Introduction

The Introduction provides a historical background to this study on prisons and forced labour in Meiji Japan. I argue that convict labour contributed to the colonization of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and thus to the building of the Meiji State and the Japanese Empire. There are several bodies of research that relate to my study, in particular: research on the Tokugawa colonization of Ezo, the Meiji colonization of Hokkaido as well as the global study of prisons and forced labour, all of which are discussed in the Introduction. The Introduction also includes a section on the book structure and the source material used for this research on prisons and forced labour in Hokkaido, 1882–1894.