Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan

BOOK REVIEW/ Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan
07/02/2005

By KENNETH J. RUOFF, Contributing Writer


Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan

By Daniel V. Botsman

Princeton: Princeton University Press

ISBN 0-691-11491-9, 319 pp, $35


Daniel V. Botsman, associate professor of Japanese history at
Harvard University, has written a crisp, nuanced account of Japan's
transition to modernity by focusing on the transformation of the
country's penal system. Disputing accounts that stress there were
already roots of modernity before the Meiji Restoration of 1868,
Botsman argues that many Meiji Era (1868-1912) reforms-specifically
the establishment of a modern penal system-represented a clear
rupture with the past. Even as Botsman emphasizes the discontinuous
nature of many Meiji Era reforms, however, he challenges simplistic
accounts that interpret the modernization of Japan's penal system as
marking a shift from barbarism to civilization.

Like their counterparts throughout the world at the time, Tokugawa
Shogunate (1603-1867) authorities developed horrifying ways of
punishing and executing criminals. Botsman provides graphic details
of those punishments, including extreme forms such as the
domestically developed type of crucifixion pictured on the book's
cover (numerous graphics augment the book's strengths). In addition,
public display of criminals' corpses was a means for the authorities
to warn people to behave.

Botsman concludes: "Tokugawa punishments were never acts of
unthinking violence. They formed part of a sophisticated system for
maintaining order that was not entirely lacking in restraint or
compassion. For example, the fact that a retainer would be punished
far more harshly for stealing from his lord than from a social equal
represented the need to uphold a particular status system. Moreover,
there was considerable room for benevolence in the system, and the
authorities often overlooked various offenses."

Botsman details how in the mid-19th century, representatives of
Western countries, without understanding the complexity of the
Tokugawa system of punishment, labeled it uncivilized and invoked it
to justify extraterritoriality. This was the provision in the
unequal treaties requiring that foreigners accused of crimes be
tried by consular officials from their own countries rather than by
Japanese officials.

To win the confidence of the Western powers, Japan's new leaders
created a system of punishment characterized by modern jails based
on European and American models. They outlawed dramatic forms of
public punishment and decreed that executions be carried out only
for particularly heinous crimes and only by hanging. They otherwise
eliminated corporal punishment. In its place, however, the state
jailed more people, including thousands for dissenting against the
new government.

It took decades for Japan to convince the West that its modernized
legal system, which included a system of jails advertised as
reforming criminals by putting them to work, showed the nation had
reached a level of civilization that merited elimination of the
unequal treaties.

Western visitors to Japan such as Isabella Bird, after observing
prisoner work gangs, wrote approvingly of the practice, which
supposedly served both to better the prisoners and develop the
country. Botsman, however, questions whether the practice of
literally working thousands of prisoners to death to extract coal
and build roads, especially in newly colonized Hokkaido, represented
a higher stage of civilization.

The author's interpretation of the intersection of penal systems and
modernity becomes most fascinating with his account of Japan's
acquisition of an overseas empire, the quintessential marker of a
civilized country in the late 19th century, as a result of its
victory over China in 1895. With its appropriation of Taiwan, Japan
earned the right to institute a colonial penal system.

Botsman's account of the double standard used to justify such
practices as flogging, first applied to colonial subjects in Taiwan
and then used extensively in Korea, demonstrates the blatant
prejudice that underlays the placement of some countries into the
category of civilized and others into the category of uncivilized
during the heyday of imperialism.

Japan initially built a showcase prison in Taiwan's capital and
applied the same system of punishment used in the homeland. Before
long, however, the colonial authorities concluded that the local
Chinese and Taiwanese were at such a low level of civilization that
incarceration in a modern prison, far from being a reforming
punishment, was a luxury.

Japanese colonial authorities thereby decided in 1904 to institute
flogging, which was outlawed in Japan proper, in Taiwan. According
to Botsman, most Western commentators, far from condemning this
hypocrisy, as did some ideologically consistent Japanese members of
the penal-reform movement, applauded the Japanese for having come to
understand that civilized forms of punishment were ineffective in
keeping the natives in place. Far from undermining Japan's place in
the self-appointed club of civilized nations, the use of harsh
punishments against colonial subjects earned Japan additional
respect from other imperialist powers that employed similar brutal
methods.

This is a sophisticated and yet accessible work of history that I
recommend heartily.

* * *

The reviewer is director of the Center for Japanese Studies at
Portland State University.(IHT/Asahi: July 2,2005)

Hi! Looks like this book is one that may prove nice to read... Where can I find one? Could I, perhaps, get hold of an ebook copy?

