Prisons and Forced Labour in Japan: The Colonization of Hokkaido, 1881-1894

by Pia Jolliffe

Overview

Prisons and Forced Labour in Japan examines the local, national and international significance of convict labour during the colonization of Hokkaido between 1881 and 1894 and the building of the Japanese empire.

Based on the analysis of archival sources such as prison yearbooks and letters, as well as other eyewitness accounts, this book uses a framework of global prison studies to trace the historical origins of prisons and forced labour in early modern Japan. It explores the institutionalization of convict labour on Hokkaido against the backdrop of political uprisings during the Meiji period. In so doing, it argues that although Japan tried to implement Western ideas of the prison as a total institution, the concrete reality of the prison differed from theoretical concepts. In particular, the boundaries between prisons and their environment were not clearly marked during the colonization of Hokkaido.

This book provides an important contribution to the historiography of Meiji Japan and Hokkaido and to the global study of prisons and forced labour in general. As such, it will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese, Asian and labour history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815383208
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Series:	Routledge Focus on Asia
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Pia Maria Jolliffe is a Research and Teaching Associate at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies and a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of Learning, Migration and Intergenerational Relations: The Karen and the Gift of Education (2016).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Technical notes

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

1 Forced labour and arrest in Edo and Ezo

2 Hokkaido prison island

3 Prisons and rural development, 1881–1886

4 Hard labour as penal servitude, 1886–1894

5 Conclusion

Index