Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan
eBook - PDF

Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan

  1. 312 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan

About this book

The kinds of punishment used in a society have long been considered an important criterion in judging whether a society is civilized or barbaric, advanced or backward, modern or premodern. Focusing on Japan, and the dramatic revolution in punishments that occurred after the Meiji Restoration, Daniel Botsman asks how such distinctions have affected our understanding of the past and contributed, in turn, to the proliferation of new kinds of barbarity in the modern world.


While there is no denying the ferocity of many of the penal practices in use during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), this book begins by showing that these formed part of a sophisticated system of order that did have its limits. Botsman then demonstrates that although significant innovations occurred later in the period, they did not fit smoothly into the "modernization" process. Instead, he argues, the Western powers forced a break with the past by using the specter of Oriental barbarism to justify their own aggressive expansion into East Asia. The ensuing changes were not simply imposed from outside, however. The Meiji regime soon realized that the modern prison could serve not only as a symbol of Japan's international progress but also as a powerful domestic tool. The first English-language study of the history of punishment in Japan, the book concludes by examining how modern ideas about progress and civilization shaped penal practices in Japan's own colonial empire.

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Yes, you can access Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan by Daniel V. Botsman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Japanese History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. List of Illustrations
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Abbreviations
  9. INTRODUCTION
  10. CHAPTER 1: Signs of Order: Punishment and Power in the Shogun’s Capital
  11. CHAPTER 2: Bloody Benevolence: Punishment, Ideology, and Outcasts
  12. CHAPTER 3: The Power of Status: Kodenmachō Jailhouse and the Structures of Tokugawa Society
  13. CHAPTER 4: Discourse, Dynamism, and Disorder: The Historical Significance of the Edo Stockade for Laborers
  14. CHAPTER 5: Punishment and the Politics of Civilization in Bakumatsu Japan
  15. CHAPTER 6: Restoration and Reform: The Birth of the Prison in Japan
  16. CHAPTER 7: Punishment and Prisons in the Era of Enlightenment
  17. CONCLUSION: Punishment, Empire, and History in the Making of Modern Japan
  18. Notes
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index