Paper short abstract:

Some of the journalists of the liberal press who were imprisoned under the censorship laws of 1875 have left detailed records of their time behind bars. I will elucidate how they dealt with their prison experience and how it affected their attitudes toward the government and modernization itself.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will analyze some of the prison records left by liberal journalists of the early Meiji period in Japan, convicted under the censorship laws of 1875. I will shed light not only what these records tell us about prison life in early Meiji Japan, but also on how the prison sentences affected the views of the journalist-writers in question on the government and Japan's modernization itself.

Legal reform was a crucial part of the grand modernization project set up by the Meiji government, especially in light of the looming issue of treaty revision. By 1875-6, the government had made some progress in abolishing the "barbaric" practices of punishment and setting up a modern prison system, but much remained to be done. When many dozens of journalists active within the burgeoning liberal press were convicted under the censorship regulations (Shinbunshi jōrei and Zanbōritsu) of 1875 to stiff prison terms, they found themselves caught in houses of detention that were very much a mixture of pre-modern jailhouses and modern correctional facilities. Narushima Ryūhoku's Gokunaibanashi, Suehiro Shigeyasu's Tengoku Shinwa and Ueki Emori's Shutsugoku tsuiki are three of such documents, depicting the harsh reality of life inside the prison walls. While previous research has focused on the significance of Narushima, Suehiro and Ueki as literary figures and political activists resp., little attention has been given to their observations regarding the actual state of prisons in the early Meiji years, the ideas underlying these observations and the impact of their imprisonment on their further careers. Indeed, these records reveal much more than self-pity or embittered hatred of government oppression. Their authors did not hesitate to praise government officials for some of the improvements that took place during their time in prison. Moreover, even after having served sentences, journalists and activists still could build careers as bureaucrats or politicians in the later Meiji years. In that sense, it seems they shared visions of a benign state with enlightened elements within the bureaucratic apparatus that tried to silence them, even if espousing different political principles coated in an almost diametrically opposed vocabulary.