My Book Pick: 150 Years of Modern Japan: The Collapse of the Total War System Based on Science and Technology
Aichi Insurance Physicians’ Newspaper
April 25, 2018
Yoshitaka Yamamoto
Iwanami Shinsho
January 19, 2018
In this book, titled 150 Years of Modern Japan: The Collapse of the Total War System Based on Science and Technology, the author argues that policies led consistently by the bureaucracy and the military have been a defining feature of Japan from the Meiji Restoration to the present day.
The government established after the Meiji Restoration eagerly pursued the acquisition of Western science and technology in order to achieve a “rich country and strong military,” with military objectives in mind. At the same time, Yamamoto points out that Japan’s modernization did not depend solely on the introduction of Western science and technology. The improvements developed by private craftsmen and artisans since the Edo period also played a major role.
He also draws attention to the darker side of Japan’s transformation into an industrial nation, which came at the cost of people’s lives and health, as symbolized by the harsh working conditions of female factory workers and the poisoning caused by the Ashio Copper Mine.
After the Meiji period, government, industry, and academia worked together to promote scientific and technological research, largely in preparation for imperialist wars of aggression. This close relationship between government, industry, and academia continued even after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Engineers and scientists who had been involved in military technology research and development before and during the war were retained and given important positions in the postwar government and major corporations, where they played a central role in promoting industrial development. Meanwhile, pollution disasters occurred throughout Japan, while relief and compensation for the victims were repeatedly postponed. Yamamoto also asks why the postwar government promoted research into and the use of nuclear power despite the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He discusses how Japan’s nuclear energy policy ultimately collapsed following the core meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station operated by TEPCO after the Great East Japan Earthquake. He criticizes the continuing alliance of government, industry, and academia for pursuing the expansion of national power and seeking the military application of nuclear energy.
As a history of science and technology in Japan since the Meiji Restoration, I find this an interesting and thought-provoking book.
The author, who called for the dismantling of the University of Tokyo in his 1969 book The Revolt of the Intellect (Zen’eisha), was such an intellectual elite that even Nobel laureate Hideki Yukawa recognized his exceptional abilities. Yet, at bottom, his thinking is rooted in pessimism, and what remains after reading the book is ultimately a sense of emptiness.
Perhaps his advocacy of dismantling existing institutions and his pessimism are two sides of the same coin.
