system that privileges orality and speech as the medium of trial procedure. This new judicial procedure accompanied the Japanese stenographic typewriter, or “sokutaipu,” as an official method for making a trial records, replacing the court clerk’s long-hand summary. The new technology was imagined to help guarantee a “speedy and fair trial,” the principal rights ensured by the new Constitution drafted under occupation. Drawing on interviews conducted with the first cohorts of court stenographers trained in the 1950s and 60s as well as documents in the Supreme Court Library, this presentation illustrates how the stenographic typewriter was used and imagined to contribute to the construction of the post-war democratic Japanese society in general, and judicial system in particular.