Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order 9781350063921, 9781350063952, 9781350063938

Citation preview

Engineering Asia

SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan Series Editor: Christopher Gerteis, SOAS, University of London (UK) Series Editorial Board: Steve Dodd, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Andrew Gerstle, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Janet Hunter, London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) Helen Macnaughtan, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Timon Screech, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Naoko Shimazu, Yale-NUS College (Singapore) Published in association with the Japan Research Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan features scholarly books on modern and contemporary Japan, showcasing new research monographs as well as translations of scholarship not previously available in English. Its goal is to ensure that current, high-quality research on Japan, its history, and its politics and culture is made available to an English-speaking audience. Published: Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan, Jan Bardsley Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan, Emily Anderson The China Problem in Postwar Japan, Robert Hoppens

Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th Century Japan, The Asahi Shimbun Company, translated by Barak Kushner Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations on Screen, Griseldis Kirsch Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan, edited by Patrick W. Galbraith, Thiam Huat Kam, and Björn-Ole Kamm Politics and Power in 20th-Century Japan, Mikuriya Takashi and Nakamura Takafusa (translated by Timothy S. George) Japanese Taiwan, edited by Andrew Morris Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society, Tomoyuki Sasaki The History of Japanese Psychology, Brian J. McVeigh Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, Pedro Iacobelli The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan, Sari Kawana Post-Fascist Japan, Laura Hein Mass Media, Consumerism and National Identity in Postwar Japan, Martyn David Smith Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War, Ethan Mark Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan, Taka Oshikiri Engineering Asia, Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore, and John DiMoia Forthcoming: Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism, Yuka Hiruma Kishida

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

Engineering Asia Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order Edited by Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore, and John DiMoia

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore, John DiMoia and Contributors, 2018 Cover image © Blueprint for the Da Nhim Hydroelectric Development Plan (1956) in the Republic of Vietnam. Image provided by Nippon K¯oei Co., Ltd. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. x-xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-35006-392-1 PB: 978-1-3501-5067-6 ePDF: 978-1-35006-393-8 eBook: 978-1-35006-394-5 Series: SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors

1

Introduction: A Kula Ring for the Flying Geese: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia Hiromi Mizuno

ix x xii

1

Part 1 Engineering Asia at Home 2 3

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation Jin Sato Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure for Japan’s Overseas Development Aid in Asia Masato Karashima

43

59

Part 2 Engineering Asia on the Ground 4

5 6

From “Constructing” to “Developing” Asia—Japanese Engineers and the Formation of the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development in Asia Aaron S. Moore The Hydrocarbon Ring: Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order in Asia Eric G. Dinmore Colonial Seeds, Imperialist Genes: Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development Tatsushi Fujihara

85 113 137

Part 3 South Korea Engineering Asia 7

8

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia: The Hybrid Origins of a Modern Scientific and Technological System in South Korea Manyong Moon Making Miracle Rice: Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea Tae-Ho Kim

165 189

viii 9

Contents In Pursuit of “Peace and Construction”: Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73 John P. DiMoia

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University Index

209

240 242

List of Illustrations Figures 2.1 4.1 6.1 9.1

Public and private capital flows in economic cooperation Map of the Balu Chaung hydropower project and surrounding areas Changes in yields for Hōrai rice and local rice in Taiwan South Korean construction interests aided with infrastructure and logistics, especially at Rach Gia (Gulf of Thailand), at Cam Ranh Bay (east coast of South Vietnam), and in Southern Thailand, close to the Malaysian Border

55 91 145

211

Tables 2.1 List of quasi-governmental corporations related to technical cooperation established in the 1950s 6.1 Changes in area planted with each rice variety in Taiwan 6.2 Reasons why Taiwanese in Taihoku State did not raise Hōrai rice 6.3 Differences in fertilizer effects between Japanese and Taiwanese varieties (1924) 6.4 Changes in fertilizer use and cost, excluding sugarcane fields 6.5 Rise in shipments of ammonium sulfate and superphosphate of lime to Korea or Taiwan 6.6 Reasons why Taiwanese in Taihoku do not eat Hōrai rice (1932 survey) 6.7 Comparative yields of older rice and Hōrai rice

52 144 150 152 152 153 154 156

Acknowledgments The most difficult part of our highly stimulating and intensely collaborative project was the task of settling on a proper subtitle. We regard our finally doing so as a fortunate triumph. Considering the project’s long gestation, the global scale of communications and meetings required, and the various career milestones and moves of our nine members that had to be navigated, we could easily have been bogged down by other tedious challenges along the way. This fortunate triumph would not have been possible without the tremendous help and encouragement the three editors have received along our long road to completion. Our collaboration began several years ago, out of casual post-panel conversations at the History of Science Society (HSS) and the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) annual meetings. Dissatisfied with the limits of nation-bound histories and the East Asia–Southeast Asia disciplinary divide, we wondered how we could acquire a better understanding of “the big picture” of twentieth-century Asia. Could we use the term “postcolonial” to understand not only Korea and Southeast Asia but Japan as well? How do we theorize on the connections and tensions between the “postwar,” “postcolonial,” and “the Cold War”? Would “trans-war” be a more suitable conceptual keyword? As our list of keywords expanded, so did our problems (hence our subsequent subtitle headache). By putting together panels at HSS and AAS almost annually, we solicited and added even more members to this project and won many more supporters. It was thanks to these discussions, debates, and meetings with scholars from different specializations based at various institutions in the United States, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore that we began to have a better understanding of the complex, trans-national flows of technology, materials, people, capital, and ideologies that connected East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the United States. We owe our deep gratitude to all of them. Special thanks are due to David Biggs and Suzanne Moon, who kindly agreed to join us in Singapore in December 2013 to share their expertise on Southeast Asia, provide detailed feedback on the early chapter drafts, and push us to go beyond our disciplinary comfort zone. Fa-ti Fan, Walter Grunden, Kobayashi Hideo, and Bradley Simpson served as insightful commentators on our exploratory series of conference panels. Daqing Yang, Janice Mimura, David Wittner, Seung-Joon Lee, Takashi Nishiyama, and Lisa Onaga participated in our discussions as this project evolved. Se-Mi Oh, Takashi Fujitani, Dagmar Schaefer, Nick Cullather, Steven Lee, participants of the “Dark Matter II: Science and the Cold War in a Decolonizing World” workshop organized by Jessica Wang at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues in the Midwestern Japan Seminar read parts of the manuscript at various stages of the project. Discussions with Tae-gyun Park, Ruth Rogaski, Hajimu Masuda, Mitch Aso, David Ambaras, Jamie Doucette, Heather Hindman, Sylvia Nam, James Lin, Robert

Acknowledgments

xi

Oppenheim, E. Bruce Reynolds, Thomas Robertson, Simon Toner, Gerard Sasges, Laura Hein, Carol Gluck, Michael Baskett, Elyssa Faison, Nick Cullather, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, and C. Michele Thompson helped us better frame the entire project in order to address multiple audiences. In Japan, two historians of science and medicine, Shin Chang-geon and Tsukahara Tōgo, have enthusiastically supported the project, as has the editor of the journal East Asia Science and Technology Studies, Wen-hua Kuo, in Taiwan. Our project’s trans-national scope necessitated an equally trans-national travel and meeting schedule. Our Singapore meeting in 2013, which transformed our conversations into chapter drafts, was made possible with the generous assistance of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology in East Asia, and Greg Clancey at NUS Tembusu College, who kindly hosted us. We would also like to thank our home institutions of University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, and NUS for supporting our trips to editorial meetings in Seoul, Tempe, and various locations at the annual AAS and HSS conferences. Additionally, we would like to thank the Kyujanggak Institute of Korean Studies at Seoul National University, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Japan Foundation for their generous research support. We are greatly thankful to Christopher Gerteis, editor of Bloomsbury Publishing’s SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan, Emma Goode and Rebecca Willford at Bloomsbury, Ross Yelsey at Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and Eugenia Lean at Columbia University for graciously recognizing the value of our project, and Jee-young Park, Sejung Ahn, and Blair Williams for their editorial work. They all helped bring this volume to publication. Lastly, our profound thanks to Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, Kumi and Kai Mizuno, and Courtney Aldrich.

Notes on Contributors John P. DiMoia is Associate Professor, Department of Korean History, Seoul National University. He is the author of Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and NationBuilding in South Korea since 1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013/Weatherhead EAI). He is currently working on a second book project, Korea’s Nuclear Century, concerning energy infrastructure issues in Northeast Asia, the Korean peninsula, and Southeast Asia. Eric Dinmore is Elliott Associate Professor in the Department of History at HampdenSydney College. He focuses on developmental and environmental history in twentiethcentury Japan, with particular interests in energy, water use, and policies regarding natural and human resources. His current book project explores public opinion discussions of Japan’s “resources problem” from the World War I era through to the 1970s. Tatsushi Fujihara is Associate Professor in the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University. He specializes in modern agricultural and food history in Germany and Japan, with a particular interest in technological aspects such as kitchens, tractors, chemical fertilizers, and plant breeding. He is currently working on the history of school lunches in Japan. Masato Karashima is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at Kobe University, Japan. He specializes in twentieth-century social and cultural history of Japan, with a particular interest in studies of knowledge productions, cultural diplomacy, and development aid. His current research examines the role of American private foundations in postwar Japan–Southeast Asia relations. Tae-Ho Kim is Assistant Professor in the Korean Research Institute of Science, Technology and Civilization at Chonbuk National University, Republic of Korea. He specializes in the history of science and technology in twentieth-century Korea, with a special interest in technological artifacts—including rice, typewriters, and nutritional supplements. Hiromi Mizuno is Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Minnesota. She specializes in the modern intellectual and cultural history of Japan, with a particular interest in nationalism, colonialism, science and technology, gender, and intra-Asia relations. Her current work investigates chemical fertilizers and agricultural modernization of Japan and Asia in the twentieth century.

