Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (review)

From the aftermath of World War One, when Japan transformed into a nation of heavy and chemical industries, until its defeat at the end of World War Two, Hiromi Mizuno examines “science as a dynamic site where its definition and political power [were] continually contested” by technology bureaucrats (technocrats), Marxist intellectuals, and popular science writers (4). Much of the contested terrain in Science for the Empire pertains to the philosophical intersection of the universalization of science and the uniqueness, or particularity of Japanese science—a debate originating with the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868–1912) when many government and academic leaders adopted and adapted “Western” science and technology to industrialize and modernize Japan. By the beginning of the Sino-Japan War in 1937, this contested, dialectical terrain would be transformed into “scientific nationalism.”

In 1921, Miyamoto Takenosuke and other engineers with connections to Tokyo Imperial University and the central government founded the Kōjin Club to advance the status of engineers and reform society, particularly through improved science education. What mostly originated as an effort to raise class consciousness of engineers and gain greater respect for the same was soon on a trajectory where nationalism surpassed and replaced class consciousness. Indeed, “technological patriotism” became the neologism for many of these engineers who ultimately directed projects in Japan’s colonies, especially in the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria, China).

The technocrats of the Kōjin Club were challenged by “Marxist intellectuals critical of Japanese modernity, capitalism, and science” (72). These Marxist and Marxist-inspired intellectuals, exemplified by Ogura Kinnosuke, argued that scientific advancements were the historical result of social, cultural, and materialist forces external to bourgeois notions of individual genius. “Practical mathematics,” such as statistics, should be emphasized in education rather than the theoretical and management problem-solving approaches of the Kōjin technocrats. Yet, by 1938, Marxist intellectuals who chose to continue their profession and save themselves and their families from loss of job and possible jail time “defended [scientific] rationality while simultaneously supporting the wartime state and Japan’s imperialism,” writes Mizuno (140). That may be, but like many Kōjin technocrats, many of these Marxists were co-opted by a Japanese state using mythological, spiritual, and racial arguments to justify and promote colonization of Asian peoples and war against the West.

The third major section of Science for the Empire describes and analyzes the “sense of wonder” about learning science exemplified in popular science magazines such as Science Illustrated and Children’s Science, the latter including very popular radio-making diagrams and model-making contests. Most Japanese interested in science read these popular magazines and were not obsessed with the philosophical, theoretical writings of Marxist or technocrat scientists. Yet, like the technocrats and the Marxist scientists, publishers and writers of these magazines were co-opted by the imperial state and supported its war aims.

Given the apparent attention that much of the Japanese public and intelligentsia devoted to issues of science and technology during the interwar and war years, it is somewhat paradoxical that major political leaders blamed Japan’s surrender at the end of World War Two on “the unscientific and irrational character of wartime Japan” (174). Furthermore, as Mizuno informs us in the Conclusion, the technocrats, Marxist intellectuals, and popular science writers who were co-opted and promoted Japanese imperial aims during wartime suffered relatively little and quickly went to work on a postwar, reconstructed Japan. They simply removed the most strident, excessively patriotic metaphors from their previously published works. It is also in the Conclusion where Mizuno finally provides a detailed explanation of what she means by the term “scientific nationalism,” which “assumes that science and technology are the most urgent and important assets for the integrity, survival, and progress of the nation” (181). She perceptively adds that “scientific nationalism” contains an inherent contradiction between the uniqueness that most nations—not just Japan—promote about their particular country and people; and modern...