Technology in a global world

2017

Low-seated chairs for tatami mats that are characteristic of Japanese-style interior appeared after late 1940s. This article focuses on the ambivalence between Western lifestyles and Japanese lifestyles by tracing the comments of designers, critics, magazines, and so forth to clarify a background of them. The introduction of chairs in Japan was actually involved, by definition, in a dichotomy between sitting on the floor and in chairs, which therefore was far from the domestic practicality of lifestyles among the public. Then we have to observe the two points for the introduction of chairs to break through this rigid situation: (1) how did the public establish definition of chairs outside the Westernization? This article grasps the fact that the artisans and early designers accumulated their experience of producing chairs from scratch, through trial and error. (2) How did the relation between sitting on the floor and in chairs break out of the dichotomy, through ambivalence? This article focuses on the fact that the public enjoyed the physical relaxation offered by the mix of sitting on the floor and in chairs. This constituted the domestic practicality of chairs for the Japanese. Therefore, such experiences of making and using chairs can be summarized as the awakening of a universe in the distance between the floor and the seat-height of Western chairs. It was a new frontier for Japanese designers, and low-seated chairs were born in this space. This article concludes that it marked the transition from Westernization to Japanese modern design.

Conference proceedings, "Why Does Modernism Refuse to Die?", 2002

Any discussion of the survival and re-birth of Modern architecture begs the question “what is Modernism?”, a question problematic enough in itself. Yet when we consider Modernism’s pervasiveness in non-Western countries the question becomes much more challenging. It demands consideration of its social corollary: the more fundamental query of “what is Modernity?” This paper will attempt to illustrate, with reference to traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture, how a number of qualities of Japanese society and culture problematize our definitions of these terms. A rethinking of our preconceptions of Modernity and Modernism can suggest how it might be that Modernism is still with us when so many of the values on which it is based – values of Modernity – have been called into question.

Japan is often referred to as high-tech country and large parts of Japanese society are attributed with an allegedly high affinity to (new) technologies. Moreover, the Japanese government cultivates a technology-friendly image and emphasises technology-driven responses to urgent societal issues like environmental protection, energy security or demographic change. Surprisingly, research on technical artefacts and technology did not become established as a full-fledged sub-discipline of Japanese Studies like sociology, political science or history, particularly in the German-speaking academic community. While, in the past, various research projects have drawn attention to individual aspects of the history, economy or philosophy of technology as well as environmental science on Japan, technical artefacts were seldom examined as the main object of study. The nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima has given new relevance to the interrelatedness of technology and society in Japan and rise to various studies. Surprisingly, this does recently not converge into a coherent research field addressing technology issues as such. The shaping of knowledge, actions, thoughts, cultures and norms are not sufficiently analysed yet. Therefore, we propose to conceive social scientific and cultural perspectives on technology as a full-fledged field of Japanese Studies. Basically, we ask in which way technical devices shape everyday life in a modern society like Japan, and how, conversely, the social and cultural context influences technological development. We take the basic ideas of Science & Technology Studies (STS) as joint point of reference by focusing on the co-evolution and intersection of technology and society. While taking into account their physical characteristics, this transdisciplinary approach understands technical artefacts as socio-cultural phenomena. More precisely, technology development is viewed not as a “rational” process and artefact not as “neutral objects”. In contrast, it is perceived as a process where social actors with varying visions, values, and concepts of usage inscribing their ideas into product designs and reconstitute a specific social order during the construction of large technical infrastructures. This enables a critical analysis of the production and the usage of technical devices, technologies and socio-technical infrastructures as interplay with their cultural and social context. While exploring the manifold roles of knowledge and technology in modern societies, methods are employed from cultural studies, social as well as historical science. In this way, STS encourage a joint research program. Moreover, focusing on the geographic, cultural and societal locale of Japan facilitates the reflection of underlying principles, unchallenged narratives and explanations on technology. We take this as an occasion to launch a special issue on Japan and contemporary Japanese Studies. The authors of this special issue reflect in their contributions on different theoretical and methodological approaches which could be employed for STS research on Japan. They discuss these approaches by using case studies from their various disciplines. We draw on insights from a workshop on STS and Japan held at Freie Universität Berlin, Jan 2015, an STS panel at the triannual Japanologentag at Munich University, Aug 2015, and the international JAWS conference on Nature and Technology in Japan in Istanbul, Sep 2015. We aim at opening a discussion on “technical things Japanese” with a wider audience by launching this special issue.

