Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan
Regular price
€51.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Daniel V. Botsman
Americans in Japan
Ansei Purge
Arson
Attempt
Author_Daniel V. Botsman
Bakumatsu
Bloody Code
Bureaucrat
Capital punishment
Category=JKVP
Category=NHF
Category=NHTB
Colonialism
Corporal punishment
Crime
Crime in Japan
Criticism
Daimyo
Death by burning
Decapitation
Decolonization
Disciplinary institution
Discipline and Punish
Edo period
Empire of Japan
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Extraterritoriality
First Sino-Japanese War
Fukuzawa Yukichi
Hokkaido
Home Ministry
House arrest
House of correction
Ichi (scarification)
Illustrations of Japan
Imperialism
Imprisonment
Incest
Institution
Interrogation
Iwakura Mission
Journal of Japanese Studies
Kansei Reforms
Korea under Japanese rule
Mass incarceration
Meiji period
Meiji Restoration
Narcissism
New Prison
Persecution
Power politics
Prison
Public execution
Punishment and Social Structure
Racism
Reformatory
RIKEN
Russo-Japanese War
Samurai Rebellion
Satsuma Rebellion
Seppuku
Shogun
Slavery
Taiwan under Japanese rule
Takasugi Shinsaku
Theft
Tokugawa shogunate
Torture
Torture chamber
Unequal treaty
Unrest
Urban riots
War
War of aggression
Warring States period
Product details
- ISBN 9780691130309
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2007
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
Daniel V. Botsman is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has lived in Japan for several years and also taught in the Faculty of Law at Hokkaido University.
