Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945 by Daqing Yang (review)

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami ravaged parts of northeastern Japan. The devastation was followed by the accident at the Fukushima nuclear reactors, which led to radioactive contamination. These events drew the attention of Japanese people to the relationships between science and technology and between society and politics. Daqing Yang's Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945 provides insights that allow readers to better understand the history of these relationships.

Yang has written a study of Japan's history of "techno-imperialism," describing how that history relates to Western countries as well as Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia and tracing it to the latter part of the twentieth century. Yang's standpoint is clearly critical: "Even the new telecommunications technology does not simply 'liberate,' as global village prophets would like us to believe" (406), he writes, and his argument that empire building and communications technology became intertwined is meant to demonstrate the corrupting effects of military ambition on technology. The telegraph and the telephone were of great strategic value, especially for an island nation with overseas colonial possessions. The technology strengthened the bonds among the elements of the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere," continuing to influence telecommunications development, particularly in Taiwan, after World War II.

Many historians have tended to separate the history of science and technology from the history of war and empire: for them, Japan's expansion in the 1930s is the fairly monolithic tale of a runaway military, of spiritual fanaticism, or of the failure of diplomacy. Yang, however, rejects these interpretations.

What is impressive in this book is the depiction of the interplay among technology transfer, imperial visions, and financial concerns in the 1930s and 1940s. Many prominent Japanese engineers, such as Matsumae Shigeyoshi and Kajii Takeshi, came to believe quite early—from the second half of the nineteenth century—that the domestic development of telecommunications technology would increasingly play a role in Japan's overseas expansion. Once Japanese engineers established dominance in the key areas—telephony and telegraphy—the rest of Asia soon became technologically dependent on Japan, and these engineers became politically influential.

Technology of Empire is arranged in four chronological parts: "Genesis" (1853- 1931), "Technology" (1931-40), "Control" (1936-45), and "Network" (1939-45). "Genesis" explains that Japanese telecommunications originated in the Meiji period, when Japan evolved from a closed island nation to a centralized nation-state. After that period, it played a crucial role in the creation and management of Japan's empire in East Asia. This section analyzes the history of wireless telegraphy and concludes that state control over telecommunications was neither monopolistic nor static. Technological innovations often produced institutional adjustments and unforeseen consequences. They became indispensable not only for military operations and government functions but also for economic and business development, cultural affairs, and the formation of public opinion.

"Technology" examines technological innovation, institutional adaptation, and the role of the Japanese engineers and technicians. As the armed forces occupied large sections of eastern and central China, the spread of telecommunications infrastructure had repercussions more complicated than determining the success of military operations. In this context, the establishment and the operation of the Manchurian Telegraph and Telephone Company, a semiprivate entity, is an instructive example. The availability of instant communication to any who wished to pay for it generated tensions between the field and the center and between armies in different regions. As officials from the Japanese Ministry of Communications lent their support to technological advances on the continent, events there influenced technological and political developments at home.

"Control" focuses on new organizational structures and administrative arrangements shaped by the engineers and technicians who tried to fulfill their visions. As part of the new empire-building mission, which faced great financial and political challenges, the Ministry of Communications bureaucracy attempted to consolidate control over operations, maintenance, and manufacturing through a pair of new organs, the International Telephone Company (1933...