Would appreciate much if one could share same to me.


Cesar


Kitsuno <samurai-listowner@...> wrote:
BOOK REVIEW/ Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan
07/02/2005

By KENNETH J. RUOFF, Contributing Writer


Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan

By Daniel V. Botsman

Princeton: Princeton University Press

ISBN 0-691-11491-9, 319 pp, $35


Daniel V. Botsman, associate professor of Japanese history at
Harvard University, has written a crisp, nuanced account of Japan's
transition to modernity by focusing on the transformation of the
country's penal system. Disputing accounts that stress there were
already roots of modernity before the Meiji Restoration of 1868,
Botsman argues that many Meiji Era (1868-1912) reforms-specifically
the establishment of a modern penal system-represented a clear
rupture with the past. Even as Botsman emphasizes the discontinuous
nature of many Meiji Era reforms, however, he challenges simplistic
accounts that interpret the modernization of Japan's penal system as
marking a shift from barbarism to civilization.

Like their counterparts throughout the world at the time, Tokugawa
Shogunate (1603-1867) authorities developed horrifying ways of
punishing and executing criminals. Botsman provides graphic details
of those punishments, including extreme forms such as the
domestically developed type of crucifixion pictured on the book's
cover (numerous graphics augment the book's strengths). In addition,
public display of criminals' corpses was a means for the authorities
to warn people to behave.

Botsman concludes: "Tokugawa punishments were never acts of
unthinking violence. They formed part of a sophisticated system for
maintaining order that was not entirely lacking in restraint or
compassion. For example, the fact that a retainer would be punished
far more harshly for stealing from his lord than from a social equal
represented the need to uphold a particular status system. Moreover,
there was considerable room for benevolence in the system, and the
authorities often overlooked various offenses."

Botsman details how in the mid-19th century, representatives of
Western countries, without understanding the complexity of the
Tokugawa system of punishment, labeled it uncivilized and invoked it
to justify extraterritoriality. This was the provision in the
unequal treaties requiring that foreigners accused of crimes be
tried by consular officials from their own countries rather than by
Japanese officials.

To win the confidence of the Western powers, Japan's new leaders
created a system of punishment characterized by modern jails based
on European and American models. They outlawed dramatic forms of
public punishment and decreed that executions be carried out only
for particularly heinous crimes and only by hanging. They otherwise
eliminated corporal punishment. In its place, however, the state
jailed more people, including thousands for dissenting against the
new government.

It took decades for Japan to convince the West that its modernized
legal system, which included a system of jails advertised as
reforming criminals by putting them to work, showed the nation had
reached a level of civilization that merited elimination of the
unequal treaties.

Western visitors to Japan such as Isabella Bird, after observing
prisoner work gangs, wrote approvingly of the practice, which
supposedly served both to better the prisoners and develop the
country. Botsman, however, questions whether the practice of
literally working thousands of prisoners to death to extract coal
and build roads, especially in newly colonized Hokkaido, represented
a higher stage of civilization.

The author's interpretation of the intersection of penal systems and
modernity becomes most fascinating with his account of Japan's
acquisition of an overseas empire, the quintessential marker of a
civilized country in the late 19th century, as a result of its
victory over China in 1895. With its appropriation of Taiwan, Japan
earned the right to institute a colonial penal system.

Botsman's account of the double standard used to justify such
practices as flogging, first applied to colonial subjects in Taiwan
and then used extensively in Korea, demonstrates the blatant
prejudice that underlays the placement of some countries into the
category of civilized and others into the category of uncivilized
during the heyday of imperialism.

Japan initially built a showcase prison in Taiwan's capital and
applied the same system of punishment used in the homeland. Before
long, however, the colonial authorities concluded that the local
Chinese and Taiwanese were at such a low level of civilization that
incarceration in a modern prison, far from being a reforming
punishment, was a luxury.

Japanese colonial authorities thereby decided in 1904 to institute
flogging, which was outlawed in Japan proper, in Taiwan. According
to Botsman, most Western commentators, far from condemning this
hypocrisy, as did some ideologically consistent Japanese members of
the penal-reform movement, applauded the Japanese for having come to
understand that civilized forms of punishment were ineffective in
keeping the natives in place. Far from undermining Japan's place in
the self-appointed club of civilized nations, the use of harsh
punishments against colonial subjects earned Japan additional
respect from other imperialist powers that employed similar brutal
methods.

This is a sophisticated and yet accessible work of history that I
recommend heartily.

* * *

The reviewer is director of the Center for Japanese Studies at
Portland State University.(IHT/Asahi: July 2,2005)






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