This thesis deals with an area of study academically unexplored in Croatia, the genealogy of Japanese penal policy from the Tokugawa period to the contemporary times. It elaborates the functioning of sovereign power under the rule of the shogunate and the birth of prison in Meiji Japan, through the work of Michel Foucault, most particularly his book Discipline and Punish. Labor camps and racist discourse in the Pacific War are explained by Foucault’s biopolitics. The origin of punishment with forced labor in the specific conditions of war is also discussed. It is shown that punishment with forced labor holds one of the central places in the Japanese penal policy and that it is marked by the emergence of a specific type of power associated with modernity, biopower. Shōwa era’s disciplinary society is demonstrated in Foucauldian terms, with an emphasis on criminological discourses and delinquency. The thesis discusses an important aspect of penal policy, the death penalty in Japan. The focus is on the reasons why it is retained and the means of its execution, with an emphasis on the problem of legitimacy. By interpreting films of the Japanese New Wave, which thematically follow the discussed eras, the functioning of different types of power discussed in this thesis is demonstrated. The intention is to point to the polemic cultural texts which discuss important aspects of Japan’s penal policy.