Japan’s colonization of Taiwan (1895-1945) brought with it the idea that prisons punish and rehabilitate, leaving a legacy of penal institutions and policies still influencing society today.
“Before the Japanese came, the most common penalties facing a convict were death or exile. The modern prison system is based on the practice of stripping a person of his bodily freedom, but focusing more on education than punishment,” according to Yang Meng-che, a comparative cultural studies specialist at National Taipei University of Education.
Japan copied the modern European penal system during the Meiji period in the 1880s, as part of the country’s modernization. “Prisons built on this new model were quickly reproduced in its colonies, Taiwan and South Korea, in the beginning of the 20th century,” Yang said.
Today Taiwan’s only surviving Japanese-era penitentiary is Chiayi Prison.
Built in 1922 and located in the center of Chiayi City, the now defunct institution is undergoing restoration. Under a Ministry of Justice plan, the structure will be transformed into a prison museum in the near future.
Everything about Chiayi Prison, from its spatial design and rehabilitation policies to the initiative to preserve it, speaks of Japanese influence.
Japan began constructing correctional facilities on the island in 1899, Yang said. The major prisons in Taipei, Taichung and Tainan were completed in 1904. In the following years, branches appeared in all parts of the island.
Chiayi Prison, completed in 1922, was affiliated with the Tainan complex. It continued to serve as a prison after World War II under Kuomintang rule.
Tracing the genealogy of Taiwan’s prisons, Yang pointed out similarities between the Chiayi facility and Japan’s most famous penitentiary, today’s Abashiri Prison Museum, on the east coast of Hokkaido.
The museum, on the Sea of Okhotsk, is a replication of the original penitentiary nearby, erected in 1890 to house inmates moved there to help build a road traversing Hokkaido and fortify the defenses of Japan’s northern territory.
Both prisons have a radial layout, with a central tower in the middle and cellblocks branching out from it. A guard standing watch in the tower commands a view down each corridor.
Abashiri Prison Museum Curator Hisayo Konno explained that the five-winged radial design was introduced after Meiji builders inspected the prison in Leuven, Belgium.
Another innovation was to surround the prison with farmlands. “During and after World War II, inmates were put to work at agricultural tasks, and Abashiri was so productive it even supplied food for prison populations throughout the country,” she said.
Japanese-built prisons in Taiwan were similarly designed to fulfill educational, correctional and production functions.
Factories and farms encircled the three cell wings of Chiayi Prison, Yang said. The design was intended to demonstrate the colonizers’ ability to institute civilized and constructive incarceration.
Yet there were differences, Yang noted. One was that prisons in Japan were required by law to be located at least four kilometers away from city centers. “But in Taiwan, for the convenience of the colonial rulers, new prisons were built within the precinct of official buildings and train stations.”
This choice of location, incidentally, led to latter-day conflicts between urban development and the preservation of local cultural heritage.
Most Japanese-era prisons have been demolished over the past 50 years, making way for public buildings, shopping malls and restaurants, while new prisons have been built outside of urban districts.
Chiayi Prison almost went down the same path. The MOJ put up a new facility in Lucao Township, Chiayi County, in 1994, and by 2000 the old prison had fallen into total disuse.
While some development-minded locals lobbied to demolish the penal complex and construct an international conference venue, some resident activists opposed the idea, calling on the government to turn it into a museum.
Yang helped invite experts from Abashiri Prison Museum and similar institutions in mainland China and South Korea to a conference in 2001 to discuss the preservation of Chiayi Prison. He also organized an art festival the next year showcasing inmate artwork.
The penitentiary was designated a national heritage site in 2005. Restoration work began in 2009 and is expected to be complete in September.
Chiu Ru-huei, a retired corrections officer with 30 years experience at Chiayi Prison and a participant in the local movement to preserve it, is optimistic about the historic, cultural and tourism value of a penal museum.
The four prison factories operated busily for many decades, making bamboo furniture and artifacts, as well as wool clothes and jeans for export, Chiu said. “They also supplied chairs, desks and notebooks for all elementary schools in Chiayi, and printed forms for the government,” she recounted.
“We hired the best local teachers to train inmates, hoping they would learn a skill to help them start a new life when they were released.”
Chiu said the Abashiri Prison Museum was made possible mainly because local people appreciated the inmates’ contribution to the development of the region.
“And Chiayi Prison is as storied as its Japanese counterpart,” Chiu said. “The prison structure and all the people associated with it are potential museum assets.”
Konno said the future Chiayi museum would be special in that it preserves the original location and apparatus of the prison, unlike the Abashiri museum.
“With the appropriate exhibition design and a well-researched narrative about the development of Taiwan’s prison system, it would be a successful museum,” she said.
The problem is that Taiwan realized the importance of preserving historic documents too late, said veteran Chiayi Prison official Lin Feng-tsai.
Though a thick book of documents from 1946 regarding Japan’s transferal of the prison to ROC government agents has survived, many more such papers from around the country have been lost or destroyed.
“In preparation for establishing the prison museum as the first of its kind in Taiwan, we have been making systematic efforts to collect and digitalize whatever materials are still available from Taiwan’s 43 prisons,” Lin said.
However, it is not yet clear who will run the prison museum once the restoration is complete, prison officials said.
Yang remarked that the Japanese prison museum has drawn millions of visits to Abashiri, a city of 42,000 people, since its establishment. “The keys are citizen awareness, government vision and museum professionalism,” he said.
The Chiayi Prison Museum could unlock the evolution of Taiwan’s penitentiary system, revealing its relationship with local industry and bringing the facts about life in the big house out from behind bars, Yang concluded. (THN)
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw