Constructing East Asia : technology, ideology, and empire in Japan's wartime era, 1931-1945 / Aaron Stephen Moore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moore, Aaron Stephen, 1972-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technology--Political aspects--Japan--History--20th century.

Technology.

Technology and state--Japan--History--20th century.

Technology and state.

Public works--East Asia--History--20th century.

Public works.

Fascism--Japan--History--20th century.

Fascism.

World War, 1939-1945--Japan.

World War, 1939-1945.

Japan--Colonies--Asia--History--20th century.

Japan.

Japan--History--1926-1945.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 314 pages) : illustrations (black and white)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The conventional understanding of Japanese wartime ideology has for years been summed up by just a few words: anti-modern, spiritualist, and irrational. Yet such a cut-and-dried picture is not at all reflective of the principles that guided national policy from 1931–1945. Challenging the status quo, Constructing East Asia examines how Japanese intellectuals, bureaucrats, and engineers used technology as a system of power and mobilization—what historian Aaron Moore terms a "technological imaginary"—to rally people in Japan and its expanding empire. By analyzing how these different actors defined technology in public discourse, national policies, and large-scale infrastructure projects, Moore reveals wartime elites as far more calculated in thought and action than previous scholarship allows. Moreover, Moore positions the wartime origins of technology deployment as an essential part of the country's national policy and identity, upending another predominant narrative—namely, that technology did not play a modernizing role in Japan until the "economic miracle" of the postwar years.

Contents:

Constructing East Asia

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Technological Imaginary of Imperial Japan

Chapter 1. Revolutionary Technologies of Life

Chapter 2. Technologies of Asian Development

Chapter 3. Constructing the Continent

Chapter 4. Damming the Empire

Chapter 5. Designing the Social Mechanism

Epilogue. Legacies of Techno- Fascism and Techno- Imperialism in Postwar Japan

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804786690

0804786690

OCLC:

849718814