The Japan Science Review
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Published: 1952
Total Pages: 1080
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Making Tea, Making Japan
Author: Kristin Surak
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-11-28
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 0804784795
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe tea ceremony persists as one of the most evocative symbols of Japan. Originally a pastime of elite warriors in premodern society, it was later recast as an emblem of the modern Japanese state, only to be transformed again into its current incarnation, largely the hobby of middle-class housewives. How does the cultural practice of a few come to represent a nation as a whole? Although few non-Japanese scholars have peered behind the walls of a tea room, sociologist Kristin Surak came to know the inner workings of the tea world over the course of ten years of tea training. Here she offers the first comprehensive analysis of the practice that includes new material on its historical changes, a detailed excavation of its institutional organization, and a careful examination of what she terms "nation-work"—the labor that connects the national meanings of a cultural practice and the actual experience and enactment of it. She concludes by placing tea ceremony in comparative perspective, drawing on other expressions of nation-work, such as gymnastics and music, in Europe and Asia. Taking readers on a rare journey into the elusive world of tea ceremony, Surak offers an insightful account of the fundamental processes of modernity—the work of making nations.
Building a Modern Japan
Author: M. Low
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2005-05-05
Total Pages: 251
ISBN-13: 1403981116
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the late Nineteenth-century, the Japanese embarked on a program of westernization in the hope of building a strong and modern nation. Science, technology and medicine played an important part, showing European nations that Japan was a world power worthy of respect. It has been acknowledged that state policy was important in the development of industries but how well-organized was the state and how close were government-business relations? The book seeks to answer these questions and others. The first part deals with the role of science and medicine in creating a healthy nation. The second part of the book is devoted to examining the role of technology, and business-state relations in building a modern nation.
Science for the Empire
Author: Hiromi Mizuno
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2008-11-12
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0804769842
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis fascinating study examines the discourse of science in Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s in relation to nationalism and imperialism. How did Japan, with Shinto creation mythology at the absolute core of its national identity, come to promote the advancement of science and technology? Using what logic did wartime Japanese embrace both the rationality that denied and the nationalism that promoted this mythology? Focusing on three groups of science promoters—technocrats, Marxists, and popular science proponents—this work demonstrates how each group made sense of apparent contradictions by articulating its politics through different definitions of science and visions of a scientific Japan. The contested, complex political endeavor of talking about and promoting science produced what the author calls "scientific nationalism," a powerful current of nationalism that has been overlooked by scholars of Japan, nationalism, and modernity.
Science, Technology and Society in Contemporary Japan
Author: Morris Low
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1999-11-28
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9780521654258
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the dynamic relationship between science, technology and Japanese society, examining how it has contributed to economic growth and national well-being. It presents a synthesis of recent debates by juxtaposing competing views about the role and direction of science, technology and medical care in Japan. Topics discussed include government policy, the private sector and community responses; computers and communication; the automobile industry, the aerospace industry and quality control; the environment; consumer electronics; medical care; and the role of gender. This is an ideal introductory text for students in the sociology of science and technology, the history and philosophy of science, and Japanese studies. Up-to-date research and case studies make this an invaluable resource for readers interested in the nature of science and technology in the twenty-first century.
Happiness and the Good Life in Japan
Author: Wolfram Manzenreiter
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-27
Total Pages: 318
ISBN-13: 1317352726
DOWNLOAD EBOOKContemporary Japan is in a state of transition, caused by the forces of globalization that are derailing its ailing economy, stalemating the political establishment and generating alternative lifestyles and possibilities of the self. Amongst this nascent change, Japanese society is confronted with new challenges to answer the fundamental question of how to live a good life of meaning, purpose and value. This book, based on extensive fieldwork and original research, considers how specific groups of Japanese people view and strive for the pursuit of happiness. It examines the importance of relationships, family, identity, community and self-fulfilment, amongst other factors. The book demonstrates how the act of balancing social norms and agency is at the root of the growing diversity of experiencing happiness in Japan today.
Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan
Author: Kenneth E. Wilkening
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2004-05-21
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 9780262265096
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAcid Rain Science and Politics in Japan is a pioneering work in environmental and Asian history as well as an in-depth analysis of the influence of science on domestic and international environmental politics. Kenneth Wilkening's study also illuminates the global struggle to create sustainable societies. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended Japan's era of isolation- created self-sufficiency and sustainability. The opening of the country to Western ideas and technology not only brought pollution problems associated with industrialization (including acid rain) but also scientific techniques for understanding and combating them. Wilkening identifies three pollution-related "sustainability crises" in modern Japanese history: copper mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which spurred Japan's first acid rain research and policy initiatives; horrendous post-World War II domestic industrial pollution, which resulted in a "hidden" acid rain problem; and the present-day global problem of transboundary pollution, in which Japan is a victim of imported acid rain. He traces the country's scientific and policy responses to these crises through six distinct periods related to acid rain problems and argues that Japan's leadership role in East Asian acid rain science and policy today can be explained in large part by the "historical scientific momentum" generated by efforts to confront the issue since 1868, reinforced by Japan's cultural affinity with rain (its "culture of rain"). Wilkening provides an overview of nature, culture, and the acid rain problem in Japan to complement the general set of concepts he develops to analyze the interface of science and politics in environmental policymaking. He concludes with a discussion of lessons from Japan's experience that can be applied to the creation of sustainable societies worldwide.
The U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Agreement: A Drama in Five Acts
Author: Cecil H. Uyehara
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-22
Total Pages: 363
ISBN-13: 1351743414
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis title was first published in 2000. An account of the 1988 US-Japan Science and Technology Agreement (88STA). The research methodology of the study is based on interviews and analysis of the relevant documents and articles augmented by an analysis of selected studies on US-Japan and science and technology relations. The author hopes to: increase the reader's understanding of the bureaucratic process and negotiations within the US and Japanese government in drafting an agreement and the interaction of the negotiators in the outcome; increase our knowledge about how the US-Japanese relationship in science and technology in the public sector is managed; throw some light on how domestic factors impact on preparing for a negotiating a new agreement between the US and Japan on science and technology; develop insights into the negotiating styles of each country; assess its role as a model agreement for negotiating similar agreements with other countries; learn some lessons for future negotiations with Japan in the science and technology area and with other countries if this Agreement is to be used as a model.
The Premise of Fidelity
Author: Maki Fukuoka
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-08-15
Total Pages: 301
ISBN-13: 0804784620
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Premise of Fidelity puts forward a new history of Japanese visuality through an examination of the discourses and practices surrounding the nineteenth century transposition of "the real" in the decades before photography was introduced. This intellectual history is informed by a careful examination of a network of local scholars—from physicians to farmers to bureaucrats—known as Shōhyaku-sha. In their archival materials, these scholars used the term shashin (which would, years later, come to signify "photography" in Japanese) in a wide variety of medical, botanical, and pictorial practices. These scholars pursued questions of the relationship between what they observed and what they believed they knew, in the process investigating scientific ideas and practices by obsessively naming and classifying, and then rendering through highly accurate illustration, the objects of their study. This book is an exploration of the process by which the Shōhyaku-sha shaped the concept of shashin. As such, it disrupts the dominant narratives of photography, art, and science in Japan, providing a prehistory of Japanese photography that requires the accepted history of the discipline to be rewritten.
