Remembering and Representing Imprisonment in Postcolonial Cities

Decommissioned Prisons in East Asia

Bibliographic Data

ID20073957
AuthorsShu-Mei Huang (0000-0001-6990-1243), Shu‐mei Huang (0000-0001-8323-0888, National Taipei University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages651-671
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueThe Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_31
OpenAlexW2616199508
ISBN9781137561350
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited29

At the Lushun Russo-Japanese Prison (LRJP) Museum, I was drawn to a photo display in which one old Japanese man is regretfully writing down his testimony (Fig. 31.1). The Japanese physician Goga Shyoichi was the medical officer in the prison from May 1944 to July 1945. The narratives at the side frame Shyoichi’s memories through shame and guilt, quoting the physician’s own writing entitled: “Retrospect of the Days in Lushun Prison” (published in the 20th issue of the Collected Works of Alumni in Lushun Medical College). Shyoichi’s words apparently were used to validate the crimes of Japanese who allegedly omitted treatment for some political criminals or tortured them to death. How is a representation of death such as this produced and how does it function? My contemplation was interrupted by a conversation among a family next to me, when the parents asked their children to watch “how much the Japs had done to the Chinese.”

Art · Contemplation · Conversation · Criminology · Imprisonment · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Prison · Shame · Sociology · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

Tools

Open DOILibgen