Introduction to Feature Issue: Colonial Science in Former Japanese Imperial Universities
Rent from DeepDyve- Introduction to Feature Issue:Colonial Science in Former Japanese Imperial Universities
e-mail: byz06433@nifty.com
Reference
Google Scholar
Footnotes
1. Modernist conservative historiography corresponded to the American anti-Communist policy towards Japan, and that facilitated Japan's collaboration to wage the Korean War and the Vietnamese War.
2. The concept of colonial modernization is not necessarily taken for granted in viewing the history of science in Japan's colonies. I will discuss this concept later.
3. This was mainly through conferences for the East Asian STS network, organized in the following order: July 2000 Beijing 北京; May 2001 Seoul; January 2002 Kobe 神戸; October 2003 Taipei 台北; Deceember 2004 Seoul; September 2005 Shanyang 瀋陽; 2006 (January 2007) Kobe.
4. This was a process of mutual education that we learned from each other; now, we have a deeper mutual understanding of East Asian science, technology and medicine. This process of communication in East Asian STS was successful, and has finally led us to together inaugurate this journal.
5. Regarding the concept of East Asia as a regional entity, we are trying to avoid any form of cultural essentialism or any claim of cultural dominance in the region. We took it for granted that we have some shared cultural elements, such as a common origin of writing language and use of Chinese characters, Confucianism and Buddhism, the culture of eating rice with chop-sticks [although we are very much different from each other as in the Chinese cultural area (long and cut edge), Korean peninsula (metal, thin and short) and most of the Japanese territories (short and sharp topped)]. However, these can only be viewed as historically constructed and socially instituted processes. We consider that those cultural elements can always offer an analytical framework for the relationship to science, technology and medicine: for example, we can compare tension between Confucianism and science in nineteenth-century China, Korea and Japan, different degrees of nationalism and/or Christianity, and acceptance of Western medicine. We do not assume any essential East Asian-ness as such; neither do we adopt any presumed national/cultural identities.
6. Togo Tsukahara, Kobe University, is the representative of the project. For the planning, see 塚原東吾 (Togo Tsukahara), 『科学と帝国主義：日本植民地の帝国大学の科学史 (Science and Empires: History of science at Japan's Colonial Imperial Universities) 』、皓星社 (Koseisha Publ.), 2006.
7. June 2005: Symposium on the Japanese Atomic Bomb Development Related Research in the Colonies, at the History of Chemistry Annual Meeting, Kobe University; November 2005: Workshop on the Historical Significance of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Keijo Imperial University, Waseda Univ., Tokyo; April 2006: Workshop on the History of Science at Taihoku Imperial University, Taipei, Taiwan; January 2007: Symposium on Japanese Colonial Science, at the 7th EASTS (East Asian STS Network Conference; not affiliated with this journal, EASTS) Conference, Kobe; July 2007: Workshop on Taihoku Imperial University and National Taiwan University, Continuity and Discontinuity, Kobe; November 2007: Workshop on Keijo Imperial University, Medicine and Sciences, Waseda and Aoyama Universities, Tokyo.
8. All three papers were preliminarily given at the "Symposium on Historical and Sociological Studies of Science and Technology Concerning Taipei Imperial University," held at National Taiwan University on 29 April 2006. All three first authors were once colleagues of the JSPS post-doctoral research fellow at Tsukahara's laboratory, Kobe University.
