Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry - (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology) by Yoshiyuki Kikuchi (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science have begun to look critically at scientific pedagogy - how young scientists are made, examining such questions as the extent to which scientific pedagogy shapes research and how pedagogical regimes interact with wider societies. In light of today's global and transnational society, it is necessary, even pressing, to add a fourth dimension to this research agenda: cross-national exchange of ideas, people, and materials for the construction of a pedagogical regime. Japan in the Meiji period makes an ideal case for this inquiry. A nascent nation-state which tried to build a Western-style higher education system as part of its industrialization policy, Japan desperately needed models for institution-building for survival in an increasingly Euro- and American-centric world order. It first looked to Great Britain as a model for a strong industrial power, and the United States as a model for a young, fast growing country that was vigorously building administrative, educational, and industrial institutions. British and American teachers were dominant in Japanese higher education between the 1860s and 1880s, and many Japanese overseas students went to British and American universities and colleges to finish their training during this period. Increase of German presence in Japanese higher education (and in politics and administration) came later, from the 1880s onward. As a result, Meiji Japan became, so to speak, a kaleidoscope of Western (as well as Japanese) styles in many aspects of institutional as well as material culture"--

Book Synopsis

Anglo-Japanese and American-Japanese connections in chemistry had a major impact on the institutionalization of scientific and technological higher education in Japan from the late nineteenth century and onwards. They helped define the structure of Japanese scientific pedagogical and research system that lasted well into the post-World World II period of massive technological development, when it became one of the biggest providers of chemists and chemical engineers in the world next to Europe and the United States. In telling this story, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry explores various sites of science education such as teaching laboratories and classrooms - where British and American teachers mingled with Japanese students - to shed new light on the lab as a site of global human encounter and intricate social relations that shaped scientific practice.

Review Quotes

'In this fluent account of the dynamic interplay between individual English and American chemists and their Japanese students in three continents, Kikuchi provides a vivid analysis of how different styles of teaching and research affected attitudes to pure and applied chemistry. His brilliant demonstration of the different cultural functions of professors and assistants, and of the laboratory as a two-way contact zone for cultural exchanges, provides an important model for historians of chemistry.' - William Brock, Emeritus Professor of History of Science, University of Leicester, UK

About the Author

Yoshiyuki Kikuchi is Associate Professor at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai), Hayama, Japan. He has published extensively on the history of Japanese chemistry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its global contexts. He previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and Harvard University, USA.