Okushiri Island Research Articles

Yoseba in Ezo

Since Japan was opened to foreign intercourse, common courtesy to foreigners demanded the consideration for the locality of banishment islands, , and the Tokugawa Bakuhu removed island prison colony to the more rest-ricted islands, far from the parts of Japan where foreigners were coming. In the second year of Bunkyu, the Bakuhu restricted the island prison colony in Ezo islands to fewer islands, and decided to send the rest of the prison colony away to Ezo, the northern island in Japan, now called Hokkaido, and banished them to Okushiri island which was situated at the northern end of Hokkaido.In addition to the island prison colony in Okushiri island, a yoseba, a kind of home for criminal coolie labourers, though it was smaller in scale than the yoseba at Tsukudashima in Edo, now called Tokyo, was established, in substitution for the island prison colony, at Usubetsu in the western part. of Ezo in the second year of Bunkyu, and in this yoseba were interned prostitutes, homeles wanderers, and monks and priests who commited adul-tery.This newly established yoseba in Ezo was not the place for intimidating the home coolie labourers to severe works as in the previous banishment island, but a disciplinary place, the object of which was to make them repent their sin and to exhort them to a virtuous life through the edifying measures of fishing around the island-coast.This yoseba fishery may be said to have killed two birds with one stone because it accomplished two aims, that is, the Hakodate Bugyo's aim of developing the resources of Ezo and the aim of edifying the men interned in the yoseba.The yoseba at Usubetsu, however, was abolished in the first year of Keio, and was transferred to the Okushiri banishment island, and the yoseba coolie labourers intermixed with the banished colony in that island. This, to my regret, resulted in the fact that intrinsic edificative nature of yoseba was lost by and by and a coercive tendency was strengthened.For all that, when we take the yoseba law as a kind of judicial reform in the island prison colony punishment law and exile punishment law, which form the important themes in the problems of criminal law of Japan, we can believe that one of the improvements of the criminal law in the Edo period was realized in the yoseba.