Building a Modern Japan

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Morris Low

      Pages 1-10

3. Science, Medicine, and a Healthy Nation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

      PDF

   2. The Rise of Western “Scientific Medicine” in Japan: Bacteriology and Beriberi

      • Christian Oberländer

      Pages 13-36

   3. Male Anxieties: Nerve Force, Nation, and the Power of Sexual Knowledge

      • Sabine Frühstück

      Pages 37-59

   4. The Female Body and Eugenic Thought in Meiji Japan

      • Sumiko Otsubo

      Pages 61-81

   5. Racializing Bodies through Science in Meiji Japan: The Rise of Race-Based Research in Gynecology

      • Yuki Terazawa

      Pages 83-102

   6. Doctors, Disease, and Development: Engineering Colonial Public Health in Southern Manchuria, 1905–1926

      • Robert John Perrins

      Pages 103-132

4. Technology, Industry, and Nation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 133-133

      PDF

   2. The Mechanization of Japan’s Silk Industry and the Quest for Progress and Civilization, 1870–1880

      • David G. Wittner

      Pages 135-159

   3. A Miracle of Industry: The Struggle to Produce Sheet Glass in Modernizing Japan

      • Martha Chaiklin

      Pages 161-181

   4. Modernity and Carpenters: Daiku Technique and Meiji Technocracy

      • Gregory Clancey

      Pages 183-206

   5. The Impact of the Great Depression: The Japan Spinners Association, 1927–1936

      • W. Miles Fletcher III

      Pages 207-232

5. Back Matter

   Pages 233-242

   PDF

In 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.

• building
• corpus
• ecology
• Europe
• Great Depression
• health
• Japan
• Japanese
• medicine
• miracle
• nation
• play
• policy
• science
• westernization

"It seems that a new scholarship is emerging from English-writing scholars of Japanese modernization and industrialization. This book admirably covers different aspects of Japanese modernization, science and technology, gender, health care and traditional technology especially from the viewpoint of cultural and gender studies." - Shigeru Nakayama, Kanagawa University

"A pioneering study in English of how science, medicine, and technology helped to transform Japan in the turbulent years after the Meiji Restoration. Morris Low is to be praised for assembling this excellent collection." - James R. Bartholomew, The Ohio State University"Low is to be commended for assembling a collection of such valueable essays by both leading senioe and junior scholars in Building a Modern Japan. What this collection - together with some of Low's other recently published works - proves is that the history of science of Japan has indeed become a well-established and growning field outside Japan itself." - Walter Grunden, ISIS

• Johns Hopkins University, USA

  Morris Low

MARTHA CHAIKLIN Curator of Asian History at the Milwaukee Public Museum, USA GREGORY CLANCEY is Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore, Singapore W. MILES FLETCHER Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, USA SABINE FRÜHSTÜCK Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, USA CHRISTIAN OBERLÄNDER Professor in the Department for Japanese Studies at the University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany SUMIKO OTSUBO Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, USA ROBERT PERRINS Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics, at Acadia University, Canada YUKI TERAZAWA Teaches at Hofstra University in New York, USA DAVID WITTNER Associate Professor in the Department of History at Utica College, New York, USA

Policies and ethics