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- Convenor:
-
Nobutaka Otobe
(Osaka University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Intellectual History and Philosophy
- Location:
- Lokaal 0.2
- Sessions:
- Sunday 20 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
While technology is often associated with science, thinking about technology spilled beyond science. This panel looks at how the discourse on technology shaped intellectual thought beyond science in the realm of industrialization, governance, philosophy, and culture in 1930s and 1940s Japan.
Long Abstract:
Japan in the period of 1930s and 1940s witnessed burgeoning interests in technology beyond the narrow confines of science. While existing studies have examined writings and projects of engineers and how they played a role in the construction of the Japanese colonial empire, less attention has been paid to how the discourses on technology influenced culture, society, and politics in the wider intellectual realm.
The first paper addresses the discourses on culture and economics by focusing on the writings of Nobuyuki Okuma (1893-1977). Trained and worked as an economist, Okuma wrote on a wide range of topics including media, literature, society, and politics. By examining these writings, the paper will reveal that Okuma envisioned a unified theory of culture and society based on his understanding of technology.
The second paper takes up the idea and practices of “standardization” as an instance where industrial technology is applied in wider society. In wartime Japan, many national standards were established in order to regulate everyday life. Some examples would be the invention of national uniform, national housing, and national food. This paper examines how these “standards” contributed to the self-governance of individuals in 1930s and 1940s Japan.
The third paper examines the theoretical discussion on communication and media technology by Nakai Masakazu (1900-1952). Nakai was famous for his philosophical research on the process and logic of communication, and aesthetical research on cinema. Looking at these writings, this paper will consider how Nakai envisaged cinema as the technology to enhance the transindividual possibility of communication.
The fourth paper, On Governance, Technology, and Utopia in 1930s Japan and its Afterlife, examines how the discourse on technology, as a response to World War I, became broadly understood as resource management, including that of human resource. The paper examines how the involvement of the population as human resource gave leverage to thinkers who sought to bolster democracy instead of letting the military dictate its terms. While this period is often characterized as a period of antimodernism and antirationalism, the thinkers behind the industrial mobilization sought to envision technology differently towards utopic ends.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Sunday 20 August, 2023, -Hitomi Koyama (Leiden University)
Paper short abstract:
The advent of World War I and the Japanese leaders’ conviction that the next war would be a total war resulted in the discourse of technology as biopolitical intervention. This paper examines how becoming “human resource” gave leverage for those who sought to enhance democracy in 1930s Japan.
Paper long abstract:
On Governance, Technology, and Utopia in 1930s Japan and its Afterlife, examines how the discourse on technology, as a response to World War I, became a matter of “tactics of managing human life”, to borrow Royama Masamichi’s words. While this period is often characterized as a period of antimodernism and antirationalism, the thinkers behind the institutionalization of industrial mobilization sought to envision “technology of managing human life” as a tactic and rationale to bolster the role of the people, rather than the military. Technology as the way to bolster state power through various forms of biopolitical intervention in this sense has never been a unilateral move, but moments of negotiation about what it means to become “human resource” in the age of total war. If everyone is to become part of the war effort, should not the people have more say over politics? More broadly, Kant theorized that if the people had to be mobilized for war they would opt not to start war. There is a theme about war involvement and implication on politics. While industrial mobilization in the end became dominated by the militarization discourse, the involvement of the people in total war gave some leverage for politicians and bureaucrats to envision a civilian-led mobilization program. If there is a latent connection between becoming human resource in the age of total war and leverage over international politics, then how does the postwar condition change this condition when war is no longer allowed? While biopolitical intervention continues in the form of social welfare and public health, how does discourse on technology change?
Takahito Niikura (Seijo University)
Paper short abstract:
In wartime Japan, lots of national standards were established in order to regulate everyday life; national uniform, national housing, and national food. This paper scrutinizes the relationship between those regulations and industrial technologies resulting from mass production.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1990s, two outcomes of significant international joint research were published in Japan: Total War and 'Modernization' and Deconstructing Nationality. Both attempted to shed light on the continuity between the prewar and postwar regimes in Japan on the one hand and the way the Japanese nation-state had artificially constructed nationality through ideological indoctrination on the other hand.
However, these works paid less attention to the historical meaning of nationality during the wartime period in Japan. This presentation will focus on the fact that many national standards were established in order to regulate everyday life in wartime Japan. These included national uniform (Kokumin-Fuku), housing (Kokumin-Jutaku), and food (Kokumin-Shoku).
