Organizer: David Wittner, Ohio State University
Chair: William M. Tsutsui, University of Kansas
Discussant: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Australian National University
The history of the development of science and technology in modern Japan is the canvas on which scholars often paint the story of a monolithic state-sponsored system of economic development relying on borrowed technology from "the West." Individual initiative and competence are largely ignored, the role of the state’s industrial policy is central. Part two of this "back-to-back" panel, which examines Japanese science and technology from the Meiji through Heisei eras, suggests otherwise.
In his paper on the development of the Meiji era iron industry, David Wittner examines the relationship between technology transfer and ideological expectation. He argues that Meiji intellectuals and bureaucrats constructed a progress ideology focused on how technology imported from the West should transfer; these beliefs influenced design and technological choices at Kamaishi ironworks. Challenging traditional interpretations, Wittner concludes that foreign and Japanese engineers designed and built a facility that was the product of empirical reality and ideological expectation.
Turning to the postwar period, Andrew Robertson examines the roles of Japanese electrical engineers at NEC and the American occupation forces in the reconstruction of the communications industry. Whereas most scholars stress the importance of the adoption of American quality control practices, Robertson argues that this misrepresents domestic technical capabilities. He notes that wartime conditions and material shortages affected vacuum tube construction and suggests that the reason why the role of electrical engineers in the NEC case has been largely ignored is that many organizations have preferred to stress the importance of management in workplace reform.
In his examination of Japanese participation in the American-led orbiting space station project, Jonathan Lewis challenges orthodox perceptions of Japanese technonationalism. Many hold that Japanese companies and the government bureaucracy jointly direct science and technology policy in the pursuit of national economic security. Lewis argues that academic scientists with neither nationalistic nor economic motives are playing increasingly active roles in policy formation. He notes that this development is changing not only the institutions and ideologies of industrial policy-making, but also the relationship between Japanese scientists and the state.
David G. Wittner, Ohio State University
This work examines the role of ideology in the development of Japan’s iron industry during the Meiji era. As part of my dissertation, "Iron and Silk: Progress and Ideology in the Technological Transformation of Japan, 1850–1930," I argue that among Meiji leaders there existed a "progress ideology"—a belief in the way technology should develop that was not necessarily based on empirics or accepted technical procedure. This paper considers the relationship between the actual process of technology transfer as it occurred in the late nineteenth century and the government’s beliefs on how industry based on imported Western technology was expected to develop. In this case study, I argue that Meiji progress ideology influenced the development of Japan’s iron industry by transforming the roles of Japanese and foreign engineers and affecting their choice of technique.
According to traditional interpretations, Japan’s first venture into industrial iron technology ended quickly in failure. Many scholars argue that the Meiji government was overly reliant on foreign advisers who never considered conditions unique to Japan when they designed the ironworks at Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture. In addition, the failure is blamed on the transfer of inappropriate and/or obsolete technologies and plans that did not consider scale of operations. Many of these arguments, however, are based on assessing nineteenth century technology in terms of twentieth century expectations. They disregard the state of the technology as it existed at the time, as well as the motivating factors that guided Kamaishi’s numerous engineers.
This work considers the state of nineteenth century iron technology in examining the engineers’ recommendations and choice of technique. I compare the engineers’ proposals to what actually transpired in order to establish the basis for understanding the development of a Meiji progress ideology. Whereas many scholars consider Kamaishi’s size as determined by foreign advisers and the corresponding design proposal as unsuitable for Japan, I conclude that the scale of operations is directly correlated to the government’s beliefs in "big technology," the design as result of these expectations, and choice of technique the most appropriate given government demands and local conditions.
H. Andrew Robertson, Harvard University
At the conclusion of World War Two, Japan’s telephone system lay in ruins. For American occupation forces, lack of reliable communication facilities posed a major obstacle to governing Japan. As one component of GHQ’s plan to resurrect the system, GHQ engineers received orders to assist NEC in improving the reliability of its products. From October 1946 onwards, NEC engineers Kobayashi Kouji and Nishio Hidehiko met regularly with GHQ engineer W. S. Magil to discuss quality control and production techniques for the manufacture of CZ-50X-D series vacuum tubes. Within a year, the average life for the CZ-504-D tube had increased from 500 to 10,000 hours. Learning of this astounding improvement, other companies petitioned GHQ to study these quality management techniques. In response, GHQ organized the "CCS Course," an eight week introduction to the fundamentals of manufacturing quality control.
In this paper I intend to reexamine the introduction of quality control at NEC and suggest that this traditional story has misrepresented the technical capabilities possessed by the postwar Japanese communications industry. Wartime shortages forced NEC to make a series of material substitutions which they were aware degraded vacuum tube performance. Following the war, NEC engineers worked extensively with Communications Ministry engineers to formulate new design specifications for the CZ-50X-D series tubes. In large part, the radical improvement in performance of NEC’s vacuum tubes can be traced to improved design rather than improved production techniques.
Why, then, have the Communication Ministry engineers and their work been erased from this story leaving only the adoption of American quality control as the basis for NEC’s vacuum tube miracle? As part of the postwar fetishization of things American, the NEC story provided a concrete example of the effectiveness of American ideas in transforming the Japanese workplace. Attempting to address the huge production technology problems afflicting much of Japanese industry, organizations like the Nihon Nouritsu Kyoukai seized on the NEC story as an example of the improvements possible. The contributions of the government engineers became an unnecessary complication in explaining how better management produces better products. NEC and its project manager, Kobayashi Kouji, obliged these groups by emphasizing the managerial aspect of the problem. Indeed, Kobayashi’s subsequent career would be founded on the proposition that the central problem for management is the creation of quality.
Jonathan Lewis, University of Tokyo
In the early 1980s Japan was approached as a potential partner in an orbiting space station project led by the United States. The Japanese aerospace industry, working in concert with space officials, mobilized almost the whole of manufacturing industry to study ways of using the space station as a gravity-free factory and laboratory. The Japanese government was persuaded to fund the design and construction of a module for the station. When Japanese users start to carry out experiments on the station in around 2002, however, they will not be the industrial companies who lobbied so vigorously for the project, but predominantly scientists working in universities and government research institutes. Industrial users quickly abandoned the station in the mid-1980s when they realized that the costs of the station would be prohibitively high. Needing to justify the continuation of the project, a small group of space professionals then set about creating a community of non-commercial space station users.
The case is significant because it suggests an undermining of the widely accepted technonationlist model of Japanese industrial technology policy. According to this view, companies and the bureaucracy join in an ideological pursuit of national economic strength through the rapid acquisition and diffusion of new technologies. The space station case, however, offers evidence that academic scientists without strong nationalistic or economic motivations are playing increasingly important roles in Japanese technology policy networks. This development is changing not only the institutions and ideologies of industrial policy-making, but also the relationship between Japanese scientists and the state.