Notes on Contributors

xiii

Manyong Moon is Assistant Professor in the Korean Research Institute of Science, Technology and Civilization at Chonbuk National University. His research area is the history of science in twentieth-century Korea, especially the history of biology and agriculture and science policy. He is currently writing a book about the compressed development of science and technology under the Korean authoritarian regimes. Aaron S. Moore is Associate Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He specializes in the Japanese empire, history of science and technology, and intellectual history of modern Japan. His current project examines Japan’s overseas development system in Asia through the lens of infrastructure construction in the twentieth century. Jin Sato is Professor in the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo and Visiting Professor in the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. He works on the politics of natural resources administration and foreign aid in the context of Southeast Asia and Japan. His most recent projects examined the trajectories of “failed projects” financed by Japan and the evolution of environmental governance in Southeast Asia.

1

Introduction: A Kula Ring for the Flying Geese: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia Hiromi Mizuno

Miracles seem to have occurred in many places after World War II (WWII). Miracles came to West Germany in the 1950s as the shuttered economy on the Rhine recovered and grew remarkably, to Japan in the 1960s as the once bombed and flattened nation sustained more than a 10  percent economic growth rate over a decade, and to the Han River in the 1970s as the formerly colonial country South Korea emerged as a newly industrialized country. National economic growth charts—those gross domestic product (GDP) charts that became the tool to measure nations’ economic vitality under the Breton Woods system—made these miracles neatly visible. They visualize economies as discrete national activities and erase the traces of geographical ambiguities of a nation. The Japanese GDP chart, for example, shows no trace of the expansion of the empire before 1945, as if “Japan” had always been the same nationstate. Textbooks list factors that contributed to this phenomenal economic growth: American aid, a skilled labor force, adept maneuvering of economic policies, a strong work ethic, and so forth. In short, the miracle narrative, embellished with the GDP charts, tames the story of global capitalism and developmentalism of the twentieth century into a distinct national story, rendering regional and global contexts invisible and irrelevant behind the teleology of national economic development. To critique what is made visible and invisible under this nation-based miracle narrative is the first aim of this volume. We challenge the nation-centered story of economic development because such a framework disassociates colonial Asia from Cold War Asia, and empires from post-WWII international development. Instead, we pay attention to flows, connections, and transformation, and ask how colonial Asia was reconfigured into Cold War Asia after the war. Therefore, the book covers a wide geographical area of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Burma, and Thailand, although the focus of our critique in Part I and Part II is the miracle narrative of Japanese development, and in Part III, South Korea’s. Chronologically, the book coverage spans from the early twentieth century to the early 1970s. We highlight the 1950s and 1960s as the transformative period to emphasize continuity with change rather than rupture,

2

Engineering Asia

during which period colonial Asia was reconfigured into Cold War Asia. The key to this reconfiguration was developmentalism, promoted and carried out through the networks of technology. Scholars such as Chalmers Johnson and Kobayashi Hideo have examined Japan’s economic development and its trans-war continuity by focusing on the role of the government, bureaucracy, and prominent political leaders.1 This volume instead focuses on the trans-war network of technology and underlines the role of engineers, scientists, and intellectuals in establishing its infrastructure. In the case of Japan, war reparations paid to Asian countries in the 1950s and 1960s in the form of technology aid best illustrates the trans-war network of development at work. Japanese engineers, entrepreneurs, and Asia specialists vigorously created, expanded, and followed their opportunities through official development assistance (ODA) channels prepared by war reparations treaties, paving the path to the “miraculous” economic growth. Reparations agreements and resulting overseas projects would not have happened without the groundwork by these men. For South Korea, too, overseas development projects carried out by entrepreneurial engineers were crucial in establishing its own postcolonial national development. The second aim of this volume thus is to shed new light on this critical role technology played in the post-WWII reconfiguration of Asia. While the Cold War was a crucial context of this reconfiguration, it should not be considered as the only or most important context. The third and final aim of the book is to take seriously Asia’s postcoloniality. The assumption that the making of Cold War Asia was simply the case of the world powers forcing their way through geopolitics underestimates the degree of destruction and the complications caused by the AsiaPacific War and the agency of postcolonial Asian states. Too often, scholarship has used the “Cold War context” as a shorthand with which to analyze actions, events, and options not necessarily related to conflicts between the two superpowers, thereby overshadowing local, longer-standing, or else contingent politics. Japan’s high economic growth in the late 1950s and 1960s needs to be situated in its relationship not just with the USA, but also with other Asian countries; that is, in the context of pre1945 colonization, the post-1945 decolonization process, and postcolonial realities.2

1

2

Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Kobayashi Hideo, “Nihon kabushiki gaisha” no shōwashi: kanryō shihai no kōzō (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1995) and Manshū to jimintõ (Tokyo: Shinchõsha, 2005). Also see Nakamura Takafusa and Miyazaki Masayasu, Kishi Nobusuke seiken to kōdo seichō (Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpōsha, 2003) and Inoue Toshikazu, Yoshida Shigeru to shōwashi (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2009). Increasingly, scholars of the Cold War have followed a more global approach by shifting the focus from the conventional diplomatic history of the superpowers to the Third World, Asia, and decolonization. See Odd Arne Westad, Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Masuda Hajimu, Cold War Crucible: The Korea Conflict and the Postwar World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). The conventional focus in the field of postwar Japanese diplomatic history used to be on US– Japan relations, but recently excellent works have been published on Japan’s diplomacy with Asia. See, for example, Miyagi Taizō, ed., Sengo Nihon no ajia gaikō (Tokyo: Mineruva shobō, 2015).

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

3

The postcolonial realities included economic nationalism, various domestic ethnic conflicts as part of postcolonial nation-building, and the global dollar shortage. The USA emerged as the most prosperous country (in fact, more prosperous than before the war) from WWII, having accumulated two-thirds of the world’s gold, with an immense balance of trade surplus and a growing reserve. Dollars needed to circulate somehow to resume world trade and global capitalism. The mechanism set up under the Breton Woods system—with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (named the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the time)— alone was not sufficient. The Marshall Plan, other development aid programs, and foreign investments were implemented to revitalize European and Japanese economies in order to promote world trade and expand the American market. The huge dollar shortage impeded not only the return of European colonial powers to Southeast Asia—which, without losing a moment, declared political independence—but also postcolonial Asian countries’ economic growth to achieve economic independence. As chapters in this volume well demonstrate, the economic nationalism of newly independent Asian countries, including Korea, was a major driving force behind the reconstruction of the network of colonial development into a network of international development under the Cold War. To control the capital, resources, and economic planning of the country was not the only purpose of national industrial development. The other target was to engineer domestic ethnic (or political in the case of South Korea) tensions into a shared national goal of prosperity. Highly complex ethnic politics had existed long before the arrival of colonial powers in Southeast Asia, but its exploitation and manipulation by colonial governance, Japanese war strategies, and the two sides of the Cold War often resulted in violent conflicts and deeper suspicions among various ethnic groups as well as rival groups. Development was appealing to Asian leaders—“developmental dictators” as some scholars call them—whose military regimes needed continuing legitimation for their authoritative governments and personal political dominance. These postcolonial realities posed both immense problems and opportunities for Japan. The collapse of the empire and economic network, war damages, and a drastic increase in population due to repatriation and the postwar baby boom kept Japan’s economic recovery difficult. Japan was also trying to achieve economic independence from American aid and World Bank loans. Technology aid proved to be the key. This introduction essay discusses the role of Japan’s technology aid that connected the USA, Japan, and postcolonial Asia. Various scholars have examined postwar Japan’s ODA, but they portray Japanese ODA in a rather myopic manner.3 With a common narrative line of “from the aid receiver to the world aid donor,” the scholarship has 3

For example, see Shinji Takagi, “From Recipient to Donor: Japan’s Official Aid Flows, 1945 to 1990 and Beyond,” Essays in International Finance, no.  196 (March 1995); Akira Nishigaki, Economics of Development Assistance: Japan’s ODA in a Symbiotic World (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999); Edward Feasel, Japan’s Aid: Lessons for Economic Growth, Development and Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 2014); Alan Rix, Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge: Policy Reform and Aid Leadership (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Robert Orr, The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); and Gaimushō, Nihon no ODA 50 nen no ayumi (Tokyo: Gaimushō, 2004).

4

Engineering Asia

wrongly reinforced the idea that providing aid is the result and indicator of Japan’s economic success, as if the aid Japan received from the USA and the World Bank trickled down to peripheries, from the First World via Japan to the Third World countries, in the “hub-and-spoke” pattern. This mistake is, we argue, based on nationbased history and a narrow focus on the bilateral relationship with the USA, which are conventionally employed when writing post-WWII history. Seeking to illuminate intra-Asia connections, I invoke the image of a kula ring. My reference to the gift exchange network in Papua New Guinea is not meant to endorse how Western anthropologists have recorded and characterized the system. On the contrary, it is to point out that the gift exchange system anthropologists have long regarded as premodern and preindustrial in fact provides a useful analogy to the network of industrial development in the modern, capitalist world. The kula ring image is useful in highlighting the role of technology aid in the modern, capitalist economy in Asia, not as mere rhetoric, but as an actual configuration in the historical conditions in postwar Asia, where the market economy was severely hampered by the lack of dollars. But the kula ring is also useful as a metaphor because, first, aid giving was a necessary condition of Japanese economic recovery and high growth rather than the result, and second, the metaphor emphasizes intra-Asia relations, rather than the US-centered “hub-and-spoke” model that scholars of Cold War studies are now starting to critique. As Daniel Immerwahr has critiqued, “most studies of development by the US are based on a hub-and-spoke model according to which the agents of the United States circulate through the world and intervene in various places. That model pays little attention to connections between Southern nations or indeed to any part of the international system.”4 The critique should not be limited to scholars of the USA. Histories of Asian countries, too, are often written with American policies representing the only “external influence,” reinforcing the assumed progressive view of modernization that the USA taught and provided a means for development in the Asian country. But industrialization requires more than US capital and political will; it also needs access to expertise, the foreign market, and inexpensive materials—that is, the flow of technologies, capital, goods, resources, and people. This is why intraAsia relations are crucial. The kula ring-like system of technology aid was not a creation or imposition by one single country; rather, while based on unequal power relations, it was born out of various needs, strains, and forces of numerous actors, such as Southeast Asian developmental dictators, American Cold War warriors, and Japanese engineers and pan-Asianists. Bruce Cumings, Chalmers Johnson, Bai Gao, and others have pioneered the studies of developmental states. Our work does not look at developmentalism as a national story, as these works have done, but instead

4

Daniel Immerwahr, “Modernization and Development in US Foreign Relations,” Passport (September 2012): 24. In this historiographical essay, Immerwahr also states (also on page 24), “by allowing themselves to move beyond moral accounting, US historians might begin to take up the technical aspects of development projects … [M]any aspects of actual modernization projects are highly technical, with non-ideological dimensions that might be understood as episodes in the history of science and technology studies rather than solely in the history of US foreign relations.”

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

5

examines the intersection of nation-state developmentalism and international development.5 The transformation of colonial development into postwar international aid did not take place without a price. The final and most important objective of this chapter is to think about the symbolic violence behind the mythology of the miracle narrative. The book’s coverage ends in the early 1970s, by which time the transformation was complete, the new postwar generation of aid experts trained, and the miracle narrative firmly established, with Japan having overtaken West Germany to be the world’s second largest economy and South Korea’s heavy chemical industrialization in full swing. Yet violence persisted, committed both physically and symbolically, albeit suppressed behind the successful establishment of the kula ring network of development in Asia, as discussed in the last section of this chapter.

Rethinking development The connection between postwar ODA and the empire is not something one finds in literature on Japanese overseas aid. In fact, the conventional narrative presented by the Japanese government and scholars alike marks the year 1954 as the beginning of Japanese foreign aid. In this narrative, the 1950s and 1960s are treated as the “formative period,” before the institution of ODA became fully established in the 1970s. However, the clear message of this timeline—that something new began in 1954 and fully blossomed in the 1970s—is misleading, and the adjective “formative” is a misnomer in my assessment. This period should be considered “transformative” instead. Let me first explain why the year 1954 has been considered the new beginning. In October of that year, Japan joined the Colombo Plan. The Colombo Plan was an international aid organization established in 1951 by Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to rehabilitate the former British Commonwealth countries while fending off the Communist influence. Composed of various bilateral agreements, it focused on technology transfer for the purpose of the economic development of South and Southeast Asian countries. Japan managed to join the Colombo Plan as a donor, as Australia’s economic interest overcame its initially strong opposition. By the early 1950s, Japan was a crucial market for Australia’s wool, and the Australian government decided that reintroducing Japan to Asia through the Colombo Plan would ensure Japan’s economic growth and thus the expansion of its export market.6 5

6

Bruce Cumings, “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences,” International Organization 38, no.  1 (Winter 1984): 1–40; Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle; Bai Gao, Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931–1965 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Meredith Woo-Cumings, The Developmental State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). For an excellent study that takes a similar perspective as ours in examining the Colombo Plan, see Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski, and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (New York: Routledge, 2015). Daniel Oakman, Facing Asia: History of Colombo Plan (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2010), 106–8.

6

Engineering Asia

American pressure, of course, was effectively behind Japan’s admission.7 The first major international organization for postwar Japan (admission into the United Nations took place two years later), the Colombo Plan provided Japan with significant access to South and Southeast Asian countries and affirmed international expectation for Japan’s active role in Cold War Asia.8 Equally pivotal was the conclusion in 1954 of Japan’s first war reparations treaty with an Asian country. The San Francisco Peace Treaty left it to Japan and Asian victim countries to negotiate reparations arrangements bilaterally. In 1954, the first treaty was signed with Burma. It specified that Japan give the Burmese government US$200 million in lieu of Japanese goods and services and an additional US$50 million for technical assistance and joint ventures between the Japan and Burmese public and private sectors over the 1955–65 period. The 1955 agreement with the Philippines mandated that Japan provide US$550 million with “the service of the Japanese people and the products of Japan in the form of capital goods.” Under the 1959 reparations agreement with South Vietnam, Japan paid US$39 million, again in the form of “the service of the Japanese people and the products of Japan”; US$27.8 million of that was designated for the construction of the Da Nhim hydroelectric power plant using Japanese companies and US$7.5 million was designated for consumer goods produced in Japan. Japan’s additional loan of US$7.5 million to South Vietnam was specifically for purchasing Japanese materials to build the Da Nhim dam.9 The “Japanese service and goods” specification defined all the reparations and quasi-reparations settlements between Japan and other Asian countries, whether or not the country was part of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Scholarship on Japanese war reparations has said little about the fact that reparations were paid in the specific form of “Japanese service and goods.”10 This feature, however, was widely noted at the time. For example, the Reparation Issue Study Group, which published a book in 1959 explaining the details of the reparations treaties to the Japanese readers, emphasized that “the most pronounced characteristics of Japan’s reparations treaties is that payment is to be made in kind and service, not in cash,” and called this feature “highly unique.”11 Large-scale constructions were carried out throughout Southeast Asia by Japanese consultants, engineers, companies, machines, and equipment. 7

8

9

10

11

Oakman, Facing Asia, 109. Hatano Sumio, “Tōnan ajia kaihatsu wo meguru nichi•bei•ei kankei: Nihon no koronbo puran kanyū (1954) wo chūshin ni,” Nenpō kindai nihon kenkyū, 16 Sengo gaikō no keisei (1994): 215–42. For an excellent examination of the Colombo Plan, see Watanabe Shōichi, ed., Koronbo puran: sengo ajia kokusai chitsujo no keisei (Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku, 2014). For more details, see Akita, Krozewski, and Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia. For English-language works on Japanese reparations to Vietnam, see Geoffrey Gunn, “War Claims and Compensation: Franco-Vietnamese Contention over Japanese War Reparations and the Vietnam War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no, 49 (December 5, 2011), http://www.japanfocus.org/Geoffrey-Gunn/3658. Yoshikawa Yōko, Nippon baishō gaikō kōshō no kenkyū: 1949–1956 (Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1991); Nagano Shin’ichirō and Kondō Masaomi, Nihon no sengo baishō: ajia keizai kyōryoku no shuppatsu (Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1999). Baishō mondai kenkyūkai, Nihon no baishō (Tokyo: Gaikō jihōsha, 1959), 18.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

7

It is significant that the Japanese construction companies in charge of these reparations projects did not regard the year 1954 as a new beginning. The twentiethanniversary publication of the Japan Overseas Construction Association (海ཆᔪ䁝঄ ࣋Պ)—established in 1955 by major construction companies—in fact starts its history with colonial projects such as railroad construction in Taiwan and Korea, building cities in Manchuria, and the formation of the Beijing Civil Engineering Trade Association by Japanese; and explains that the reparations projects of the 1950s and 1960s were just like these colonial projects: they brought contracts to these companies, with the pay secured by the government, and with no international bidding and competition. In contrast, the publication asserts, overseas projects after the 1970s were different, as they were commercially based and competitive.12 To these Japanese construction companies that provided “Japanese service and goods” of war reparations, the 1950s and 1960s were more or less a continuation of the colonial period. To them, the new era began in the 1970s. The construction companies, and consulting companies that worked in tandem with them, indeed demonstrate a clear continuity from the colonial period to the reparations period. Japan’s largest construction companies of today—Kajima, Shimizu, Taisei, Takenaka, and Obayashi—all grew with the expansion of the Japanese empire; they were also the key contractors in reparations projects in Southeast Asia. Kajima and Taisei, for example, built Wusanto Dam, the largest dam in colonial Taiwan, as well as the Taiwan Bank headquarters building, the Taipei Railways, the Wushu Power Station, the Takao sea port, and so forth in the colonial period, and continued to win contracts for projects in Taiwan after 1945. Another example—the case of Kubota Yutaka’s transwar and trans-Asia dam construction—is discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Many scholars of international development consider foreign aid as a distinctively post-WWII and Cold War phenomenon. The following quote by eminent scholar of economic development, Keith Griffin, serves as a standard description of this view: “Foreign aid as it is understood today has its origins in the Cold War. It is largely a product of the ideological confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union which dominated international politics for forty-five years.”13 However, newer scholarship has begun to examine the connection and continuation from colonial development to international aid. “Development emerged during the colonial period,” explains Philip McMichael in his popular textbook of international development.14 Joseph Hodge’s Triumph of the Expert locates the emergence of British development discourse in the late colonial, interwar period and argues that “the postwar crusade to end world poverty represented not so much a novel proposal marking the dawn of a new age, as the zenith of decades, indeed centuries, of debate over the control and use of the natural and human resources of colonized regions.”15 One can point to the British Empire’s 12

13 14

15

Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai, ed., Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai nijūnen no ayumi (Tokyo: Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai, 1976). Keith Griffin, “Foreign Aid after the Cold War,” Development and Change 22 (1991): 646. Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change, 5th edn. (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011), 26. Joseph Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007), 3.

8

Engineering Asia

1929 Colonial Development Act, whose aim was “to aid and develop agriculture and industry in the Colonies, Protectorates and Mandated Territories, and thereby promote commerce with or industry in the United Kingdom.” In the Netherlands, where postwar aid was justified as “enlightened self-interest,” one of the official reasons for post-WWII Dutch foreign aid was to create employment for former Dutch colonial experts.16 The similar connection between colonial development and postwar foreign aid is clear in the case of Japan as well. The Japanese empire, too, had numerous kaihatsu (development) projects and offices tasked with extracting natural resources, developing agricultural land, and promoting economic development, and the term was used in various projects for Hokkaido, in the slogan “Manchuria Development” (⒰㫉 䮻Ⲫ), and in company names such as Northern China Development Company (े ᭟䛓䮻ⲪՊ⽮). Postwar Japanese terms for overseas aid, keizai kyōryoku (economic cooperation) and gijutsu kyōryoku (technical cooperation), were also already part of the colonial discourse; they referred to Japanese industrial and agricultural development activities in China and Manchuria. It is possible that “development,” “technology,” and “cooperation” went together even more prominently in Japanese colonialist discourse than in their Western counterparts because Japan invested heavily in establishing industrial bases in colonies, especially in Manchuria and Korea, which provided new entrepreneurs and the rebellious faction of the army with space and conditions unattainable in Japan proper already monopolized by established powerhouses. Nissan and Chosen Chisso were “newly emerging zaibatsu” in Manchuria and colonial Korea, and the South Manchurian Railway was Japan’s largest industrial enterprise, whose branches covered everything from railroad building to mining, iron works, chemical factories, R&D laboratories, and agricultural modernization. As I have written elsewhere, Imperial Japan maintained that its leadership in Asia was based on Japanese technological superiority and that its mission was to utilize Japanese science and technology to create a cooperative, stronger, and wealthier Asia against the West— the official stance widely publicized by leading technocrats.17 As a result, the latest technology, considerable industrial capital, and elite engineers were a particularly visible presence in Japanese colonies. These companies and engineers were the ones who knew how to carry out projects overseas. They had connections to local leaders and the business community. They also had to struggle to find a job after repatriating back to Japan; the empire had disappeared overnight, and so had their positions. Many consultant companies that sprang up after 1945 were created to absorb these repatriated engineers, similar to the Dutch case.18 “New” aid institutions established in postwar Japan did not actually look new, for they housed those who had, until a few years earlier, worked as experts of colonial 16

17

18

Gabi Spitz, Roeland Muskens, and Edith van Ewijik, “The Dutch and Development: Ahead of the Crowd or Trailing Behind?” (March 4, 2013), https://www.ncdo.nl/sites/default/files/Report%20 Analysis%20The%20Dutch%20and%20Development%20Cooperation%20FINAL%202013%20 03%2004.pdf. Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Hatta Toyoaki, Chichi Hatta Yoshiaki no Omoide (Tokyo: Keisō shuppan, 1976), 49.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

9

“economic cooperation.” In 1951, in preparation for Japan’s independence and return to Asia, the Asian Issues Research Group (Ajia Mondai Chōsakai) was established. Its chairman, Ogata Taketora, had just been cleared from Class A war criminal suspect status a few months earlier; during the war, he was the Tokyo Asahi Newspaper editorin-chief, a member of Showa Kenkyūkai, a strong supporter of Konoe’s New Order Movement, and a close friend of Tōyama Mitsuru, a powerful right-wing political boss who founded the secret ultra-nationalist society Genyōsha. Back in 1934, Ogata formed a research group similar to the postwar group, the East Asian Issues Research Group (Tōa Mondai Kenkyūkai), which “collected, organized, preserved, and analyzed as many materials as possible” about Manchuria and China. This provided Ogata with important connections with the intelligence network.19 Ogata was a pan-Asianist nationalist. As soon as the Asian Issues Research Group was launched, he energetically toured nine Southeast Asian countries as a special envoy of Yoshida Shigeru.20 He was highly critical of the Hatoyama cabinet’s negotiation efforts with the Soviet Union toward normalization, demanding that Hatoyama instead spend more energy on re-establishing relations with Asia. Recently, researchers have found that the CIA approached Ogata in the 1950s as the most influential Japanese politician who could block the Japan–Soviet normalization. Before he achieved his ambition to become the next prime minister, however, Ogata passed away in 1956.21 The Asian Issues Research Group had other big names: Kishi Nobusuke, also a Class A war criminal suspect and soon-to-be prime minister of Japan; and Miwa Jusō, a Japan Labor-Farmer Party leader. Kishi and Miwa, close friends and former classmates at Tokyo Imperial University, were behind the establishment of the 1955 system from the conservative and socialist lines, respectively. Kishi, along with other so-called “radical bureaucrats,” was the architect of the Manchurian planned economy and postwar Japan’s developmental state.22 Other notable core members included Akamatsu Kaname, an economist famous for the Flying Geese Theory (to be discussed later), and Kada Setsuji, a professor of economics who was also a member of the wartime Showa Kenkyūkai. In 1954, the Asian Issues Research Group was absorbed into the Asia Association (Ajia Kyōkai), a newly created auxiliary agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to manage and oversee Japan’s technical aid. Here, too, the direct connection with prewar colonial development was apparent. The chair of its technical aid section was Hatta Yoshiaki, one of the most prominent technology bureaucrats in Japan. A railroad engineer by training, he worked on various railroad and civil engineering projects in Japan proper, and in the 1930s and wartime held powerful leadership positions in the empire, including the vice president of the South Manchurian Railway in 1932, the Minister of Commerce and Industry and that of Colonial Affairs under the Hiranuma Cabinet in 1939, the Minister of Railroad under the first Tōjō Cabinet, and Minister of

19 20 21 22

Kurita Naoki, Ogata Taketora (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2001), 71–2. Kurita, Ogata Taketora, 151. Yoshida Noriaki, CIA to Ogata Taketora (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2012). Kobayashi, Manshū to jimintõ; and Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

10

Engineering Asia

Communication in the second Tōjō Cabinet. He worked closely with powerful men in Manchuria such as Kishi Nobusuke, Hoshino Naoki, and Ayukawa Gisuke (who went to Tokyo Imperial University’s Engineering Department with Hatta).23 Just before the war ended, Hatta became the president of the Northern China Development Company, the above-mentioned state-sponsored company that helped Japanese capitalists conduct development projects in various industries such as electricity, agriculture, communication, and mining in northern China. Now in the 1950s, Hatta oversaw development projects of virtually identical itineraries in South and Southeast Asia. Hatta’s career exemplifies the colonial origins of international development and the continuing significance of the Manchuria connection for postwar Japan, two themes the following chapters illuminate as well. While bylaws emphasized their political and ideological neutrality, the Asian Issues Research Group and the succeeding Asia Association—and related institutions such as Ajiken, examined in Chapter 3—clearly entailed pan-Asianist aspirations with a strong connection to Manchuria and China.24 It is nonetheless too simplistic to argue that the Manchuria connection alone survived the war and shaped postwar Japan. Not everyone in those organizations was connected to Manchuria; there were also many who had worked and studied in Southeast Asia, such as Itagaki Yoichi. As is made clear in Chapter 3, Itagaki and his fellow Southeast Asia specialists played a pivotal role in establishing the field of Asian Studies in postwar Japan that produced knowledge for Japan’s Asian development. Institutions such as the Asia Association and the Ajiken were highly significant, I maintain, because they connected and merged the Manchuria network and the Southeast Asia network into postwar Japan’s technocratic network for Asian development. To insist that 1954 was the new beginning of Japanese development aid is to erase this colonial connection. This is why the 1950s and 1960s should be considered “transformative,” rather than formative. The postwar machine of international development and aid was not a totally new formation. It was something deeply rooted in Japan’s colonial development.

Technology aid through “services and goods” Colonial development was a vital part of Imperial Japan’s economic growth. During the 1930s and early 1940s, Japan went through tremendous industrialization. According to the US Strategic Bombing Survey, Japan’s industrial production overall increased by a total of 15  percent from 1937 to 1941.25 By the end of 1941, heavy 23 24

25

Hatta, Omoide, 57. The Manchuria connection has been highlighted by many studies, such as Suehiro Akira, “Ajia chōsa no keifu,” Teikoku Nihon no gakuchi, Iwanami kōza, Vol. 6 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006); and Kobayashi Hideo, Nihonjin no ajia kan no henkan (Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2012). Kurt Bloch, “Japanese War Economy,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 215 (May 1941): 17; Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 215; and Takatoshi Itō, The Japanese Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992/2001), 14–15.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

11

industry overtook the earlier predominance of light industry: whereas heavy industry constituted 38 percent of total industrial output in 1930, the figure rose to 73 percent by 1942. In 1940, Japan was producing more organic high explosives than the USA. This heavy industrialization was achieved by relying on Asia. The collapse of international trade during the Great Depression—higher tariffs, import quotas, foreign exchange controls, and preferential trade blocks by the world’s economic powers—led to Japan’s reliance on Asia and military expansion into Asia.26 After Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japanese investments in the region increased from 97 million yen in 1931 to 1,420 million yen in 1941. Such investment and resulting development directly contributed to Japanese industries at home. China supplied 14  percent of Japan’s iron ore imports in 1938; by 1941, it furnished 49  percent.27 As embargoes posed by the USA and its allies cut off oil and other crucial supplies, Asia became the critical “lifeline” for Japan. Termed the “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Asia from Manchuria to Southeast Asia sustained the Japanese war industry by supplying rubber, oil, coal, food, labor, and so forth and by purchasing Japanese goods. After 1941, more than 80 percent of Japan’s exports went to Asia; by 1944, virtually all exports went to China and Manchuria. Japan’s imports, too, came mostly from Asia; whereas in 1938 only 38.4 percent of imports were from China and Manchuria, from 1942 onward, Japan relied on Asia for more than 95  percent of its imports.28 Yet Japan’s Co-Prosperity Sphere was no match for the American empire, whose industrial capacity surpassed Japan’s by manyfold. The war ended with Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the Japanese Empire collapsed. Having lost this economic sphere, Japan was utterly devastated. The Japanese economy, which had been expanded but severely distorted (by 1938, more than three-quarters of the government’s budget went to military spending) and damaged, could not find a way to recover. Air raids destroyed most cities, large and small, and the remaining factory facilities—many of which had been converted to war material production—were confiscated by the victorious Allies. Nearly seven million Japanese were repatriated from the former Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japanese territory was reduced to that of Montana in size, but with a population of over seventy million. The economy did not improve under the US occupation. This marks a stark contrast to the case of West Germany, whose economy began recovering after 1948. West Germany, as soon as the Federal Republic was founded, became a member of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation in 1949 and the European Coal and Steel Community as well as the Council of Europe by 1951. Back in the economic sphere and supported by the USA, West Germany experienced

26

27

28

Douglas A. Irwin, Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011). Globally, this was the time of the state intervention, managed economy, and protectionist trade policy seen in the New Deal, fascism, and socialism. See Bai Gao’s insightful discussion on Karl Polanyi’s take on the 1930s: Gao, Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy, 22–5. Jerome B. Cohen, “The Japanese War Economy, 1940–1945,” Far Eastern Survey 15, no. 24 (December 4, 1946): 361–2. Oku Kazuyoshi, “Senji•Sengo fukkōki no nihon bōeki: 1937–1955,” Kansai daigaku shōgaku ronshū 56, no. 3 (December 2011): 19.

12

Engineering Asia

drastic economic growth in the 1950s, dubbed an “economic miracle.”29 However, the Japanese economy under the US occupation continued to struggle. It was not that Japan lacked industrial capability. In fact, wartime industrial mobilization drastically increased Japan’s industrial capacity. As the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded, it was “the declining flow of raw materials”—due to the Allied attacks on Japanese shipping after the summer of 1942—that did “not support the new higher level of output.”30 Thus, war damage at home was only one factor. The stopping of trade and material flow was an even more significant factor. This situation of Japan differed greatly from that of West Germany, whose trade partners in Europe relied on its recovery for their own economic reconstruction.31 Unable to access the economic sphere that had sustained its economic growth in the past and now with more mouths to feed and fewer factories to operate, Japan relied heavily on American aid. The frustrating tardiness of the Japanese economic recovery became a serious American concern, as Japan’s position in US strategic thinking changed with the onset of the Cold War. With the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the US occupation policy drastically shifted from eliminating the former Asian enemy’s potential for a return to power to actively creating an effective Cold War ally and “factory of Asia.” In March 1949, the Dodge Line was announced, criticizing the Japanese economy as an “economy on stilts” (takeuma keizai) that had been precariously standing on the two poles of American aid and Japanese government subsidy. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) officer Philip Taylor put it: “We have got to get Japan back into, I am afraid, the old co-prosperity sphere.”32 While George Kennan and the CIA initially hoped for Japan’s “access to the Northeast Asiatic areas—notably North China, Manchuria, and Korea—now under direct, indirect, or potential control of the USSR” and envisioned the “liberation” of northern China and Manchuria for this purpose, Mao Zedong’s success in defeating the Nationalist Party in China in October 1949 nullified this option. In search of new peripheries that would reconstitute Japan’s economic sphere, they looked to South Asia (National Security Council Paper NSC-48) and then Southeast Asia (NSC-68) and proposed that the Japanese economy would be rehabilitated through the USA–Japan–Southeast Asia triangle.33 Asia after 1945, however, was no longer the Asia of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, but a dramatically different place. The collapse of the Japanese empire released nascent historical forces in full swing, and the Asia-Pacific War morphed into civil wars and 29

30 31

32

33

Mary Fulbrook, History of Germany 1918–2000: The Divided Nation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 144, 147–50; Sam A. Mustafa, Germany in the Modern World: A New History (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 223; and Barry Eichengreen, “Mainsprings of Economic Recovery in Post-War Europe,” in Europe’s Postwar Recovery, ed. Barry Eichengreen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3. Cohen, “The Japanese War Economy,” 365. Karl Hardach, The Political Economy of Germany in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 92. Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racism and the US Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 140. Bruce Cumings, “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences,” 19.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

13

independence wars all over Asia. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong resumed the civil war that had been on hold during the war against their common enemy, Japan. Korea, now freed from Japanese rule but divided along the 38th Parallel, went into a ferocious civil war to claim sole sovereignty over the peninsula. Meanwhile, the Dutch East Indies, British Burma, and French Indochina picked up guns against their old colonial masters who had naively assumed that they could return and reign again after their humiliating loss of the colonies to Imperial Japan. Asia is where the European empires first crumbled. By 1955, much of Asia obtained independence, hosting the world’s first conference for the “Third World” in Bandung, Indonesia, voicing their non-aligned position in the Cold War. Returning to this Asia was not easy for Japan. No matter what Japanese panAsianists might have idealized, memories of Japanese brutality and betrayal were fresh and suffering still raw. As George Kennan put it in October 1949, “the terrific problem [is] how then the Japanese are going to get along unless they reopen some sort of Empire toward the South. Clearly we have got … to achieve opening up of trade possibilities, commercial possibilities for Japan on a scale very far greater than anything Japan knew before. It is a formidable task.”34 Technical aid helped Japan deal with this formidable task, beginning with South Asia. South Asia at the time loomed larger in the mind of American policy-makers than Southeast Asia; the USA then regarded India and Japan to be the two pillars of the anti-communist wall in Asia (NSC 46).35 In March 1949, Pakistan, which was desperately looking for a partner that would compensate the lost access to resources and expertise in India after the partition, requested technical aid from Japan through the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). SCAP agreed. By the end of that year, Japan sent approximately sixty technical experts to countries such as Pakistan, India, Ceylon, and Burma. Pakistan’s request for Japanese technical aid was quickly followed by Japanese trade missions; by the end of 1950, Japan became Pakistan’s largest export partner after only the USA.36 In 1950, Japan also contributed US$80,000 to the United Nations Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA) and began to receive trainees for technical training as a contributing participant of the US Third Country Training Programs. Even from this perspective, the year 1954 was not the beginning of Japanese international aid. Technical cooperation had already begun paving a way for Japan’s trade relations under US auspices during the occupation period. A succeeding series of National Security Council policies—the most influential one being NSC 68 in 1950—fully integrated Southeast Asia into US strategic thinking. The unifying goal of American capital, Japanese technology, and Southeast Asian resources was to build the wall against communism. The Korean War surely provided a crucial boost to the Japanese economy, but the short-lived “Korean War boom” and

34 35

36

Quoted in Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 239. Kobayashi Hideo, “Senkyūhyakugojūnendai ni okeru Amerika no tai ajia enjo seisaku no tenkan: jō,” Sekai keizai hyōron (July 1986): 55. Ahmad Ras Malik, Pakistan–Japan Relations: Continuity and Change in Economic Relations and Security Interests (New York: Routledge, 2009), Chapter 2.

14

Engineering Asia

a subsequent recession made clear that Japan needed stable trade relations for steady economic growth. What plagued both Japan and postcolonial Asia was the lack of dollar reserve. Indeed, this was a huge global problem of the immediate postwar world, whose reconstruction needed to depend on imports from the USA, the only country that came out of the war as prosperous; by 1947, the USA had accumulated 70  percent of the world’s gold reserve. Britain, for example, was in need of US$4–6 billion to balance its deficit and make the foreign sterling balances convertible.37 But Europe’s dollar crisis was mitigated by 1950. Japan, unable to reconstitute its trade relations, continued to drain foreign reserves. The problem was even graver for Southeast Asian countries. Export monocultures, long established under European colonial rule, led neighboring postcolonial states to compete over the same export crops such as rice and rubber, whose prices fluctuated too rapidly and frequently in the postwar period. Demand for consumer and capital goods only intensified, increasing the imbalance between import and export. Western capital continued to control resources in their territories such as oil and rubber. In order to launch industrialization and become economically independent, these nations needed capital goods, but importing capital goods only dried up their foreign reserves and increased the nations’ debts. Without a foreign currency reserve, Southeast Asian countries lacked the capital required for industrialization. Here, too, technology became the crucial factor. Japanese war reparations in the form of capital goods and services were the solution to this conundrum. Japanese technology functioned as part of the magic formula that aided all parties involved: Japan (the donor), Asia (the receivers), and the USA (the architect of Cold War Asia). This magic formula then transformed Japan from one of the largest recipients of international aid to one of the largest providers of international aid. I highlight three key features of technology embedded in the reparations treaties between Japan and Asian victim countries: capital goods, reparations/aid, and depoliticization. First, technologies given as reparations needed to be capital goods, not consumer goods, to aid the country’s economic development, rather than leading to dependency. Reparations items thus commonly included large-scale infrastructure projects such as the construction of dams and hydroelectric power stations, ports, and irrigation, as well as machinery, plants, and tools. As explained above, this was the key element of the solution to the perpetual lack of dollars in Asia. The Marikina development project in the Philippines is a good example of this mechanism. Originated on President Quirino’s order in 1953, the Marikina development was a multipurpose project that involved the construction of a dam near Manila along the Marikina River to provide electricity and water for industrial and agricultural uses and for the prevention of floods. The Philippine government used American engineers and aid money to conduct preliminary investigations and to draw up a blueprint. Two years after the signing of the reparations treaty with Japan, this project became a reparations project. During reparation negotiations, it was decided that the Philippines would borrow yen for the Marikina project and use 37

