1. An individual identification device which uses an image of blood vessels of a hand to perform individual identification, comprising: an imaging device which can image blood vessels of a hand without coming into contact with the hand, comprising: a position/direction/shape instructing unit for instructing a user to hold up his hand; one or more irradiating units for irradiating the hand with near infrared radiation; and one or more imaging units for producing an image by the near infrared radiation; a blood-vessel image extraction unit for extracting a blood-vessel image from the produced image by said one or more imaging units; a blood-vessel image storage unit for storing the registered hand blood-vessel image of each user; and an identification unit for identifying the user by comparing the extracted blood-vessel image with the registered blood-vessel image.