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i n t r o d u c t i o n Technology and Culture, War and Peace On March 28, 2000, Japan’s sole public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai), introduced the enormously popular documentary program Project X: Challengers and televised it for the next five years. Most of the 191 episodes were “success stories” of multiple guests, mostly males. The program lionized the ordinary citizens who had contributed to Japan’s double-digit economic growth in the 1960s (the decade of an “economic miracle”) in contrast to the 1990s (its sluggish economy signaling an “economic debacle”). In the episode that aired on May 9, 2000, three former military engineers in their eighties recalled their wartime and postwar years. The one-hour program dramatized their roles and nationalism in the development of the Shinkansen, Japan’s high-speed rail service that has remained technologically successful since its commercial introduction in 1964. By this account, the skills and values that the engineers had developed during World War II seemed perfectly suited for the postwar national rail project. Technological progress in this view had been steady and linear—almost preordained . This episode, among others, sold well in book format and was eventually translated into English, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.1 The popularity of Project X encapsulated important issues surrounding technology , culture, war, and peace. First, it showed how a nation could portray its engineers as “victors” after defeat. Engineers became the means for the nation to explain how military failure nonetheless could give rise to postwar success. Victors are said to write history, and in this case, ordinary citizens of the defeated nation rewrote history, presenting themselves as “victors” in achieving technological triumph after war. The program also posed vexing questions about the relative credit due to war and peace in the narrative of Japan’s twentieth-century technological transformation. 2 Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 Clearly, two world wars and then the Cold War carried vast implications for technological development around the world. From 1868 to 1945, Japanese technological progress depended considerably on almost incessant armed conflicts outside its borders. The Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II in Asia and the Pacific (1937–1945) prodded Japan to strengthen its technological muscles. Each war elevated the importance of military science and technology. In the process, the nationalistic slogan “Rich Nation, Strong Army” proved sound and persuasive. Technological transformation in preparing for war, militarism , and industrialism, each reinforced the other under the imperative of national security. In addition to the millions of ordinary citizens on the home front, the newly formed modern armed forces and their supporting engineers at home all focused their efforts on countering the rise of Western imperial power in East Asia. The combination of militant ideology, trained conscripts, and innovative technology proved highly effective in building imperialism in Japan (and elsewhere). The Ministry of Education and armed forces played key roles in designing an engineering workforce for war. By the 1930s, three key variables— (1)engineeringtrainingininstitutionsofhighereducation,(2)civilianandmilitary research and development facilities, and (3) civilian firms in war-related industries —worked in tandem. Technology was for war, and, reciprocally, war favored the technologically adept. On December 7, 1941, with strong optimism, or a fatally unrealistic, fascism-tainted vision, Japanese leadership steered the country into war with the United States. At the time Japan, with a well-educated engineering workforce, stood as the most industrialized and wealthiest nation in Asia. Unconditional surrender followed. It was the first time for the country to face defeat. American strategic bombing demolished Japanese wartime industry, reducing urban centers to rubble and ashes. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may partially have survived atomic attack, but the bombing left indelible scars on the psyches of the citizens. Tokyo, the nation’s capital and the hub of railway networks, had come under the Allies’ assault 122 times during the war, and on August 15, 1945, when the fighting ended, parts of the city seemed beyond repair. The war devastated the spirit of millions of ordinary Japanese people. Yet in just two years during the Allied occupation (1945–52), the new Ministry of Education heralded defeat as paradoxically constructive. In a short, illustrated textbook, The Story of the New Constitution (1947), which it issued to benefit seventh graders across the country, the ministry described the meanings, roles, and responsibilities of “a New Japan.” Page 18 carried...

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