This is a tour-de-force study... Lucid, delightful to read, yet theoretically sophisticated, this is one of the best books on the Tokugawa-Meiji transition in many years.
Mark Ravina, Journal of Asian Studies [A] lasting contribution to understanding a subject that many historians of Japan have talked about but few have explored... This is an outstanding social history, richly detailed ... Read moreand insightful, that deserves a wide readership.
Michael Lewis, American Historical Review In this fine book Daniel Botsman uses an examination of punishment to argue that imperialism helped to constitute state power in modern Japan. The book also does much more. It explains the relationship between state power and punishment in Japan from the early Tokugawa period to the end of the nineteenth century, and is accessible and based on an impressive mastery of primary and secondary source material.
Robert Eskildsen, Pacific Affairs Botsman sets a high standard of research and analysis... [T]his book is outstanding.
Geoffrey C. Gunn, Journal of Contemporary Asia In this impressive volume, Daniel V. Botsman details the history of Japanese punishment and penal reform in the early modern and modern periods... In his view, Japanese penal reform should be interpreted as an example of how external forces
in this case, Western imperialism and the desire for treaty revision
were integral to the formation of modern Japan, rather than such vague notions as 'civilization' and 'progress.'
Choice Botsman's book tries to move past the tendency to see punishment in Tokugawa Japan as harsh and barbaric, or 'uncivilized'. Without denying the ferocity of Tokugawa penal practices, he argues that these were part of a sophisticated system of order that had internal limits and was not simply arbitrary.
F.G. Notehelfer, International History Review The penal system and methods of punishment employed by any government have less to do with suppressing crime than with bolstering its authority and enhancing its vision of itself, as Daniel V. Botsman ably demonstrates in this path-breaking study.
Anne Walthall, The Historian This is a superb book on a subject of enormous importance
namely, prisons and punishment in Japan from the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) through the beginning of the twentieth century... [The book has] sweeping scope, ambition, conceptual sophistication, and intellectual force... [A]lthough the book is erudite and theoretically sophisticated, it is written in a very clear and accessible manner, ensuring that it can be read with much profit by advanced undergraduates as well as scholars and graduate students inside and outside of Japanese studies.
Takashi Fujitani, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Show Less