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- Convenor:
-
Bernhard Leitner
(University of Vienna)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- History
- Location:
- Lokaal 1.11
- Sessions:
- Saturday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
When imperialist Japanese ambitions were forced to break down various critical barriers, science seemed to step in. This panel seeks to explore four different episodes of the history of science in Japan and its colonies from 1900 to the 1970s, as well as their transnational ramifications.
Long Abstract:
Japanese imperialist advancements in the twentieth century had to overcome multiple obstacles. Adding to the existing scholarship that highlights Japan’s problems with resource acquisition, this panel focuses on hitherto uncharted aspects of such issues as blood supplies for soldiers, insect-borne diseases in the tropical outposts of the empire, establishment of legitimized colonial regimes, and more delicate troubles with human remains from the war.
The first paper attempts to uncover a transnational episode of knowledge circulation in psychiatry and neurology between Austria and Japan starting from 1900. With malaria at the center, the paper follows the transformation of the disease from a problem to a solution for colonial endeavors upon entering occupied Korea.
The second paper argues that whilst Japan was the world’s largest producer and exporter of dried pyrethrum flowers in the 1920s-1930s, the Japanese military – unlike the US and UK armies – never considered pyrethrum a crucial material for insect control. This paper also provides a counter-narrative to the accounts that overestimate the role of DDT and ignore other substances that were deployed for insect control during WWII.
The third paper examines how blood group knowledge was incorporated into the war rally of “medical patriotism.” As the frontlines of war edged closer to the home-front, air defense became a strategic priority for the wartime government. However, this paper argues that the (re)presentation of blood, while serving its propaganda purpose, was also a contested site challenging the state’s authority.
The fourth paper addresses the collection and distribution of hibakusha body parts in postwar Japan and the US in the context of colonial science and culture. It discusses the mobility of the center of scientific knowledge and its connection to the underlying international situation.
Science was at the crossroads of all these hubs. By examining four different dimensions of the history of science in Japan and its colonies from 1900 to the 1970s, this panel seeks to enhance our understanding of how scientific findings are negotiated during wartime and occupation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 19 August, 2023, -Isaac C.K. Tan (Columbia University)
Paper short abstract:
With air defense preparations intensifying at the Japanese home-front, blood became a key feature in the war rally of “medical patriotism.” I examine the portrayal of blood science in these war slogans, showing that (re)presentation of blood was a contested site challenging the state’s authority.
Paper long abstract:
Blood is often associated with the embodiment of a homogenous power to bond and unify a community. However, by examining its discursive representations at the height of the Second World War in the Japanese home islands, I argue that blood served as a discursive site for negotiating contradicting loyalties and agendas. With the increasing pressures of resource scarcity and the occurrences of enemy air raids by late 1942, the frontlines of war were edging closer than ever to the home-front. Japanese doctors invented the war slogan of “medical patriotism” [igaku hōkoku] to rally local medical associations into supporting the state’s mobilization of entire communities for air defense preparations. I investigate how the subjects of blood and blood groups were infused into the war propaganda machinery. On the one hand, through the organization of countrywide events such as blood donation drives and blood group testing, the knowledge of blood science was widely propagated among the masses—in an attempt to promote a form of wartime “philanthropy of blood” and to showcase the country’s progressive medical culture. On the other, this revealed many unresolved issues in the medical scene, including the deplored practice of blood trading, and more importantly, the Allies’ advantage in blood science research that inevitably portrayed the Japanese medical community in negative light. The (re)presentation of blood, especially that on blood groups, was thus not a straightforward affair in wartime Japan, but instead a contested site that challenged the authority of the state.
Kirill Kartashov (University of York)
Paper short abstract:
This paper evaluates the importance of pyrethrum-based insecticides as a means of tackling insect-borne diseases in the Japanese military (1900s-1945) and explains why pyrethrum was a relatively insignificant wartime material in Japan, in contrast to its high importance for the US and UK armies.
Paper long abstract:
Conventional accounts of insect control during WWII focus almost entirely on the synthetic insecticide DDT and narratives that celebrate its unparalleled efficacy. The fame of DDT has obscured the fact that the nations fighting in WWII actually deployed a range of substances to tackle the vectors of insect-borne diseases. One such substance was the natural insecticide pyrethrum, produced from the dried and ground flowers of a daisy-like plant Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium. While historians including Edmund Russell and Sabine Clarke have argued that pyrethrum was highly significant for the Allies’ insect control efforts, there is still an unresolved question about Japan: were the Japanese armed forces big consumers of pyrethrum? Given that Japan was the world’s largest producer and exporter of dried pyrethrum flowers at the time, it would seem natural to suggest that pyrethrum played a similarly important role for the Japanese military both during and before WWII – which, I will argue, was not the case.
I will start with tracing the history of the use of pyrethrum by the Japanese military (1900s-late 1930s) against the background of other ways to control the spread of insect-borne diseases. Pyrethrum took a variety of forms and functions, including: a powder that protected the soldiers against flies and lice during the Russo-Japanese War; a component of sprays and wipes applied by Japanese military veterinarians to tackle horse pests; an active compound of coils that Japanese military stationed in Taiwan used to repel malaria mosquitoes. By locating pyrethrum within the wider set of measures against insect-borne diseases, I will show that pyrethrum was one of many available tools of disease control, but its importance was never paramount.
I will then attempt to explain why, in contrast to the US and UK militaries, pyrethrum was relatively insignificant to the Japanese armed forces during WWII. This explanation is necessary because the Japanese army suffered heavy losses from malaria. One of the factors that prevented the large-scale use of pyrethrum by Japanese soldiers was the acuteness of food shortages, which led to the prioritization of growing food crops over industrial ones such as pyrethrum.