Science, ideology, empire: A history of the 'scientific' in Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s

How was science perceived and promoted in mid-twentieth century Japan that relied on folk myth for fashioning its nation and mobilizing nationalism? This dissertation examines discourses of science in Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s. The topic of science has rarely been discussed in the scholarship on interwar (1919–1936) and wartime (1937–1945) Japan, despite the fact that this period was characterized by the development of science in Japan and the flourishing discourse of a uniquely Japanese science. This dissertation focuses on three sites where the concept of the “scientific” was discussed and defined in relation to concepts of the “Japanese”: (1) the field of the history of Japanese science in Japan, with a focus on the leading Marxist intellectuals in this field; (2) the technocrat movement for “science-technology” [kagaku-gijutsu], led by engineer-bureaucrats; and (3) the popular culture of science, as seen in science fiction and popular magazines such as Science Illustrated [Kagaku gaho] and Children's Science [Kodomo no kagaku]. The protagonists in each site—Marxist historians of science such as Ogura Kinnosuke and Saigusa Hiroto, technocrats like Miyamoto Takenosuke, and popularizers of science such as Harada Mitsuo and Unno Jûza—presented differing and often competing concepts of the “scientific” tailored toward their own agendas for the promotion of science. One goal of this dissertation is to examine the intense politics surrounding the definitions of the “scientific.” The second objective is to demonstrate the complex ways in which these protagonists became incorporated into state war mobilization through what I term scientific nationalism, a call for a more scientific Japan. Scientific nationalism was not only a wartime phenomenon; it continued to shape nationalism in postwar Japan as well. By integrating the topic of science into the intellectual and cultural history of modern Japan as well as using materials such as the popular science magazines that have been overlooked by historians both in Japanese and English scholarship, this dissertation provides a new understanding of Japanese nationalism, imperialism, and war mobilization in the twentieth century.