Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964

Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 PDF Author: Takashi Nishiyama
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412675
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The role of engineering communities in taking Japan from a defeated war machine into a peacetime technology leader. Naval, aeronautic, and mechanical engineers played a powerful part in the military buildup of Japan in the early and mid-twentieth century. They belonged to a militaristic regime and embraced the importance of their role in it. Takashi Nishiyama examines the impact of war and peace on technological transformation during the twentieth century. He is the first to study the paradoxical and transformative power of Japan’s defeat in World War II through the lens of engineering. Nishiyama asks: How did authorities select and prepare young men to be engineers? How did Japan develop curricula adequate to the task (and from whom did the country borrow)? Under what conditions? What did the engineers think of the planes they built to support Kamikaze suicide missions? But his study ultimately concerns the remarkable transition these trained engineers made after total defeat in 1945. How could the engineers of war machines so quickly turn to peaceful construction projects such as designing the equipment necessary to manufacture consumer products? Most important, they developed new high-speed rail services, including the Shinkansen Bullet Train. What does this change tell us not only about Japan at war and then in peacetime but also about the malleability of engineering cultures? Nishiyama aims to counterbalance prevalent Eurocentric/Americentric views in the history of technology. Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 sets the historical experience of one country’s technological transformation in a larger international framework by studying sources in six different languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The result is a fascinating read for those interested in technology, East Asia, and international studies. Nishiyama's work offers lessons to policymakers interested in how a country can recover successfully after defeat.

Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964

Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 PDF Author: Takashi Nishiyama
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412675
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book

Book Description
The role of engineering communities in taking Japan from a defeated war machine into a peacetime technology leader. Naval, aeronautic, and mechanical engineers played a powerful part in the military buildup of Japan in the early and mid-twentieth century. They belonged to a militaristic regime and embraced the importance of their role in it. Takashi Nishiyama examines the impact of war and peace on technological transformation during the twentieth century. He is the first to study the paradoxical and transformative power of Japan’s defeat in World War II through the lens of engineering. Nishiyama asks: How did authorities select and prepare young men to be engineers? How did Japan develop curricula adequate to the task (and from whom did the country borrow)? Under what conditions? What did the engineers think of the planes they built to support Kamikaze suicide missions? But his study ultimately concerns the remarkable transition these trained engineers made after total defeat in 1945. How could the engineers of war machines so quickly turn to peaceful construction projects such as designing the equipment necessary to manufacture consumer products? Most important, they developed new high-speed rail services, including the Shinkansen Bullet Train. What does this change tell us not only about Japan at war and then in peacetime but also about the malleability of engineering cultures? Nishiyama aims to counterbalance prevalent Eurocentric/Americentric views in the history of technology. Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 sets the historical experience of one country’s technological transformation in a larger international framework by studying sources in six different languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The result is a fascinating read for those interested in technology, East Asia, and international studies. Nishiyama's work offers lessons to policymakers interested in how a country can recover successfully after defeat.

Designing Modern Japan

Designing Modern Japan PDF Author: Sarah Teasley
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780232306
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
A revealing look at Japanese design weaving together the stories of people who shaped Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics. From cars to cameras, design from Japan is ubiquitous. So are perceptions of Japanese design, from calming, carefully crafted minimalism to avant-garde catwalk fashion, or the cute, Kawaii aesthetic populating Tokyo streets. But these portrayals overlook the creativity, generosity, and sheer hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining design industries in Japan. In Designing Modern Japan, Sarah Teasley deftly weaves together the personal stories of people who shaped and shape Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics.. Key to her account is how design has been a strategy to help communities thrive during turbulent times, and for making life better along the way. Deeply researched and superbly illustrated, Designing Modern Japan appeals to a wide audience for Japanese design, history, and culture.

Swords Into Plowshares

Swords Into Plowshares PDF Author: Takashi Nishiyama
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic conversion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Abstract: This dissertation examines civilian application of military technology in Japan after World War II. As a case study, I focus on the historical metamorphosis of wartime technology, such as military aircraft deployed for kamikaze suicide missions, into the highly successful Shinkansen high-speed bullet train. In retrospect, the shift in the socio-technological landscape in Japan after 1945 was drastic, spectacular, and unprecedentedly successful. Employing a bottom-up approach, I highlight the decentralized character of Japan's conversion process from wartime to postwar eras. Specifically, I examine the roles of former military engineers in the public research and development sector at the grass roots-level. The crucial variable in the conversion process, I argue, was the remarkable adaptability and flexibility of these engineers and their knowledge, especially in support of Japan's technological development. The course of the technological transformation was neither obvious nor preordained. It was largely idiosyncratic and contingent on numerous individual decisions and actions within the engineering community. At least the bullet train and other modern technological artifacts were a product of such development; postwar technological artifacts were essentially amalgamations, reproductions, and reconfigurations of pre-1945 technologies with little orchestrated effort from the top. The postwar conversion went beyond a mere shuffling of human and financial resources. Many efforts came from grass-roots activities among engineers. The society as a whole beat swords into plowshares, renouncing war with peace-oriented technology.

Japan in War and Peace

Japan in War and Peace PDF Author: John W. Dower
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780006863465
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This collection of essays highlights the resemblances between wartime, postwar and contemporary Japan. The essays are particularly concerned with the nature of Japanese capitalism and the country's nationalistic doctrines of racial superiority.

War and Militarism in Modern Japan

War and Militarism in Modern Japan PDF Author: Guy Podoler
Publisher: Brill
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in WWII. Scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. This volume examines Japan's twentieth-century approach to war and militarism in a wider perspective, bringing hitherto unexamined new themes and subject-matter under scrutiny up to the present day.

Modern Japan

Modern Japan PDF Author: Arthur E. Tiedemann
Publisher: Princeton, N.J., Van Nostrand
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Modern Japan

Modern Japan PDF Author: William Montgomery McGovern
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The economic development of modern Japan, 1868 - 1945 : from the Meiji Restoration to the Second World War. 1

The economic development of modern Japan, 1868 - 1945 : from the Meiji Restoration to the Second World War. 1 PDF Author: Steven Tolliday
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781858981901
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages :

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Anarchist Modernity

Anarchist Modernity PDF Author: Sho Konishi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684175313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
"Mid-nineteenth century Russian radicals who witnessed the Meiji Restoration saw it as the most sweeping revolution in recent history and the impetus for future global progress. Acting outside imperial encounters, they initiated underground transnational networks with Japan. Prominent intellectuals and cultural figures, from Peter Kropotkin and Lev Tolstoy to Saigo Takamori and Tokutomi Roka, pursued these unofficial relationships through correspondence, travel, and networking, despite diplomatic and military conflicts between their respective nations.Tracing these non-state networks, Anarchist Modernity uncovers a major current in Japanese intellectual and cultural life between 1860 and 1930 that might be described as “cooperatist anarchist modernity”—a commitment to realizing a modern society through mutual aid and voluntary activity, without the intervention of state governance. These efforts later crystallized into such movements as the Nonwar Movement, Esperantism, and the popularization of the natural sciences.Examining cooperatist anarchism as an intellectual foundation of modern Japan, Sho Konishi offers a new approach to Japanese history that fundamentally challenges the “logic” of Western modernity. It looks beyond this foundational construct of modern history writing to understand people, practices, and cultural expressions that have been forgotten or dismissed as products of anti-modern nativist counter urges against the West."

Cork Wars

Cork Wars PDF Author: David A. Taylor
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421426919
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
World War II buffs—and anyone interested in a good yarn—will be gripped by this bold and frightening tale of a forgotten episode of American history.