ABSTRACT
The recent popularity of historical novels on pre-Meiji Japanese "scientists"—heroic men who strove to understand the natural world, before the word "scientist" or a Japanese equivalent had come into popular use—attests to public interest in the history of science in Japan. Broadly taken, "science" refers to knowledge of the natural world. The authority of the concept is due to the fact that the knowledge of nature produced by science is taken to be true, or at least authoritative. Sugimoto and Swain's focus on textually based elite investigations of nature and mathematics also needs to be reevaluated, in light of more recent studies suggesting that technological developments may have had a greater effect on more individuals in Japanese history. The techniques and material knowledge found in the trades and crafts— among Buddhist sculptors or merchants, for example—will clarify the social history of knowledge in premodern Japan and help incorporate these less textual fields into a broader history of Japanese science.