Arthur I. Bloomfield, “The British Balance-of-Payments Problem,” Essays in International Finance 6 (Autumn 1945): 17.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

15

the yearly payment of Japanese reparations to pay it back. Of the US$5.4 billion that the Marikina project was estimated to cost, two-thirds was covered by the Japanese reparations funds. In short, it provided the Philippines with a way to complete the major infrastructure development project without using US dollars or foreign loans. This worked well for Japan, too, as it was able to fulfill the duty of paying reparations while providing Japanese companies with contracts.38 This was the basic structure of all of the so-called reparations projects. The better-known projects include Burma’s Balu Chan dam and hydroelectric power station and South Vietnam’s Da Nhim dam and the hydroelectric power project, which used 90 percent of the Japanese war reparations (US$39 million worth of Japanese services and goods).39 Reparations to Burma in many ways functioned as a blueprint for all the succeeding treaties with the other Asian countries. Burma became independent in January 1948, but did not attend the San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference or sign the Peace Treaty, due to its dissatisfaction with the US-centered content of the treaty. It did, however, participate in reparations meetings and, when the Philippines suggested a very high reparations amount of US$8 billion, it took a pragmatic line by countering it with US$200 million dollars. Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, had his own objective of securing funding to implement the Pyidawtha Plan, a national development plan to build an industrial welfare state in Burma.40 Negotiations with Japan, which began in late 1953, ended with the peace treaty and the reparations treaty signed on November 5, 1954, and enacted on April 16 of the following year. The treaty specified that Japan give the Burmese government US$200 million worth of Japanese goods and services, in addition to US$50 million for technical assistance and joint ventures between Japan and the Burmese public and private sectors over the 1955–65 period. The content of Japanese services and goods was to be determined by the Burmese government. The largest project was the building of a multipurpose dam and hydroelectric power stations on the Balu Chaung River. This was the first large-scale power plant for Burma and was the first overseas construction project for Japan after 1945. Burma’s dam project provides a clear example of the colonial–postcolonial connection of development, with engineers playing a central role in the process, as Chapter 4 demonstrates through the figure of Kubota Yutaka. Kubota launched his civil engineer-cum-entrepreneur career by building large dams in colonial Korea and Manchuria, such as the Sup’ung Dam, the third-largest in the world at the time. After the war, Kubota established Nippon Kōei, one of the first Japanese consultant companies, and hired Japanese engineers desperately looking for employment after their repatriation from the empire. Starting with the Balu Chuang dam, Kubota oversaw many large infrastructure projects throughout Asia, and Nippon Kōei grew to be the largest consultancy company in Japan. The president of the Overseas Construction Company Association explains this clearly: 38 39

40

Nagano Shin’ichirō and Kondō Masaomi, eds., Nihon no sengo baishō, Chapter 4. Laos concluded a quasi-reparations treaty with Japan in 1959; in exchange for Laos giving up its right to reparations, the two countries signed a technical aid treaty that provided 10 million yen in the form of Japanese goods and services. Much of this amount was spent on building waterworks and a new power plant in the capital, Vientiane. Katsumi Murata, “Biruma baishō,” in Nihon no sengo baishō, ed. Nagano Shin’ichirō and Kondō Masaomi (Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1999), 84.

16

Engineering Asia Reparations projects were projects of the Japanese government. This was a large merit. It meant that Japanese construction companies had guaranteed payment and encountered no competition with foreign competitors as the projects did not involve international bidding. Japanese companies were able to learn knowhows of overseas construction and on-the-ground workings of business in foreign countries under the protection of the government, which immensely helped them later enter the international market on the commercial base.41

The gospel of development transmuted war reparations payment into international aid. This is the second function of technology in the Japanese reparations treaties and is the most important function that needs to be highlighted and problematized. Reparations became aid through the actual language of the treaties as well as through the extension of reparations projects as aid projects. Since reparations projects were required to use Japanese companies, foreign observers criticized that Japanese ODA was too tied to Japan’s commercial interests. This is an accurate criticism, but misplaced. During the transformative period, an economic motivation behind reparations/aid was not a problem for either Japan or the receiver. After all, that was precisely the purpose of the “Japanese goods and services” specification of the reparations treaties. “If the receiving country uses capital goods given as reparations effectively for the country’s development and economic growth, it will contribute to the growth of Asia. Both the giver and the receiver benefit from this.”42 Statements like this were made publicly and widely in the media and policymakers’ discussions. Rather, the Japanese worried more about the connection with the old empire. Japan tried very hard to avoid the criticism of looking imperialistic again. As Hatta Yoshiaki candidly confessed, “Japan may provide aid as a genuinely friendly gesture, but it tends to be criticized in media as a return of the Greater East Asian policy or economic imperialism.”43 In order to avoid such criticism, the Yoshida government’s “Policy Regarding Economic Aid for Asian Countries” announced in December 1953 that Japanese foreign aid was not initiated by the state, but administered by the Asia Association. This did not stop criticism, however. After all, avoiding such criticism would be extremely difficult when those in charge of reparations projects were the same ones involved in development projects under the Japanese Empire. As explained earlier, Hatta—wartime president of the Northern China Development Company— himself embodied the connection between colonial development and postwar reparations aid. Asian countries nonetheless accepted, even embraced, Japanese technology aid because of a difficult but urgent need for economic decolonization. Technology answered the postcolonial needs of these countries. Japanese reparations aid cannot be fully comprehended without Asian countries’ postcolonial needs and ambitions. 41

42 43

Hatanaka Jin’ichirō, “Wagakuni kensetsugyō no kaigai shinshutsu,” Keizai kyōryoku 175 (February 1997): 22. Ōkōchi Masatoshi, “Baishō to gijutsu kyōryoku,” Gekkan Indonesia (October 1951): 2. Hatta Yoshiaki, “Ajia no keizai kaihatsu to wagakuni no gijutsu kyōryoku ni tsuite,” Ajia kyōkaishi (October 2018): 5.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

17

As historian of Indonesia, Kurawasa Aiko, maintains, Indonesia’s reparations cannot be understood without considering Sukarno’s policy to expel Dutch capital from his country’s ocean transportation. For Indonesia, composed of thousands of islands, shipping is extremely important, but the industry had been monopolized by the Dutch capital of the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM), and remained so after independence. Reparation negotiations with Japan helped Sukarno make the difficult decision to force out KPM and nationalize the shipping industry. A rather heavy weight was placed on ships and related training within the list of Indonesian reparations: sixteen ships, ten patrol boats, and technical training associated with ship repairs and ocean transportation.44 Chapter 5 in this volume also demonstrates how Japan’s wartime interest and investment in oil in the Dutch Indies transformed into its postwar interest and investment in oil in Indonesia through postcolonial Indonesia’s desire for economic decolonization.45 That chapter details the complex economic and political interests on the side of Indonesia that made reparations aid possible and workable. A powerful critique has been made of postwar developmental aid from the perspective of Cold War gains made by the donor countries, but it has also been pointed out that such a critique assumes too little agency on the side of the receiving countries. An especially strong connection between the Indonesian reparations and the Japanese Empire—Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, two Indonesian independence leaders under the auspices of Imperial Japan, and the Manchurian network that connected Kishi Nobusuke and Kubota Yutaka—needs to be understood not as a simple continuation of prewar connections, but rather as networks reconfigured and made useful again by technology aid, Indonesia’s postcolonial aspirations, Japan’s economic and diplomatic needs, and US Cold War interests. Some scholars regard Indonesia’s “reparations student program” to be exceptionally free from commercial ties and diplomatic interests, but this too needs to be understood in the postcolonial context. As part of the reparations package, Sukarno requested Indonesian youth to be sent to Japanese universities for education. As mentioned earlier, Indonesia also sent a large number of young engineers to Japan to be trained in shipbuilding, repair, and transportation, as part of his economic decolonization policy. While many Indonesian reparations projects have invited criticism, the studying abroad program has tended to be received positively, because it produced future political and business leaders in Indonesia; providing the educational opportunities to the youth, however selective, has been seen as “the only exception” to the reparations “that emphasized the material aspect of industrialization and commercial transaction.”46 However, this program also was not free of expectations for an economic return. The commercial expectation for accepting students and trainees was well expressed by the director of the Japan Association for International Construction Technology (ഭ䳋ᔪ 䁝ᢰ㺃঄Պ), Yanagisawa Yonekichi, in 1960. Upon returning from an observation tour of the Suez Canal construction, he expressed his disappointment regarding the 44 45

46

Kurasawa Aiko, Sengo Nihon = Indoneshia kankeishi (Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2011). Also see Miyagi Taizō, Sengo ajia chitsujo no mosaku to Nihon: “umi no ajia” no sengoshi, 1957–1966 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 2004). Nihon no sengo baishō, 77, 80.

