(Collection UTCP 6) Historical Essays on Japanese Technology

This is a collection of essays I wrote on various historical aspects of Japanese technologies from the Edo period to the present times. It consists of four parts and eleven chapters in all. The first two papers deal with the Japanese traditional clock and the origin of punctuality in Meiji Japan. The next two papers explain about the roles and visions of foreign engineers in the late Edo and early Meiji periods. The three papers in the third part narrate various aspects of technological and industrial development in Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras. And the four papers in the last fourth part discuss the relationship between the universities and the industry in Japan as well as in the United States. These papers were written in different occasions, some being written as one of the chapters of a book on specific topic, others as an independent paper in a history of technology journal, and still others as translations of Japanese articles already published in a book or encyclopedia. The first essay “Japanese clocks and the Origin of Punctuality in Modern Japan” was a result of the previous collaborative researches on the origin of punctuality (which resulted in the collection of papers Chikoku no Tanjo (The Birth of Tardiness) and on the traditional Japanese clocks and the so-called Myriad Year Clock designed and constructed by Hisashige Tanaka also known as Karakuri Giemon.
 

(Written by Takehiko Hashimoto, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2017)