Techno-Science and the State in the Japanese EmpireYang Daqing, Technology of Empire Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire Togo Tsukahara (bio) It is a pleasant surprise to find two serious English-language scholarly works on Japan’s period of empire-building and the Japanese state’s use, appropriation, and management of technology. Together, these works suggest that the Japanese attempt at expansion and empire-building in the twentieth century and the conceptualization of its claim to the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” should be characterized by its application of techno-science and not simply attributed to nationalism and fascism. The Japanese political management of a combined science and technology was in many senses remarkable, and it holds great interest as the first non-Western case of the appropriation and globalization of modern Western science and technology. Yet it has been underexamined; except for a few English-language works, such as Mizuno Hiromi’s Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (2009), most studies of techno-science and empire in Japan have been limited to Japanese academia or to Chinese, mainly from Liang Bo and his group. Yang Daqing’s Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard East Asian Monograph 219, 2011. Pp. 468. $49.95) is a straightforward history of telecommunications in Japan: well-documented, descriptive, and thorough. This is an impressive work, starting from Japan’s first contact with Western communications technology on the occasion of its forced encounter with American gunboat diplomacy, and ending with [End Page 461] Hirohito’s radio broadcast. Those points are marked to signify the beginning and the end of a distinctive period in Japanese telecommunications, both coerced by the Americans. Chronologically ordered and encyclopedic, this book surely will be a standard in the field. One should note, however, that the subtitle is somewhat misleading. This is not really a book covering Japanese imperialism and communications from 1883 onward; it is much more concentrated on 1930–45, with the earlier story being more of a backdrop. Part 1 discusses the “Genesis” of Japanese telecommunications in the period 1853–1931, when Japan was an emerging empire in the age of submarine telegraphy; it also covers the subsequent technology of wireless. The author pays attention to Japan’s so-called informal empire, the building of its telecommunications network, and that network’s function as a tool of control. Part 2 deals with “Technology,” covering the period after Japan’s commitment to China in the period between 1931 and 1940. Yang states that telecommunications were oriented toward a new order on the continent, and he analyzes new Japanese communication technologies in connection to the way Japanese bureaucrats and engineers envisioned imperial integration. Part 3 discusses “Control” in the more intensified war effort, during 1936 to 1945. How did Japan negotiate and establish control at home, and consolidate media and telecommunications control in China? It also further describes how Japan gained control in Southeast Asia. Finally, part 4 explains the final stage of Japan’s telecommunications from the viewpoint of “Network” in 1939–45: how systematic integration into the disastrous total war was organized and disrupted, up to its final operation and meltdown. In this part, the aftermath of the whole story is briefly discussed. This is the first full-scale book on this topic in English, but it is not clear what is new to Japanese and Chinese historians of technology already familiar with this history. In part, this is because it is much more descriptive than theoretical. I understand that the author needed to explain what is what to English readers, but I, for one, would have liked to see a sharper theoretical edge. The descriptive approach, however, surely has laid a firm foundation for further analysis. There is also an editorial issue of some significance: there are too many mistakes in Japanese. To name just a few notable ones in the earliest part: Hirohito’s radio broadcasting of Japan’s defeat is “Gyoku On Hoso,” not “Gyo’on Hoso” (p. 2), and the standard resource work edited by the Japanese Society of History of Science is Nihon Kagaku Gijutsu Shi...
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Jan 1, 2014
Margaret Ross 
Open Access