IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB963876628

A Tale of Two Mills: Socio-Technological Integration in Meiji Japan, 1868–1912 (April 2022)

Technology and Culture
Volume: 63
Issue: 2
Pages: 349-376

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/854001

DOI: 10.1353/tech.2022.0050

Publication Date: April 2022
Edition Details: Special Issue - Industry in Common: Thinking Globally with Modern Japan
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Spinning Machinery Technology transfer Silk reeling Sociotechnical systems Industrialization Silk and silk industry Technology transfer Industry Cotton and cotton industry

Since the 1950s, historians have sought to explain industrial modernization in Meiji Japan as a model for developing countries. They typically attribute Japan's success to single factors such as accumulated knowledge or capital, visionary leadership, or technological choice. This article moves beyond mono-causality to examine technology transfer's role in industrial modernization. Tomioka Silk Filature and Osaka Cotton Spinning Mill make the case that components of industrialization were interrelated and a new socio-technological system was essential for technology transfer to affect a Kuhnian-style paradigm shift. Tomioka is an example of ad hoc industrialization, the gradual integration of transferred technologies, and creation of associated regimes leading to a new socio-technological system. In contrast, Osaka Cotton Mill embodies the creation of a new industrial paradigm for Japanese industry, demonstrating the essentiality of integrating numerous socio-technological elements such as adapted artifacts, bio-materials, accumulated knowledge, factory management, and geographic location.

...More

Associated with

Article Aleksandra Kobiljski (April 2022) The Global Industrial Now. Technology and Culture (pp. 309-325). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB963876628/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Gang Wu; (2024)
Mapping Byzantine Sericulture in the Global Transfer of Technology (/isis/citation/CBB155501505/)

Article Paola Bertucci; (October 2021)
Spinners' Hands, Imperial Minds: Migrant Labor, Embodied Expertise, and the Failed Transfer of Silk Technology across the Atlantic (/isis/citation/CBB785454816/)

Article Bertucci, Paola; (2013)
Enlightened Secrets: Silk, Intelligent Travel, and Industrial Espionage in Eighteenth-Century France (/isis/citation/CBB001320536/)

Article Solà, Àngels; (2010)
Silk Technology in Spain, 1683--1800. Technological Transfer and Improvements (/isis/citation/CBB001252246/)

Article Sheila Jasanoff; Sebastian Pfotenhauer; (December 2017)
Panacea or diagnosis? Imaginaries of innovation and the ‘MIT model’ in three political cultures (/isis/citation/CBB640965055/)

Article Margaret Cook; (2022)
Australia's Entanglement in Global Cotton (/isis/citation/CBB701066924/)

Article Saara Matala; Aaro Sahari; (2017)
Small nation, big ships: Winter navigation and technological nationalism in a peripheral country, 1878–1978 (/isis/citation/CBB502258382/)

Article Yuan Yi; (October 2022)
Crafted for Mass Production: Imported Spinning Machinery on the Shop Floor, China, 1910s–1920s (/isis/citation/CBB248076434/)

Thesis Spencer Dean Stewart; (2022)
Seeds of Construction: Cotton, Science, and Society in Republican China (/isis/citation/CBB616662665/)

Article Ikegami, Shunzo; (2008)
Technology Transformation of the Optical Industry in Japan---Research and Development of Japanese Rangefinders (1913--1927) (/isis/citation/CBB000930015/)

Article Kawamura, Noriko; (2011)
Christopher Dresser's Observation Trip in Japan and Okubo Toshimichi (/isis/citation/CBB001210080/)

Article Drielli Peyerl; Silvia Fernanda de Mendonça Figueirôa; (2020)
Applied Geophysics in Brazil and the Development of a National Oil Industry (1930 - 1960) (/isis/citation/CBB731258081/)

Book Bruland, Kristine; (1991)
Technology transfer and Scandinavian industrialisation (/isis/citation/CBB000047082/)

Article Anduaga, Aitor; (2011)
The Engineer as a “Linking Agent” in International Technology Transfer: The Case of Basque Engineers Trained in Liège (/isis/citation/CBB001033627/)

Article Vivers, Meg; (2015)
The Role of British Agents and Engineers in the Early Westernization of Japan with a Focus on the Robinson and Waters Brothers (/isis/citation/CBB001550624/)

Article Gouzévitch, Maxime; (2009)
Aux sources de la thermodynamique ou la loi de Prony/Betancourt (/isis/citation/CBB001450857/)

Article Jan Zofka; (2018)
China as a role model? The ‘Economic Leap’ campaign in Bulgaria (1958-1960) (/isis/citation/CBB698728570/)

Book Beatty, Edward; (2015)
Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico (/isis/citation/CBB001553233/)

Thesis Krishnan, Shekhar; (2013)
Empire's Metropolis Money Time & Space in Colonial Bombay, 1870--1930 (/isis/citation/CBB001567494/)

Article Catherine Casson; Mark Dodgson; (Summer 2019)
Designing for Innovation: Cooperation and Competition in English Cotton, Silk, and Pottery Firms, 1750–1860 (/isis/citation/CBB799382467/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}