ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Science Diplomacy, and Empire in East Asia: The Establishment of the Shanghai Science Institute (1931-1945)

• In Event: Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 3

English Abstract

This presentation examines the establishment of the Shanghai Science Institute (1931–1945) in Shanghai, China, as a nominally joint Sino-Japanese research institution created under Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of its “Cultural Work in China,” later renamed the “Oriental Cultural Work.” The Institute pursued the study of pure science through departments of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, pathology (with hygiene added in 1938), pharmacology, and bacteriology.
Rather than viewing it merely as an instrument of imperial or military expansion, this study situates its conception within Japan’s interwar diplomacy, particularly the intellectual and political legacy of Gotō Shimpei, who as Foreign Minister articulated Japan’s “cultural policy toward China.” Drawing on government documents and writings by bureaucrats and scientists, it reveals how Japan’s rhetoric of international cooperation and non-intervention coexisted with ambitions to shape the sphere of influence and modernity in Asia through science.Gotō’s notion of “civilization as armament” and his proposal to use the Boxer Indemnity for scientific projects anticipated the Institute’s creation. Its emphasis on “pure science” reflected Japan’s desire to demonstrate cultural prestige while asserting symbolic leadership in East Asia. However, the Foreign Ministry’s attempt to ease Sino-Japanese tensions through such a cultural and scientific approach eventually failed, as the Institute could not overcome the growing political frictions between the two nations. The project is interpreted as a form of science diplomacy—an attempt to reconcile cooperation and control, culture and empire, within interwar Japan’s engagement with China.

Author

• Shigeo Kato, School of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan.