Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire ed. by David G. Wittner, Philip C. Brown (review)

On March 11, 2011, an extremely powerful earthquake struck northeastern Japan. The tsunami it generated killed and injured over 20,000 people and led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant, producing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. The catastrophe is a stark reminder of one of the gravest challenges faced by Japan and indeed all of humanity: how to harness modern science and technology without endangering the fragile environment of which human life is but an integral part.

By coincidence, several months later, a major conference on Japanese science, technology, and medicine (STM in the professional lingua) was held at Ohio State University. From the over 40 papers presented at that conference, a dozen or so appear in this edited book. They are divided into four sections: “Science, Technology, and Industry in the Creation of a New Japan,” “State, Experts, and Imperial Medical Policy,” “Medical Specialists and Scientists at Work,” and “Scientific Weapons, Technology, and the Transformation of Pacific War Aims.” Both the conference and the book are dedicated to James Bartholomew, who writes an afterword. Of the 14 chapters, 10 are devoted to medicine or public health either entirely or partially. Temporally, the book covers the entire span of modern Japan, although the Meiji period claims the largest share of chapters. Many chapters are mini-biographies, either on one scientist or engineer or a group of individuals; others are concerned with knowledge production and circulation and policy formulation and implementation, among other things.

Together, these chapters are intended to be “something of a marker of the current state of studies in the history of science, technology, and medicine in Japan” (p. 7). The two editors, David Wittner and Philip Brown, achieve this goal admirably in their introduction by providing a historiographical account of the development of Japanese STM studies. After a slow start and briefly under the shadow of Chinese science, they point out, Japanese STM has seen a surge of scholarly works in English since the 1990s. They attribute this phenomenon to a confluence of personal, professional, and cross-disciplinary developments. Still, they lament the fact that until recently the histories of STM in Japan have been largely neglected and marginalized, as they are often subsumed under economic or environmental history. Japan specialists rarely feel the need to consult journals devoted to STM.

As this book demonstrates, this should not be the case. In addition to providing a brief summary of each chapter, the editors highlight five themes running through the book: the strong sense of national pride and image associated with Japanese STM; the degree of state involvement in STM endeavors; the influence of religious faith in research choice or policy; the multidirectional transmission of knowledge; and what may be termed “transwar” concerns. Not surprisingly, many contributors address—directly or indirectly—the question of Japan’s “research traditions” that Bartholomew pursued in his 1992 prize-winning book Formation of Science in Japan: Building a Research Tradition. These themes are reflections of historians of Japanese STM in dialogue with Japan studies on the one hand and global STM studies on the other.

Situating modern Japan in the worldwide development is an inherent strength of STM studies and is evident in many chapters, whether on basic science or epidemiological research or population theory. Aleksandra Kobiljski’s chapter on Shimomura Kōtarō, a “Christian scientist” who studied in the United States, shows the intersection of religion and science, traditional ideas, and practical concerns in Meiji Japan. In his examination of several leading Japanese physicists in a broad context, Ito Kenji proposes four questions they all faced—possibility, legitimacy, strategy, and originality—and points to the impact of “self-Orientalism” on these scientists. James Bartholomew draws from his ongoing work on Japanese Nobel laureates and nominees and returns to the question of the...