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This chapter traces the history of the Japanese insurance industry. Japan adopted an isolationist policy in 1639, which established national seclusion, disrupted trade, and reduced the opportunities for the marine insurance industry. Prior to isolation, a primitive form of marine insurance called nagegane had existed, brought by the Portuguese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Historians have discovered that traders from Hakata and Sakai provided financing that included marine accident coverage for ship owners, merchants, and tradesmen. As shipping businesses developed along the coasts, methods for handling marine accidents were systematized and so-called marine contracts (kaijou ukeoi) began to be conducted by shipping agents in these areas. Marine contracts worked by attaching a risk fee onto shipping charges, while damages during transport on entrusted cargo saw the principal on the cargo paid to the consigning merchant. Upon entering a marine contract, a marine contract note (kaijou ukeoi tegata) fulfilling the roles of a receiving note and a marine insurance policy was issued. This domestic risk hedging method co-existed alongside modern marine insurance for international trade until the beginning of the Meiji period in 1868.

This chapter discusses the ways in which the disease and its victims were “criminalized” through their treatment in Hawaiʻi. At the heart of this discussion on medical treatment, objectification, confinement, and criminalization of those with a disease lays the question of whether those with leprosy were treated more as patients or as prisoners. There is no easy answer, yet there is evidence that those with the disease were often treated as though they had committed a crime in contracting the bacterium. The laws that regulated this disease and the implementation of those laws are hence discussed, with attention given to the “punishments” meted out in the policies of isolation and to the specific case of a convicted criminal (a Native Hawaiian) being used for experimentation, in hopes of finding a cure.

This chapter considers the ways Hawaiians and those afflicted with the disease resisted the 1865 Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy and its application. At the same time the chapter reveals Western anxieties about the disease. Native Hawaiians responded in a variety of ways to both the epidemic and to the Hawaiian Kingdom's response to it. While there was some accommodation and adaptation to the Board of Health policies, there was also resistance, which came in many forms and which was at times violent. Above all, these various reactions demonstrate that Native Hawaiians were not merely victims, but active participants in this disease experience that affected so many.

This chapter deals directly with life in the leprosy settlement—with the daily onslaught of disease and death—in a supposedly isolated environment. The physical environment was difficult for those who were suffering from leprosy, and the challenges of that environment as well as death were constant throughout the early decades of the leprosy settlement, informing every aspect of daily life for the patients. Presented largely from the perspective of the Board of Health, the chapter looks at the problems associated with the isolation policy, but it also considers the demonstrated agency of Native Hawaiians in this history. Kānaka Maoli sought ways of treating/curing the disease, gave kōkua (help, service) to fellow sufferers, and found ways to survive in their isolated condition.