Transfers of Knowledge in Japan’s Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bodies of knowledge in Japan were defined and disseminated in innovative, disruptive, and unexpected ways. This panel brings together scholars from Japan and North America to explore the various methods by which knowledge transfer took place in different arenas of society ranging from the household to the factory floor. Young examines diaries written before the widespread implementation of hospital medicine to demonstrate how families living in the nineteenth-century city of Edo documented their own illnesses and recorded medical knowledge that was passed down through the generations. Greenstein explores the role of businessmen as conduits for information about the Allied mobilization of shipping during WWI and the impact of that information on Japan’s shipping policies in the interwar period. Melzer analyzes how foreign engineers communicated with their Japanese counterparts using the highly effective medium of blueprints during Japan’s transformation into an aviation nation. Mayo traces the history of two dictionaries that emerged in opposition to one another with the shared aim of redefining and reinterpreting the Japanese language for youth in the postwar period. Finally, in her role as discussant, Koshiro will further explore some of the shared insights into knowledge transfer raised in each of the presentations. By keeping the presentations short, this panel aims to involve the audience in a discussion that will conclude the session.


Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Christopher Mayo, Kogakkan University

Chair

• Christopher Mayo, Kogakkan University

Individual Presentations

• Recording Suffering: Medical Knowledge and Diary Keeping in Nineteenth-Century Japan - W. Evan Young, Dickinson College

• Shipping Strategies: Businessmen and Conduits of Knowledge about Wartime Mobilization in Interwar Japan - Elijah J. Greenstein, Princeton University

• Graphic Illuminations: Blueprints and the Transfer of Aviation Knowledge to Japan - Juergen P. Melzer, Yamanashi Gakuin University

• Dueling Dictionaries: Re-Defining Japanese in the Post-War Period - Christopher Mayo, Kogakkan University

Discussant

• Yukiko Koshiro, Nihon University