David B. Sicilia, David G. Wittner. Strands of Modernization: The Circulation of Technology and Business Practices in East Asia, 1850-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 208 pp. $60.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-4875-3968-9; $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4875-0908-8.
Reviewed by Xia Qing (Osaka Unversity)
Published on H-Japan (January, 2023)
Commissioned by Martha Chaiklin
This book argues that technology transfer during the period 1850 to 1920 was not solely from West to East as is often depicted in scholarly literature. Instead, it also includes the nonlinear, multidirectional East-to-East technology transfer, with Japan playing a significant role. The cases used in the book are vivid and contain successful and failed cases. Most of the chapters focus on Japan but a few others address other East Asian countries. In aggregate, they deepen our understanding of how to transfer a technology rooted in a different social and technological environment to a new one. They take important factors such as the geo-cultural and political situations, military development, MNE (Multinational Enterprise) activities, indigenous entrepreneurship, and market specifications into consideration and explain how they profoundly interact with each other, resulting in different outcomes from both micro and macro perspectives.
The book comprises an introduction and eight chapters. The introduction presents the overall historical contexts in East Asia to enable readers to understand the different political, social, and military development in China, Japan, and Korea during the period of 1850 to 1920. The eight chapters focus on various case studies to illustrate the nonlinear and multidirectional processes of technology and business practices within East Asia during the specified period.
Chapter 1, “Multinationals and Technology Transfer to and within East Asia, 1870- 1914,” examines the important role of multinationals in technology and business practices transfer between China, Japan, and Korea between 1870 and 1914 from a macro sectoral perspective. MNEs served as a conduit and planted trade, shipping, banking, transportation, and many other industries from West to East through aggressive exploitation of raw materials and markets. However, MNE activities impacted China, Japan, and Korea differently. Government actors from China attempted to reject the possible changes, resulting in quite limited economic development, which mainly occurred in treaty ports. Japan, on the other hand, hungrily consumed all kinds of knowledge from the West and developed its own industrial sectors and strong trading firms, which later played a significant role in transferring adapted technologies to China and Korea. Korea, which was trapped in imperialist rivalries, could not focus on economic matters and got very limited advanced technology before the First World War.
Chapter 2, “Print Capitalism and Material Culture: Technology Transfer in Early Twentieth-Century China,” focuses on the complex processes of transferring print technology from the West to China, with an example of two presses in Shanghai, from a micro perspective. It shows that the transfer was not a direct transfer from Europe to East Asia, however. It was a multidirectional transfer process among East Asian cities, and both firms gained the latest print technology transferred from Japan. Still, the transfer of mechanized printing was not simply a replacement of traditional and family-based production with modern advanced production, but a mixed outcome from factors such as indigenous printing traditions, market conditions, cost rationalities, social changes, and cultural tastes, as well as local entrepreneur activities. In contrast to what has been often argued in the literature, the major agents in print technology transfer were not the government or MNEs but small publishers seeking a transformation in a fast-expanding reader market brought about by social change.
Chapter 3, “The Essence of Being Modern: Indigenous Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Meiji Japan,” illustrates the essence of being modern, not what looks modern, with three interesting cases of technology transfer in early Meiji Japan. The Tomioka case demonstrated that decisions by government leaders in the early Meiji era on the technological importation of silk reeling were more determined by culture symbolic values of “modern” than by economic or technological utilities. This led to the failure of the economic efficiency of Tomioka. The Shōshi Kaisha case shows the transfer of Western paper technology, which was initially a failure for a similar reason. However, it successfully changed through industrial leader Shibusawa Eiichi’s vision of the essence of “modern,” which was not technological artifacts but having the right technologies and the knowledge to create and sustain them. Finally, the successful Osaka Spinning case shows the application of Shibusawa’s revised practical attitude toward “modern” that led to a successful paradigm of the hybridization of foreign technology and local indigenous human resources and knowledge.
Chapter 4, “The Evolution of the Exposition Form and Its Transfer from the West to Japan,” shows that the technology transferred during the Meiji Restoration included hard artifacts from the West as well as Western institutions that are also essentially important to achieve modernization. Instead of blindly following the Western exposition form, Japan used its own novel techniques to adapt the “exposition form” to serve its country’s industrial development purpose. The modern international exposition form originated in London to demonstrate civilization by exhibiting all products and technological innovations within a single building. Realizing its value in strengthening the country’s industries soon after its emergence, Japan started to participate in international expositions and adopted them domestically. To remain the most advanced, Japan always embraced the latest trend of exposition forms from the West and made its own adaptations. For example, to better foster domestic innovations and stimulate comparison as desired, Japan constantly organized exhibits by item classification, a technique no longer used in Western countries.
