Panoptic apparatus: a study of the Japanese-built prisons in colonial Taiwan (1895-1945)

Prison construction was among the most important infrastructural developments introduced into Taiwan by the Japanese colonial regime in the late nineteenth century. The Japanese-built colonial prisons were characterized by their adaptation of Western-style prison typology, which signified the successful transfer of multiple aspects of modernity from the West, first to an eastern nation and then to its colonies. Completed in 1921, the Chiayi Prison is the only existing Japanese-built radial-plan prison in Taiwan, of which the built form and spatial arrangement reflect how the authority disciplined the inmates. This paper firstly offers a summary of how the modernization of prisons developed in Euro-American countries and then how it was introduced to Japan and its colonies. Then it gives a comparative analysis of the three major prisons in colonial Taiwan. Using the Chiayi Prison as a primary case study, this paper examines the surrounding urban formation, architectural creation, and spatial effects of the prison and how it attempted to achieve the moral correction of the prisoners.