History and Technology, 2022

This article explores coal and wood manufacturing in late nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury Japan as the empirical sites for understanding the material gaps between industrial inputs available locally and the affordances of imported technology. Using hitherto unexplored archival materials, it demonstrates how the process of making coking coals for steel smelting and wooden boards for furniture-making challenge a conceptual framework that assumes that raw materials exist on one side of a binary and manufactured goods on the other. Instead, this article foregrounds the creative ways in which actors approached, redesigned and manufactured raw materials locally, to make them comply with the constraints of imported technologies. In doing so, the article provides a useful counterbalance to scholarly explorations that anchor modern Japan in notions of technology transfer and appropriation, thus failing to recognize the creative labour necessary to making imported technologies work on local ground. By focussing on the labour of matching materials to hardware, this article restores to the historical record the creativity and innovation that formed the fabric of the first wave of Japan's industrialisation and nuances our understanding of raw materials in the history of technology in general.

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2009

Business History Review, 2013

has written a history of the sewing machine in Japan that not only brings together elements of business, social, and gender history, but also tells an evocative story of daily life and social

Journal of Material Culture, 2001

We can easily now conceive of a time when there will be only one culture and one civilization on the entire surface of the earth. I don't believe this will happen, because there are contradictory tendencies always at workon the one hand towards homogenization and on the other towards new distinctions.

DIJ Workshop, 2021

Technical artefacts, technologies and infrastructures are shaping our everyday life in manifold ways. At the same time, their development, promotion and/or rejection is influenced by cultural patterns, ethical principles, social values as well as power relations. Thus, their study can be perceived as a promising starting-point for transdisciplinary and intercultural queries for research on intersections between Science, Technology and Society. In this workshop, we bring together scholars who share an interest in the analysis of co-construction processes of technology and society in Japan and beyond. What kind of visions exist in relation to autonomous driving in Japan? How can visions of technology-assisted care be co-created in Germany? What differences can be found in intercultural comparisons of AI ethics between the UK and Japan? What are success factors for co-creation approaches to transform social systems in Japanese municipalities? Moreover, which models or ideas of "participation" in development exist? Our research initiative aims at fostering a network of scholars of Japanese Studies and those from other disciplines with interest in methodologies and comparative research across different countries on topics such as medical technologies and care robotics, digital transformation and AI, mobility and autonomous driving, to mention a few. Furthermore, it strives to broaden linkages between the Japanese and the European research community of Science, Technology and Society and beyond.

Journal of World Buddhist Cultures, 2023

Andrew Feenberg's book Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity is a collection of the author's articles written on the examination of Nishidan philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and Japanese literature with the aim of tracking ways for alternative modernity. Even though Feenberg is not a specialist in the field of Japanese studies, as he has duly stated, he is a remarkable philosopher of the 21st century and is known for his writings on critical theory and technology. He was also a student of one of the leading members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse (1898Marcuse ( -1979)). Feenberg writes that the Japanese case of modernisation and Japanese thinkers' approach to modernity inspired him to revise his own works and to investigate Japan further (1). Feenberg points out that many Japanese thinkers, most notably Nishida Kitaro (1870Kitaro ( -1945)), struggled to create an alternative way of Asian modernity which would be rooted in their own culture by using Western sources (38)(39). He argues that this collective initiative has been successful for Japan to a considerable extent. Thus, he points out that today's Western society, which is undergoing a crisis of cultural self-confidence, has much to learn from the example of Japan to rejuvenate itself intellectually, just as Japan did in the past (1). The book consists of an introduction and five different articles. The introduction has been written by Yoko Arisaka, who is a Japanese philosophy expert at the University of Hildesheim in Germany, wherein she shares her personal experience by relating it with the author and the theme of the book. The first article "Technology in Global World", explores Miki Kiyoshi's and Nishida Kitaro's idiosyncratic insights into 'rationality' as an effort to find a mediation between its Western and Japanese forms. The second article "The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishida", explores Nishida's alternative understanding of modernity established around a multicultural worldview. The third article entitled "Alternative Modernity? Playing the Japanese Game of Culture", reviews Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author, Kawabata Yasunari's (1899-❖ 2023.3 ❖

International Journal of Japanese Sociology, 2018

This article addresses three questions on modernity. Can "the premodern" and "the modern" be differentiated in the historical process? If they can, what is the relationship between "the premodern" and "the modern"? And what will become of these relationships in the future? This article attempts to answer these questions by criticizing the world-system theory and considering some of the experiences of the modernization process in Japan. The world-system theory has tried to relativize social theories from advanced societies in the global perspective. However, the world-system, born during the long 16th century, was defined from the start as modern and capitalist. Therefore, logically this theory cannot adequately grasp the modernization process. To overcome this challenge, this article first accepts the differentiation between "the premodern" and "the modern" and defines modern society as one in which "the modern" is not exclusive but dominant. Second, this article turns to some of the Japanese experiences of "modernization", particularly in industrial relations. This article asserts that a Japanese-style society tends to keep "the premodern" over a longer term and to replace "modern" relations with "the premodern" ones in management. The author defined this process as informalization. Third, this article stresses that since the late 1990s with globalization, informalization is no longer derived from original "premodern" relations, which are nowadays reproduced by capital. An example of this is the "black company." This article notes, finally, that capitalism is likely to reproduce premodern forms for its duration.