Chapter 5, “What the Eastern Wind Brings: Rickshaws, Mobility, and Modernity in Asia,” examines the invention of rickshaws in Japan with local knowledge and the transfer of rickshaw technology from Japan to other Asian countries. Although technology transfer in Asia’s long nineteenth century is often categorized as advanced technology transferred from the West to the East, the case of rickshaws shows the multiplicity of modernization. Rickshaws emerged in Japan as a creative adaptation of Western technology through local knowledge. The inventor Akihara Daisuke and his successors continually developed new styles and adapted business models as well as sales channels to meet the increasing demand from the domestic market as well as from other Asian countries. While rickshaws disappeared in Japan, they still circulated and were reinvented in other Asian countries. Although rickshaws were not as technologically advanced as, for example, the steam engine, they were cheap, convenient, comfortable, and speedy enough to meet the needs of ordinary consumers and contributed to modernity in Japan and the rest of Asia.
Chapter 6, “Zhang Jian and the Transfer of Western Business Practices through Japan into China,” focuses on the story of the entrepreneur Zhang Jian and his efforts to modernize Nantong as well as China. Driven by the mission of achieving national strength, China had booming industries, with modern technology, and Zhang Jian, a former government official trained in the traditional Confucian system, quit the government and became an entrepreneur. Zhang adopted numerous Western technologies and adapted them for local use. He visited Japan to learn technologies, business practices, and constitutionalism to apply in China. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Zhang Jian believed that technology transfer from the West alone was not enough to strengthen his country; the political system also needed to be reformed to support industrial development. Nevertheless, Zhang Jian was never a true capitalist and he never lost his Confucian roots, investing much of his profits into social reforms and philanthropic projects and education. His business eventually declined in a turbulent political environment.
Chapter 7, “Shibusawa Eiichi and the Transfer of Western Banking to Japan,” examines the original transfer, under the leadership of Shibusawa Eiichi, of the modern banking system to Japan. Although widely known as the father of modern Japanese capitalism, Shibusawa was also a financial entrepreneur. He understood that hard technology, such as manufacturing equipment, was not enough to cultivate industries. The soft ones, barely recognized as technology, such as political, economic, and social systems, were also necessary to support the development of industry. Realizing the critical importance of the banking system in facilitating business activities and promoting a civil society in Japan, Shibusawa imported financial practices from the West to reform the conservative traditional financial system in Japan. Among various nations, he selected the US National Bank system, which most suited Japan’s local conditions. The case of Shibusawa, therefore, demonstrates the capacity of Japan to selectively import ideas from outside Japan.
Chapter 8, “The Transfer of Western Banking Systems to Korea’s Hanseong Bank: The Path through Japan,” examines why and how the Western banking system was transferred from Japan to Korea’s Hanseong Bank. It highlights the Japanese imperialist context that underlay the transfer process. Japan established the Pusan branch of the Daiichi Bank in 1878 and started financial penetration into Korea. To block this financial penetration, Korea attempted to modernize its old and inefficient system through indigenous endeavors. However, this inevitably turned out to be a failure because of both lack of experience and rivalries among imperialist powers. The modernization of the financial system in Korea was finally controlled by foreigners. As a byproduct of the conflict between Russia and Japan, Public Hanseong Bank began Western bank management and banking techniques transfer under the influence of Shibusawa’s Daiichi Bank in 1903. The growth of the Hanseong Bank during the colonial period was also dependent on Japan’s economy and its colonial policy in Korea.
Although the historical contexts mentioned in the book have changed a lot after more than a century, the key concepts regarding “technology” and “technology transfer” conveyed by this book remain extremely valuable today. First, technology includes not only tangible artifacts but also other forms of knowledge such as institutional cultures, business practices, et cetera. It is important to realize that technology is invented in a certain specific context, and when its surrounding environment— the ideologies, agents, institutions, and social, cultural, political and market situations—change, technology needs to be selected, adapted, and developed. Second, technology transfer is a nonlinear process that involves successes as well as failures. This book tells us that failures are also valuable experiences; lessons from a failure can connect with future successful technology transfer. Third, technology and its transfer processes are dynamic. That technology normally transfers from technologically advanced regions to less developed ones is just a stereotype. The indigenous knowledge from less developed regions is quite important. It interacts with transferred technologies, leading to the hybridization of new technologies and business practices that can be circulated to other regions and countries.
This book makes a significant contribution to the academic world as well as to today’s business world. It is highly recommended that students and scholars who are curious about East Asian economics and history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries read this book. Students from Japanese studies departments should also consult it to understand how Japan selected and adapted technologies from the West in the Meiji period. Moreover, businesspersons and government agents dealing with technology transfer will gain many insights and deepen their understanding of technology and technology transfer from this volume.
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Citation:
Xia Qing. Review of Sicilia, David B.; Wittner, David G., Strands of Modernization: The Circulation of Technology and Business Practices in East Asia, 1850-1920.
H-Japan, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2023.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57666
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