A major rethinking of Japanese imperialism in Asia using subaltern postcolonial studies and Marxism to focus attention on the role of human life and labour in colonial expansion

In this major reassessment of Japanese imperialism in Asia, Mark Driscoll foregrounds the role of human life and labor. Drawing on subaltern postcolonial studies and Marxism, he directs critical attention to the peripheries, where figures including Chinese coolies, Japanese pimps, trafficked Japanese women, and Korean tenant farmers supplied the vital energy that drove Japan's empire. He identifies three phases of Japan's capitalist expansion, each powered by distinct modes of capturing and expropriating life and labor: biopolitics (1895–1914), neuropolitics (1920–32), and necropolitics (1935-45). During the first phase, Japanese elites harnessed the labor of marginalized subjects as Japan colonized Taiwan, Korea, and south Manchuria, and sent hustlers and sex workers into China to expand its market hegemony. Linking the deformed bodies laboring in the peripheries with the "erotic-grotesque" media in the metropole, Driscoll centers the second phase on commercial sexology, pornography, and detective stories in Tokyo to argue that by 1930, capitalism had colonized all aspects of human life: not just labor practices but also consumers’ attention and leisure time. Focusing on Japan's Manchukuo colony in the third phase, he shows what happens to the central figures of biopolitics as they are subsumed under necropolitical capitalism: coolies become forced laborers, pimps turn into state officials and authorized narcotraffickers, and sex workers become "comfort women". Driscoll concludes by discussing Chinese fiction written inside Manchukuo, describing the everyday violence unleashed by necropolitics.

"“[A] thought-provoking narrative of Japanese imperialism. . . . The book not only conceptualizes theoretical literatures of postcolonial studies and Marxism but also suggests concrete historical knowledge. I believe the book will attract readers not only in history but also comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and philosophy.”" - Pacific Affairs

"“[P]rovocatively argued and spiritedly written. . . . an audacious book. Bold, challenging, and refreshingly unrestrained by snooze-inducing generic conventions, Driscoll unapologetically shoves you into the muck of Japan’s modernity, breaches those vast colonial silences that ‘absorb all behavior, no matter how dirty, how animal it gets,’ and somehow makes the experience pleasurable. I can’t help but desire to be shoved further, past 1945, to trace vampiric revenants of the bio/neuro/necropolitical in postwar Japan. Perhaps there’s a sequel to be made.”" - Journal of Japanese Studies

"“A good book teaches you things you don’t know. A very good book does that and also changes the way you think about things in general. Mark Driscoll’s recent study, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque examines labor and social change in the days of the Japanese empire, and it is a very good book.”" - Monumenta Nipponica

"“Driscoll squarely confronts the real human costs of Japanese imperialism. He rightly demands that the problem of colonial labour be placed at the centre of abstract discussions of ‘resources,’ modernization, and late development. He also skillfully exposes the ‘ideological fantasy’ of Japan’s wartime leaders and the ways in which ‘civilizer/looter’ represented two sides of the same imperialist coin.”" - Labour/Le Travail