1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910792021503321

Autore

Moore Aaron Stephen <1972->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, Calif., : Stanford University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-8047-8669-0

Descrizione fisica

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

Classificazione

ZG 9363

Disciplina

303.48/3095209043

Soggetti

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

Technology and state - Japan - History - 20th century

Public works - East Asia - History - 20th century

Fascism - Japan - History - 20th century

World War, 1939-1945 - Japan

Japan Colonies Asia History 20th century

Japan History 1926-1945

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.