K. Buhrman
not merely those corresponding to modern scientific constructs—have brought cosmology and
other concepts previously regulated to the study of Japanese religion into the discussion as
well.^36
Other new sources have also been included in this project, notably from material culture.
Archeologists have added new information to the history of mining and metalworking in Japan,
and in other fields discoveries have shown that even when a more efficient or effective techno-
logy was available, it did not necessarily displace precursors.^37 These new sources do not neces-
sarily lead to the sort of precisely dated histories that readers in other fields are used to, but they
provide vital information about knowledge of and interaction with the material world outside
the sphere of elites.^38
Some of these shifts in scholarship are long- standing but have yet to be worked into compre-
hensive histories of science and technology in Japan. The use of sources beyond treatises and
official histories began before the 1970s, with the work of astronomers mining courtier diaries
and unofficial chronicles for information about the stars. More recently the ways in which these
non- specialist sources reveal changes in specialist practice have come to attention. The history of
mathematics has already been opened up beyond mere analysis of treatises to general numeracy
and counting techniques.^39 Certainly, the archives of temples may yet reveal new texts not yet
well- known in the history of science or mathematics, which will further shed light on the period
between the official histories of Japan and the print revolution of the early modern period—
particularly if scholars do not assume that religion means a rejection of science. Even if such
treatises or teaching texts are slow or fail to emerge, new approaches to materials and targets of
study mean that new work in the field can be done.
There is need, too, to take up an insight from the past two decades in the history of medieval
and early- modern Western science, to redraw the map of how knowledge and skills were organ-
ized in premodern Japan.^40 Previous studies have included discussion of the ways in which know-
ledge was organized within the ritsuryō bureaucracy, but this has not yet been the focus of
adequate inquiry. The ways in which knowledge of calculation, the stars, and other subjects was
divided up within the bureaucracy will provide useful insights about specialization and expertise
in the classical world. Comparison of this new classical model to one that does the same with the
medieval world of guilds (za) and other quasi- professional experts and technicians will reveal
new ways to examine social changes in that historical transition. The techniques and material
knowledge found in the trades and crafts—among Buddhist sculptors or merchants, for
example—will further clarify the social history of knowledge in premodern Japan and help
incorporate these less textual fields into a broader history of Japanese science.
Such a new history of science in premodern Japan will require more coordination and effort
among scholars of a number of fields. If science can be defined as “views about the natural world”
and technology as “a productive action on some form of matter in social context,” the work of
the historian of science and technology becomes more challenging.^41 Not only scientists but also
nobles, artisans, farmers, and merchants become the subjects of study; and not only texts but also
chemical analyses and archeological reconstructions must be consulted. The value of such an
approach is, however, in the contribution that such a history might make to the history of pre-
modern Japan as a whole.
Instead of focusing on the question of how the ground was prepared for science in Meiji and
post- Meiji Japan, this new approach to the premodern history of science in Japan will provide
information on how individuals and groups understood, interacted with, and manipulated the
world around them. The boundaries between the history of science and technology, and the
histories of other subjects—environmental history, art history, agricultural history, to name a
few—will blur. The utility of the project, however, will grow commensurately.