HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY: A LARGELY UNRESEARCHED FIELD IN JAPANESE STUDIES?

THE HISTORY OF technology is still a largely unresearched field in Japanese studies outside Japan. This Introduction, therefore, begins with some general remarks on the development of the history of technology in Japan.

Do an internet search for ‘technology’ or ‘history of technology’ together with ‘East Asia’, and up pop lots of entries on China, with considerably fewer on Japan, and with Korea trailing along behind. But such numbers tell only half the story. The history of science, and to a lesser extent that of technology, have strong support in countries in the region, and are characterised by lively publishing activity there. Outside these countries, however, China holds a pre-eminent position in terms of research on the history of science and technology, at university institutions and above all in publications. This can be traced back – among other reasons – to the major influence of the comprehensive works of Joseph Needham (1900–1995). His multi-volume series on Science & Civilisation in China, published from 1954 and continued up to the present, set a high standard early on and influenced numerous sinologists. Nothing comparable has ever been produced for Japan. Although studies of the history of technology in Japan also go back a long way and are represented in the academic field through institutions, publications and journals, scholars dealing with Japan have not succeeded in establishing as strong a tradition as those dealing with China.

PRE-WAR: EVOLUTION OF THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY IN JAPAN

The beginnings of the history of Japanese technology are fed by various currents, starting with early studies of Japan's industrial development in the Meiji period. Most of them were officially initiated descriptions or documentations of industrial-technical changes in individual enterprises (e.g., naval shipyards, military arsenals), entire sectors, such as communications, or other public institutions. As a rule, such works were neither written by trained historians of technology – such an academic discipline was not established in Japan until after the Second World War – nor were they conceived as scientific or technical-historical works at all. The aspect of the industrial boom and questions of further development in the future were brought to the fore in these works, and this implied a focus on technology, too.