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Dis/continuities: Nation-State Formation in Japan with Science, Technology, and Medicine during Imperialism, War, Occupation, and Peace, 1932-62

A Workshop organized by Sharon Traweek, UCLA History and Women's Studies, Shigeru Nakayama, UCLA Terasaki Chair in U.S.-Japan Relations, Aaron Moore, UCLA Terasaki Post-doctoral Fellow, and Michiko Takeuchi, UCLA Doctoral Candidate, history.

Friday, May 29, 2009
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
2355 Public Policy
Los Angeles, CA 90095

UCLA Workshop on Dis/continuities:
Nation-State Formation in Japan with Science, Technology, and Medicine during Imperialism, War, Occupation, and Peace, 1932-1962

Our goal for this workshop is to explore historical debates about the dis/continuities in Japanese nation-state formation from 1932 to 1962. Conventionally, a sharp distinction has been made between the imperial/colonial/military period to 1945 and the post-war process of reconstruction and development.  Similarly, wartime and peacetime projects in science, technology, and medicine often are sharply juxtaposed.  In this workshop we will examine this set of assumptions, using one to probe the other.

The period 1932 to 1962 ranges from the 1932 establishment of a Japanese colony in Manchuria to the First Comprehensive National Development Plan in 1962.  A focus on these three decades together enables us to carefully examine the debates about dis/continuities.

The speakers will analyze the designs, practices, and discourses about diverse Japanese government medical, technological and scientific projects during this period.

Clearly, science, technology, and medicine have been crucial for imperial and colonial expansion, wartime mobilization, occupation, and postwar reconstruction and development in several countries.  We raise these questions about that process in Japan:

* How are science, technology, and medicine invoked in nativist, essentialist, religious, nationalist, and modernist debates about nation-state projects?
* How have science, technology, and medicine been used by the nation-state to rationalize and construct wartime, colonial, and peacetime projects?
*  How are class, gender, ethnicity, and race implicated in these scientific, technological, and medical projects?
* How has Japan been engaged with other countries on these projects?
* How are these practices and discourses situated similarly and differently in Japan from related practices in other countries?

PROGRAM

Friday, May 29
9:00 Welcoming Remarks: Seiji Takeda, Director, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, San Francisco Office, USA 

9:15 Keynote Address: Situating the Dis/continuities Debate Shigeru Nakayama, UCLA Terasaki Chair in U.S.-Japan Relations, USA, and Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan

10:15-10:30 Coffee Break [no host], Jimmys Coffee House at Lu Valle Commons, UCLA

10:30 Engineering, Empire, War, and Peace, Moderator:  Sharon Traweek, UCLA

Aaron Moore, Terasaki Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA & Arizona State
Total War, Colonial Engineers and the Precursors of Postwar "Comprehensive National Land Planning"

Min Suh Son, Johns Hopkins University
Teaching Technology in Colonial Korea

Daqing Yang, George Washington University
Matsumae Shigeyoshi and Japanese Technological Mobilization

Takashi Nishiyama, State University of New York [SUNY] at Brockport
War and Peace for Engineers

Discussant:  Soraya de Chadarevian, History Dept. and Center for Society & Genetics, UCLA

12: 30 Lunch, Lu Valle Commons or North Campus Student Center, UCLA [no host]

2:00 Science, Empire, War, and Peace, Moderator:  Michiko Takeuchi, UCLA/CSULB

Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota
Scientific Nationalism and Postcolonial Development

Dong-won Kim, Boston
The Legacy of Japanese Science in Korea, 1931-1961

Tsukahara Togo, Kobe University
Jesuit Meteorologists vs. Japan's Imperial Weathermen: A note on the history of meteorology on the southern frontier of Japan's Empire

Shigeo Kato, Waseda University
Constructing Racial Differences: Psychiatric Researches in Colonial Taiwan and other Japanese colonies

Discussant:  Sabine Fruhstuck,
East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, UC Santa Barbara

5-7pm Relax together at UCLA Northern Lights Cafe [no host]

Saturday, May 30

Body Politic, Public Health, and Nation-State Formation, Moderator Aaron Moore, UCLA/ASU
 

Sumiko Otsubo, Metropolitan State University, Minnesota
Emperor, Family, and Scientific Modernity:
The 1940 Passage of the National Eugenics Law

Kei-ichi Tsuneishi, Kanagawa University
TB research in the Japanese Imperial Army

Sakino Takahashi, Institute for Gender Studies, Ochanomizu University
Change in the industrial structure and gender/sexuality: discovery of contemporary "sex/gender difference" by public health

Michiko Takeuchi, UCLA & California State University, Long Beach
Pan-Pan Girls & GIs: Japan-U.S. Military Prostitution System in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952

Discussant:  Mariko Tamanoi, Anthropology, UCLA, USA

12:30 Lunch, Lu Valle/Jimmys Coffee House/North Campus Student Center [no host]

2:00 Documenting and Remembering the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Moderator:  Shigeru Nakayama, UCLA
 

James Yamazaki, Emeritus Professor, UCLA
The US Atomic Bomb Medical Team:  Collecting evidence in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in collaboration with Japanese researchers

Yukuo Sasamoto, Society for the Study of the History of the US Occupation of Japan:  Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb

Kaoru Narisada, Hiroshima University
On the movement for establishing the Hiroshima Literature Museum: 1987-2009

3:00 Epilogue: Historically Situating Technoscience Projects of the 60s & 70s
Moderator:  Shigeru Nakayama, UCLA
Sharon Traweek, History and Womens Studies, UCLA, USA

3:25-4:00 Future Plans Discussion, Moderator:  Aaron Moore, UCLA & ASU

4:00-5:00 Informal Discussion, Jimmys Coffee House at Lu Valle Commons, UCLA [no host]

Sponsor(s): Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, Southern California Colloquium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.