18

Engineering Asia

lack of familiarity with the quality of Japanese technology among Egyptians. “How can we make those countries with no knowledge of Japan appreciate Japanese technology and science? I believe the only way is to invite people from Egypt and other countries to Japan while sending Japanese to stay in those countries.”47 The dispatch of technical experts and accepting technical trainees from abroad were directly connected to the international introduction of Japanese science and technology and the expansion of the market. As if to legitimize the program, technical aid publications from the transformative period are replete with statements by foreign trainees that emphasized their heightened appreciation for the high quality of Japanese technology and desire to publicize Japanese technology once they returned home. Foreign trainees were brought to Japan not only by governmental programs, but also by the private business sector. The business sector established its own agency in 1959, the Overseas Technical Training Agency (海ཆᢰ㺃㘵⹄‫؞‬Պ), to receive trainees from abroad, and such companies as Mitsubishi Electronic Company, Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industry, and Isuzu Auto trained engineers and technicians from India, Burma, the United Arab Republic, and many other countries. The first issue of the Overseas Technical Training Agency newsletter carried a statement by Vice Minister of International Trade and Industry: “our foreign trade will increase when foreign investment and the technical training program advance in tandem like the two wheels of a vehicle.”48 This was precisely how England used its postwar technical training program. As Yokoi Katsuhiko explains, financially struggling England was concerned with American, (West) German, and Soviet technology taking over India. Establishing a technical college in India with a technical aid fund was one major mechanism by which England could train post-independent South Asian youth to be familiar with British technology and machines.49 Reparations programs constituted an important part of Japan’s technical aid programs during the transformative period. “Technical aid” is generally defined as: (1) dispatching technical experts; (2) receiving trainees from abroad; (3) granting equipment; (4) establishing technical centers; and (5) building youth corps programs. Japanese technical aid programs were covered by the national budget earmarked for war reparations, the Colombo Plan, the Middle East and African Technical Plan, the Japan–US Joint Third Country Technical Training Programs, and so forth.50 During the first few years of the transformative period, programs were limited to dispatching Japanese experts and receiving foreign trainees. But in the late 1950s, with reparations projects in full motion, technical aid projects expanded both in their scope and size dramatically. In 1957, the Japanese government set aside a separate 47 48 49

50

Yanagisawa Yonekichi, “Kaigai heno gijutsu kyōryoku,” I.E.C. 13 (May 1960): 12. Tokunaga Hisatsugu, “Goaisatsu,” Kaigai gijtsushusha kenshūkai kaihō 1 (September 1960): 3. Yokoi Katsuhiko, “Indo kōka daigaku no setsuritsu to kokusai enjo,” in Koronbo puran, 103. The Philippines and South Korea also included the technical training program in their respective reparations packages, although the scale was much smaller. While this chapter does not discuss agriculture and medicine, both were also important areas of technical aid in addition to engineering and construction. Some programs covered a wider range of fields; for example, the Japan–US Joint Third Country Technical Training Program, which brought a very large number of Asian trainees to Japan, included finance, welfare, education, and administration as well.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

19

budget for preliminary investigations for overseas development projects and tasked the Association for Overseas Construction Technology (ഭ䳋ᔪ䁝ᢰ㺃঄Պ) to be in charge. Among the various preliminary investigation groups sent abroad in the late 1950s and 1960s for mostly infrastructure building projects, Indonesia occupied the highest number (more than twenty investigation groups), followed by the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Pakistan. In 1958, Japan joined the Mekong River Comprehensive Development Project, the multinational technical aid project led by the United Nations. Also in 1958, the overseas technical training center program began as a new enterprise. Inviting trainees all the way to Japan limited the size and length of the program, due to cost and time constraints on trainees traveling abroad and the language barrier. Under the new program, training centers were built in the aid-receiving countries, making technical training available to a larger number of people. Japanese experts, equipment, and tools were dispatched. In 1959, through the quasi-reparations treaty, three such centers were built in Cambodia for agriculture, horticulture, and medicine. By 1972, thirty-three centers had opened throughout Asia. India was most represented in this category, with eight agriculture development centers, responding to the nation’s strong demand for Japan’s wetland cultivation techniques. These centers often operated in tandem with other agricultural aid projects such as the model farm program. All these centers were built with “Japanese services and goods.” An often overlooked fact, because the criticism has been so focused on Japanese ODA’s commercial ties, is that reparations helped Japan expand its aid programs. Joining the rank of international aid givers was itself as important for defeated and criminalized Japan as reopening trade. Among these technical training centers were two road construction centers built in Thailand based on the Japan–Thailand treaties. Thailand’s story is somewhat unique, but nonetheless shares the global trend from colonial development to postcolonial international aid. As the only sovereign nation in colonial Southeast Asia, Thailand allied with Imperial Japan and declared war against the Allies. Therefore, it was not invited to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Conference, nor was it eligible for war reparations defined by the Peace Treaty. However, Japan owed a large amount of money—1.5 billion baht total, when the annual budget of Thailand in 1943 was only 278 million baht—to the Thai government from war operations during the 1941–5 years.51 After a long negotiation, the so-called “special yen credit issue” was finally resolved with a treaty, the Agreement between Japan and Thailand Concerning Settlement of “Special Yen Problem,” concluded in July 1955 and revised in January 1962. It specified that Japan had to pay to Thailand 9 billion yen by 1969 in the form of Japanese capital goods and service. The “in kind and in service” clause here makes it virtually the same as the reparations treaties. It is thus called a “quasi-reparations” treaty. Repaying wartime debt through technology aid was not Japan’s invention. The British government, having accumulated an enormous debt to India/Pakistan during wartime (1.5-times larger than its debt to the USA), used technical cooperation to 51

E. Bruce Reynolds, “Aftermath of Alliance: Wartime Legacy in Thai–Japanese Relations,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 21, no. 1 (March 1990): 69. This chapter of Thai–Japanese relations has not been studied fully, but detailed accounts can be found in E. Bruce Reynolds, Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 1940–1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

20

Engineering Asia

settle the sterling balance as well.52 Indian capitalists demanded capital goods for their new nation’s economic development rather than receiving weak sterling for the balance. India obtained technology and expertise for industries such as shipbuilding, automobiles, and heavy chemicals, as well as ownership of merchant ships that had been monopolized by British capitalists. This was based on the multiyear economic plan India had blueprinted even before the war ended. Providing capital goods and technical services was a highly convenient arrangement for the British government as well, whose economy was severely suffering with its growing debt in both dollars and sterling; Britain, after all, had been providing technical training to India all along.53 The first Japanese road construction center was in operation in Songkhla between 1965 and 1969, the other in Surat Thani in 1971; both were located in the southernmost part of Thailand. Ten Japanese experts were sent to Songkhla with tools and machines worth 300 million yen that were granted to Thailand. They trained more than 200 Thai engineers and technicians on-site during the construction of a road that was 52 km in length. The Japanese understanding was that the primary purpose of the center was technical training and that neither completing the 52km road nor granting equipment beyond training were absolute necessities. The Thai understanding, however, was different. Thai officials believed that the road construction itself was the primary purpose of the center and requested more equipment and services for surfacing the road completely. Tamamitsu Hiroaki, a technocrat in the Ministry of Construction stationed in Thailand, recalled later: “The weaker is the giver. We had to comply, because they already had Japanese experts in Thailand like hostages.” In order to respond to these additional demands within the set budget, the Japanese decided to utilize used trucks. “Thai people with a high pride,” Tamamitsu lamented, objected to this because “aid” should not come with secondhand tools, and their criticism was widely publicized in Thai newspapers. Criticism did not end there. Under pressure to complete the additional road construction within the allocated time, the Japanese outsourced parts of pedestrian bridges, but their careless design destroyed the roads around these structures. Tamamitsu, again, bitterly recalled: Thai people immediately complained that Japanese roads break right away. Those structures had nothing to do with us. Our job was to give machines and to teach [construction] techniques (gijutsu o oshieru). We could not be responsible for those bridges we did not make. It was the construction imposed by the Thai government. However, once it had the signboard with Japan on it—the Japan-Thailand Road Center—then the public complained that everything was our responsibility. In the end, both the construction and the training programs were successful. Tamamitsu was proud and happy but also a bit sarcastic: “When [the Thai government] publicized

52

53

“By the end of 1945, out of the total external liabilities owed by the UK of about 3,183 m., India held the largest proportion of about 35.8 percent …” Aditya Mukherjee, “Indo-British Finance: The Controversy over India’s Sterling Balances, 1939–1947,” Studies in History 6, no.  2 (August 1990): 232. Watanabe, Koronbo puran, 11. Watanabe, Korombo puran, 47 and 62.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

21

the road as Japan’s production, I had to laugh, because Thailand actually paid twice as much as Japan did.”54 When the Thai government requested a second road construction center in Surat Thani, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not too enthusiastic, remembering all the complaints and added work. The Japanese Ministry of Construction was eager, however, and Japan decided to accept the request. Tamamitsu explained the ministry’s reasoning as follows: trade imbalance was particularly severely in favor of Japan that time, and Thai economic nationalism was on fire. The road center, which granted equipment and provided free service of experts, was in the purest sense a form of cooperation; it would help soften any emotional conflict arising from trade imbalance and wipe out a negative image of Japan as a so-called economic animal that abused technical assistance and economic cooperation for its economic expansion55.