Furthermore, what did the term nation (Kokumin) exactly mean in the wartime period? Why did such numerous standardizations prevail in the wartime period? This presentation will scrutinize these questions in light of the development of industrial technologies as well as the introduction of ‘Scientific Management’ discourses since the Great War period. In fact, this presentation notes that standardization provided the means of accomplishing the mass production necessary to prepare for the coming total war.
Through historical analysis of the wartime discourses of intellectuals as well as bureaucrats, this presentation will reveal the following points:
First, the establishment of those national standards was intended to subsume individual life ranging from family income and expenditure to foodstuff and clothing.
Second, the national subsumption through these standardizations was accomplished through the quantification embedded in various social surveys concerning peoples’ physical health and livelihood, including their housing, food, and clothing.
Finally, these standardizations demanded and promoted individuals to govern their lives to fit them.
In conclusion, this presentation suggests the dissemination of standardization and self-governance might facilitate the acceptance of the idea of management and information studies in postwar Japan.
Nobutaka Otobe (Osaka University)
Paper short abstract:
Nobuyuki Okuma (1893–1977) published on a diverse range of subjects, namely economy, literature, and politics. Analyzing his writings the 1930s and 1940s, I argue that despite differences in subjects, they mirror each other in addressing the impact technology has on people’s “lives” (seikatsu).
Paper long abstract:
Nobuyuki Okuma (1893–1977) published on a diverse range of subjects, namely economy, literature, and politics. As an economist, he started his academic career with the study of the economic thought of John Ruskin and William Morris and later developed an economic theory of “life” (seikatsu). Concerning literature, he wrote a pioneering essay on reproductive art, as well as published Tanka poems among a proletarian poetry group. Regarding politics, during the early 1940s, Okuma planned a theoretical treatise of state that would enable him to distance himself from far-right nationalists while still supporting Japan’s wartime policy. After 1945, he appeared as a harsh critic of both progressive and conservative camps. What unites Okuma’s interests in these diverse subjects? Analyzing Okuma’s writings in the 1930s and 1940s, I argue that despite differences in subjects, they mirror each other in addressing the impact of emerging technology on people’s “lives” (seikatsu) that underlie every human activity, including labor, artistic creation and consumption, and politics. For example, his study on literature focuses on how technologies such as radio and television help specific forms of literary works become popular, thus changing the way people enjoy art. Indeed, his writings as a whole form a unified theory concerning technology, understood as “one of the most important problems in our real life,” which prompts us to build “a new perspective toward human lives (seikatsu).”
Satofumi Kawamura (Otsuma Women's University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine Nakai Masakazu's theory of communication and media technology. Looking at Nakai's philosophical research on communication and cinema, how he envisaged cinema as the technology to enhance the transindividual possibility of communication will be considered.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine the theoretical discussion on communication and media technology by Nakai Masakazu (1900-1952). Although Nakai’s academic career was formed under the strong influence of so-called Kyoto School, his concern was more focused on leftist or socialist criticism of modern capitalist society. He thought, as capitalism developed, the mode of production and communication became collective, and behind this collectivization, the development of technology played the key role. In other words, capitalist industrialization was the strong driving force to establish the management system of labors in which each individual was controlled according to the mechanized production process as a whole. Therefore, Nakai pointed out that in the mass society emerged as a result of capitalist collectivization the human spirit itself was subject to mechanization (seishin-teki kikaika) and became crowd oriented (zokushu-ka). However, he did not criticize these characteristics of mass society, but rather grasped them as the auspice to (re)form mass as a collective or, transindividual subjectivity. For Nakai, the most crucial problem was found among individuals who recognized themselves as cultural, because they were not willing to admit that they were also subject to mechanization. Criticizing such a spiritual aristocracy (seishin-teki kizokushugi) among intelligent people, Nakai argued that what was needed was to appropriate the collective mode of production and communication by mass as collective/transindividual subjectivity, and mass culture (taishu-bunka) was the concrete example of the practice of such an appropriation. To consider the possibility of the above discussion by Nakai, this paper will look at his representative work on the process and logic of communication titled “The Logic of Committee” (Iinkai-no-ronri), and his aesthetic researches on cinema, particularly the one included in the book titled An Introduction of Aesthetics (Bigaku-nyumon). Through this consideration, this paper will elucidate that Nakai understood cinema as the mass-cultural media technology to enhance the transindividual communication that was crucial for forming collective/mass subjectivity.