ABSTRACT
Japanese science has undergone enormous change in the twentieth century, but these changes have often followed some well-defined parameters. From a small, elitist project based in two universities and a few state-supported laboratories at the beginning of the century, it has evolved into the massive enterprise of academic, government, and corporate laboratories of the present day. In 1900 its mission was limited to either a disinterested form of inquiry modeled on that of the German university or to narrowly applied work designed to improve rice strains or find a variety of sheep better suited to Japan’s humid climate. By the mid 1990s one influential form of science still had an obvious practical thrust, oriented as it was to crowding ever more circuitry onto a silicon chip or enhancing the efficiency of small batch production. But this science was now being done in corporate laboratories which scarcely existed at the turn of the century, and it benefitted from the preferential treatment of a sympathetic government. As in other countries which contribute to science, the twentieth century experience in Japan has featured the growing involvement with, and querolous support of, scientific and technical research by ever more social elements with diverse motivations. In 1900 the Japanese military establishment had little to do with scientific research, as is true in Japan today. But for several decades, the Japanese Army and Navy were significant sponsors of science, with occasionally disastrous results. Similarly, the universities were the dominant research institutions in the century’s early years but lost their preeminence after World War II. It will be a central task here to explain these shifts of direction and emphasis.
