Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964

Conclusion: Legacy of War and Defeat

c o n c l u s i o n Legacy of War and Defeat For about a century following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan had to acquire or develop appropriate technology in a very challenging environment. The nation capitalized on both the intended and unintended consequences of war, and especially after World War II, the latter carrying a greater impact on technological development than the former. As war and peace succeeded one another over the decades, the power dynamics changed at multiple levels, ranging from international to national and in regional, local, industrial, institutional, and laboratory settings. In roundabout ways, these changes after defeat prompted various engineering communities to promote the nation’s postwar reconstruction, carrying out state-sponsored projects along the way. The result was a haphazard, unsystematic , nonlinear progression of technological development. The conversion of military technology after the defeat was a value-laden, internally conflicting, and contingent process. It did not occur automatically in a preordained, orchestrated manner. This is not to suggest that Japan’s effort to build modern technology was unsystematic or chaotic. From 1868 to 1945, the nation rather systematically trained and recruited a modern engineering workforce for war by using the geographical concentration of resources in key regions. Before, during, and after World War I, a national security imperative underlay the expansion and changing content of modern engineering. The educational and research infrastructures, which remained unscathed from conflicts abroad, supported the country’s imperial ambition . The nation’s new capital, Tokyo, was an ideal location for all forms of top-down modernization because it had amassed the requisite financial, political, and human resources from the earlier Tokugawa era. One illustrative case was Conclusion 185 the creation of Tokyo University, from which institutionalized engineering education spread to the periphery. Engineering education and war reinforced each other. Japan developed its engineering education programs through four successive phases—(1) 1895–1897, (2) 1905–1911, (3) 1918–1924, and (4) 1938–1942—each roughly corresponding to an external conflict that Japan waged. After Tokyo University came Kyoto University (1897), which marked the first phase of engineering education expansion immediately after the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). The second phase of expansion followed the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), as exemplified by Kyūshū University and technical schools in urban centers across the country. World War I (1914–1918) yielded a third wave of expansion between 1918 and 1924. The national security imperative strengthened engineering education at imperial universities in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Kyūshū. Meanwhile, Hokkaidō University and Tōhoku University built solid, modern engineering programs. Incrementally, systematic education also became available at technical schools across the country. In respect to scientific and technological development, each international conflict until 1937 was, to use the words of John Dower, a “useful war” for Japan.1 As the nation moved from war to war, its engineering education was severely tested by conflicts abroad. For the Asian latecomer to the age of imperialism, each war conveniently meant the rationale to expand engineering education across the country. World War I in particular reduced the nation’s financial constraints on engineering education, legitimizing aeronautics as an academic field of study for national security. The war, which had left Japan’s homeland unscathed, had been the most “useful” in Dower’s sense. It had stimulated the research interests of Japanese civilian and military officials to build research and development institutions , especially for air power. Driven by a national security imperative, the military turned the destructive European war to constructive use; it choreographed technology transfer from overseas, devising a system in which foreign engineers competed with one another for Japanese civilian aircraft companies to advance the field of aeronautics. What substantially affected Japan’s technological development before, during , and even after 1945 was interservice rivalry in the imperial military, which ironically undermined the nation’s capability to wage war abroad. Despite, or because of, threats from the West, the army and navy contended with each other in a quiet, subterranean war at home that surfaced by the 1930s. In the end, the navy prevailed over the army by recruiting elite students through maneuvering ; it often “stole” promising engineers directly from the army, while Japan had 186 Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 chronically suffered from a shortage of such manpower in support of imperialism . The two services had erected barriers between them, hindering the spread of engineering...