The History of Technology in Japan and East Asia

摘要

To the extent that “the history of technology” exists in Japan and East Asia as a discipline, literature, or coherent collection of problems or approaches, it does so in an often limnal form. “The history of science” is also a relatively small discipline in this part of the world (as elsewhere), but is more clearly locatable and demarcated in the form of groups and individuals whose identity is bound up with that project.1 In a 1990 survey, Mats Fridlund found that there were about 950 persons in the various Japanese organizations of the history of science and technology, but that only about 10% of them were dealing with technology as opposed to science. At that time, there were four professorships in the history of technology in Japan, although most of these were qualified by reference to other sub-fields, such as economics and industrial psychology. “The general climate of the history of technology is quite cold” one Japanese professor told Fridlund, but was in “the fermentation stage” (Fridlund 1993).2 This is not fundamentally different than the situation today, almost 20 years later, at least as regards formal institutionalization.