Punishment is often measured by its severity or examined by its instruments.

For postmodern theorists like Michel Foucault ([1975] 1977), punishment involves complex technologies that produce docile bodies and pervasive forms of social control. Yet even this Foucauldian perspective cannot fully capture the wide range of punishment practices across Asia. There is no linear progressive trend toward a particular mode of punishment, nor is there any fixed pattern of harsher or more lenient sanctions over time. This section offers three vastly different examples of punishment in Asian contexts, includ­ing benevolent paternalism in Japan, governing through killing in the Philippines, and quantified capital punishment in China.

8.1