Punishment and power in the making of modern Japan / Daniel V. Botsman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Botsman, Dani.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Punishment--Japan--History.

Punishment.

Japan--History--1868-.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (338 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2005]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction

Signs of order : punishment and power in the shogun's capital

Bloody benevolence : punishment, ideology, and outcasts

The power of status : Kodenmachō jailhouse and the structures of Tokugawa society

Discourse, dynamism, and disorder : the historical significance of the Edo stockade for laborers

Punishment and the politics of civilization in Bakumatsu Japan

Restoration and reform : the birth of the prison in Japan

Punishment and prisons in the era of enlightenment

Punishment, empire, and history in the making of modern Japan.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-302) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691114910

0691114919

9781400849291

1400849292

OCLC:

860711362