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Technology and Culture 43.1 (2002) 29-49



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In Search of Wakon
The Cultural Dynamics of the Rise of Manufacturing Technology in Postwar Japan

Kenkichiro Koizumi


In view of the technological gap between Japan and the West that existed at the time of the Second World War, what accounts for the great postwar advance in Japanese technological expertise? How can we explain the fact that in a mere twenty-five to thirty-five years Japan was able not just to catch up with the United States and Europe but to reach a level of technological expertise that could be perceived as a threat by the United States?

Numerous theories have been advanced on this subject. 1 My purpose here is not to weigh the pros and cons of these, but rather to explore an important underlying cultural factor that played a crucial role in leading [End Page 29] Japan, after its total defeat in the war, not just back to prewar levels of technological accomplishment but to an advanced state of manufacturing technology. This article will describe a little-examined mental framework within which, beginning in the nineteenth century, the Japanese intelligentsia functioned as they attempted to modernize technologically and deal with the West in the years between Commodore Perry's forcible opening of Japanese ports in 1853 and the outbreak of the Second World War.

In the years immediately preceding the war this mental framework was expressed by the phrase wakon yosai, which translates as "Japanese spirit, Western learning." Japan undertook the task of modernizing in the nineteenth century by importing the products of Western science and technology while resisting Westernization. When this strategy succeeded, the Japanese attributed that achievement to wakon, the Japanese spirit, rather than to yosai, Western learning. But defeat destroyed this framework completely, leaving a vacuum in its place.

By the end of the war Japan was devastated, its people starving. The American victors brought with them a culture that was, in contrast, fantastically affluent. Food, clothing, vehicles, refrigerators, radios, all manner of desirable consumer products began to pour in where cities had been leveled and life was hand to mouth. This deluge opened Japanese eyes to the importance of manufactured consumer products. From the nineteenth century to the Second World War the Japanese had perceived technology largely in terms of such imported Western inventions as trains, ships, electrification systems, bridges, heavy industry, and the like: objects or systems to be adopted and used as is, not adapted or developed further. Where innovation did occur in the prewar period, the aim was not to "improve" a technology but either to make it somehow fit the Japanese environment or to make it cheaper. But after their defeat, in the process of attempting to rebuild their world in the new material environment of the American occupation, the Japanese realized that technology need not be merely something to accept passively; rather, it was susceptible to endless adaptation and improvement, and huge markets for new products might be created not only at home but abroad. At the same time, wakon, as understood before the war, had failed as a framework for self-identity, and a new organizing concept was urgently needed. It became clear that Japan could turn itself into a manufacturer of highly desirable material things, not only out of immediate need and not only for itself but over the long term and for the [End Page 30] world, based on endless technological innovation. In so doing, the Japanese could identify themselves with that process of improving technology and thereby regain their national pride and self-esteem.

That moment of conceptual transformation, when the process of technological innovation in manufacturing consumer products took on high value, is a watershed in Japanese history. This new mental framework, which lent new meaning to a life's work, constitutes an important part of the explanation of how the Japanese could make such extraordinary technological advances in the thirty years or so following the war.

Innovation is not a simple, linear process of improvement; rather, it is sometimes...

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