Knowledge of nature and craftProblems of the field
There are a number of reasons why the history of science in pre- 1600 Japan is vastly overshad-
owed by the activity and interest in the history of science after 1600—reasons that have to do
with some preoccupations of scholars in the field as well as those intrinsic to the topic itself. These
issues include the definition of science, a focus on modernization theory, and the matter of sources
for the study of science in premodern Japan.
While the term “science” would certainly seem to have an obvious definition, scholars
working on the history of science in the West and in the sociology of science in a modern global
context have pointed out the surprising difficulties involved in pinning it down.^6 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.
But what counts as science, or in other words the proper object of a history of the subject (should
knowledge gained from experience count, or only the rigorously theorized results of a complex
experimental method?) determines how one might look at the history of science, particularly for
places and peoples outside of western Europe.
For those who center the subject on the Western tradition stemming from the Scientific
Revolution, there is little of interest in developments before the Meiji Period except the early
importation of Western books, particularly through the Dutch- Learning (Rangaku) circle of
scholars. This viewpoint leads to histories of science in Japan beginning in 1868 or 1854, after
Japan was “opened” by Matthew Perry.^7 While in these works material from before 1868 or even
1600 may appear, they are presented as cultural background to the importation of Western
knowledge—in such cases, the further from 1868 the material, the less relevant it is for such a
history.
And yet, even when modern science, defined as deriving from the Scientific Revolution in
Europe, is taken as the proper subject of a history of science, there are ways of defining the problem
that make room for non- Western, non- modern objects of study. One such means of including the
premodern in such a study is to look at what pre- existing factors in Japan may have helped, hin-
dered, or shaped the adoption of Western science. In such works, for example, the flourishing
mathematical field of wasan or Japanese mathematics in the Edo Period plays a role in the adoption
of Western educational and scientific methods in the Meiji Period.^8 Such studies resemble other
works influenced by modernization theory for early modern Japan. The current trend in scholar-
ship on political, economic, and cultural history, however, has been to reject this focus, and this
style of scholarship is out of step too with the field of the history of science as a whole.
Another way of including premodern Japan, or at least Asia, in the history of modern science is
to look for contributions made to global knowledge or technology before the Scientific Revolu-
tion. In his early publications, Joseph Needham made a justification for the utility of studying
“Chinese Science” in terms of the technological contributions (namely printing, gunpowder, and
the compass) that, although part of the intellectual revolution in Europe, had their origins in China.
In such a way, Needham made a case for the importance of premodern Chinese science as a contrib-
utor to a modern, “global” science—a distinct stream, but one that fed into a global ocean.^9
While Japan shows up occasionally in the extensive Science and Civilisation in China series,
Needham’s justification for the study of Chinese science does not work as well for Japan: while
“Chinese” (sometimes including Korean) texts and techniques made their way to the archipelago
multiple times over the course of Japanese history, rarely was that flow reversed before the
modern period, although this did not preclude a Chinese interest in or appreciation of Japanese-
made goods.^10 For that reason alone, it is hard to envision any Japanese innovation or intellectual
tradition that made it from Japan to become influential in medieval or early modern Europe.