A preliminary research team was sent from Japan, an agreement was signed between the two governments (making clear, this time, that both construction and training were the equal priorities of the center) in 1971, and ten engineers were dispatched from Japan and stationed for four years. This time, “Japan was involved from the very beginning of blueprint drawing and used the best technology in order to avoid criticism later.”56 The two Thai road centers produced a series of reports published in various Japanese engineering journals. Buried in descriptions of technical details is a very brief reference to the Japanese Imperial Army. Yamataka Shigeru, the head of the Japanese engineer group sent to Thailand, wrote: “We know about Kota Bharu [in Malaysia] where the Imperial Army landed, but not so many of us know that the Army went into Thailand [as well as Singapore] from there. … Thai soldiers who did not yet know the news of the [Japan–Thailand] alliance fought against Japanese soldiers.”57 However, “footprints of General Yamashita whose headquarters remain at a corner in town are being washed away. They are being replaced by the new footprints of Japanese sent to Thailand for the Japan–Thai joint ventures shipping frozen shrimps to Japan and Songkhla’s port construction …”58 By the late 1960s, most reparations projects had been completed, and new technical aid programs and commercially based projects were starting. Together with wartime memories, any association between technical aid and war reparations for Thailand had been washed away as well. The reconfiguration 54

55 56

57

58

Tamamitsu Hiroaki, “Tai koku heno dōro ni kansuru gijutsu kyōryoku,” Dōro (March 1972): 6. Also see Ogiwara Hiroshi, “Shin tai dōro sentaa setsuritsu no ugoki,” Dōro (June 1970): 76–8. Tamamitsu, "Tai koku heno dōro ni kansuru gijutsu kyōryoku," 7. Tamamitsu, “Tai koku heno dōro ni kansuru gijutsu kyōryoku,” 7. However, the Ogiwara report in 1970 states that the appeal of this project lay in the road’s contribution to the development of the Surat Thani region, which was rich with natural resources, because the new transportation route would make it easier for Japan to import those resources. Ogiwara Hiroshi, “Shin tai dōro sentaa setsuritsu no ugoki,” Dōro (June 1970): 78. Yamataka Shigeru, “Tai dōro kensetsu gijutsu kunren sentaa (III),” Dōro 313 (March 1967): 58. Yamataka and the other members of the engineer group were all engineers of the Ministry of Construction. Yamataka Shigeru, “Tai dōro centaa keikaku rosen no kaitsūshiki,” Kensetsu geppō (June 1969): 77.

22

Engineering Asia

of colonial development into international aid went side by side with that of war reparations into overseas aid during this transformative period. Technology—capital goods and services—transformed Japan from a war reparations indemnitor to an aid giver while depoliticizing Japanese aid projects. This depoliticization is the third feature of reparations/aid I want to highlight. Technology not only depoliticized the colonial and Asia-Pacific War connections of postwar aid. For example, there were two other wars behind road construction in Thailand. First, nowhere in the numerous reports on the road centers do we find any reference to the Vietnam War. We only get a glimpse of this war because the Japanese reports mentioned Australia and New Zealand, each of which operated six centers in Thailand during the same period. It was against their centers, which prioritized completing all the roads, that the Japanese center was compared and complained about. Road construction in Thailand was a crucial part of the US operations against North Vietnam. By the mid-1960s, more than 80 percent of US airstrikes were being launched from air bases in Northern Thailand. Thailand received a large sum of aid from the USA in return: US$650 million in economic aid, US$940 million earmarked for Thai defense, US$760 million for war operation costs, and US$250 million for air bases and road construction. Thailand, with over US$2 billion in total assistance from Washington, was the second largest recipient of American aid in Southeast Asia, next to Vietnam.59 Australia and New Zealand, not major donor countries internationally, were nonetheless loyal military allies of the USA during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, being the core members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) headquartered in Bangkok and the Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security Treaty (ANZUS). Equally importantly, Australia and New Zealand had a vested interest in establishing their own economic and security ties with Southeast Asia, as they realized a weakened Britain could not be relied upon.60 The roads that Japan and other countries were building in Thailand were also related to Thailand’s violent ethnic conflicts. Southern Thailand, where the Japanese road centers were located, had experienced a long history of Thai government suppression of the Malay minority of Muslim faith. “Four Southern Provinces”—Songkhla, Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat—together with the northern region of Malaysia, which used to constitute the Islamic kingdom of Pattani, were conquered by the Kingdom of Siam in 1785. Thai Muslims’ discontent was somewhat contained by Bangkok’s skillful maneuvering of colonial governance, but became intense after the 1932 “Bloodless Coup” Revolution by Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram (known in the West as Phibun), the Western-educated dictator who aspired to make Thailand a strong, modernized, and unified nation-state. Inspired by fascism, in 1940, Phibun launched a forced assimilation of the Muslim population under a series of Thai Custom Decrees that equated Buddhism with patriotism and prohibited wearing sarongs, using the Malay language and names, and teaching Islam. The forced assimilation policy

59

60

Arne Kislenko, “A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand’s Role in Covert Operation, Counter-Insurgency, and the Wars in Indochina,” Journal of Conflict Studies 24, no.  1 (2004), http://journals.hil.unb.ca/ index.php/JCS/article/view/292/465. See Oakman, Facing Asia.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

23

was  repealed as soon as the war was over, but Malay resistance reached a peak in 1948 with violent, organized protests against Thai officials, as the so-called Malayan Emergency—a guerrilla war between the Commonwealth and the Malayan National Liberation Army—kept the British colonial government busy on the Malay side of the national border.61 By the time the treaties with Japan brought the road centers and other projects, Phibun had been ousted (exiled to Japan) and the Thai government had switched to the policy of improving living conditions in the southern region to mitigate Thai Muslim frustration. Needless to say, strengthening the transportation and communication ties with the southern region was also meant to curtail the southern region’s potential alliance with communist guerrillas.62 Road construction in Songkhla and Surat Thani was therefore part of the nation-building project in both the physical and political senses. Tamamitsu and his Japanese engineers were aware of the kind of aid politics Thailand engaged with, but were ostensibly oblivious to, or indifferent to, the violence behind their aid projects. Tamamitsu complained that “a favorite of the aid donor nations, Thailand understands foreign aid as the buyer’s market. It constantly makes multiple countries fight each other for a better deal.”63 Yet, to Japanese engineers and bureaucrats, theirs was simply a Japanese aid project for the welfare of the people of Thailand. To the Japanese engineers dispatched abroad, their job was to transfer technology of road construction; as their reports make clear, it was with a sense of engineers’ duty that they helped Thai public works and trained young engineers. James Ferguson has famously named this indifference the “anti-politics machine.”64 While the bureaucratization of development aid that Ferguson discusses took place not in the 1950s/1960s of our concern but in the 1970s after the reparations projects were completed, the “development” of the 1950s and 1960s also tended to transform political matters into technical issues and render politics irrelevant. War reparations, Cold War geopolitics, and postcolonial nation-building of Southeast Asian countries were all big, complicated, and difficult problems to deal with, but technology—machines, skills, roads, and dams—transferred via “Japanese services and goods” separated development from such complications as a digestible, palatable enterprise. We tend to think more about economic gains related to Japanese technical aid/ reparations. Indeed, according to historian Hirakawa Hitoshi, numbers demonstrate that the strategy of using reparations to boost trade did work: “With each Southeast Asian country, Japan’s trade share increased dramatically during the reparations period, especially in the areas where European and American companies had previously dominated.”65 However, in order to achieve this economic benefit in post-WWII Asia filled with bitter memories of Japanese occupation, Japan needed 61

62

63 64

65

Nantawan Haemindra, “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand (Part One),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7, no. 2 (September 1976): 197–225. Nantawan Haemindra, “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand (Part Two),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (March 1977): 85–105. Tamamitsu, “Tai koku heno dōro ni kansuru gijutsu kyōryoku,” 9. James Ferguson, Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Hirakawa Hitoshi, “Baishō to keizai shinshutsu,” Iwanami Kōza 7 Ajia•Taiheiyō sensō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006), 454–5.

24

Engineering Asia

to be accepted back. The depoliticization of war reparations/aid via technology provided this crucial function. The road centers remind us, however, that this was possible because Japanese aid was situated at the intersection of the Cold War and the authoritarian nation-building projects of Asian countries. This theme will return in my later discussion on Korea and in Chapter 9 on Korean road construction projects in Southeast Asia.

A kula ring for the flying geese During the transformative period, Japan was one of the largest aid recipients in the world. Between 1953 and 1966, Japan borrowed US$860 million from the World Bank, making it the second largest receiver of aid next to India. The US Export–Import Bank also provided US$942 million between 1956 and 1970. These two sources of foreign capital constituted more than 60 percent of the total capital flow to Japan between 1953 and 1960.66 By 1970, however, Japan became one of the largest donors in the world, and by the end of the 1970s, it was the world’s second largest economy. Asian countries that Japan aided, such as South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, also began to receive international attention as newly industrialized countries (NICs). It was because of this dramatic shift that Akamatsu Kaname’s Flying Geese Theory became popular. Akamatsu’s theory is widely understood to explain how the leading goose—in this case, Japan—led Asia as a whole to fly up. The prototype of the Flying Geese Theory was developed in the 1930s, based on Akamatsu’s observation of how the wool industry in Nagoya developed through a cycle of import, domestic production, and export as Japanese industrialization proceeded in the early twentieth century. Akamatsu then was a young economist influenced by Hegel. Inspired by what he saw in Germany and the USA while studying abroad, he harbored an ambition to establish a research institute in Japan to collect empirical trade data and to theorize on the dynamics of commerce. He created such a center at the Nagoya Commercial College, where he conducted research for the initial Flying Geese Theory. The “flying geese” at the time meant the pattern created by the textile industry’s rise and fall through the cycle of import, domestic production, and export, first exhibited by the cotton industry, then the muslin industry, and then the wool industry. Akamatsu perceived this pattern to be the Hegelian dialectics of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis. Through the 1930s, he further developed his theory to explain the industrialization pattern of the “latecomers” such as Germany, the USA, and Japan, as well as China and India. Akamatsu enthusiastically supported Japan’s expansion into Manchuria and China and the establishment of the Yen Economic Block through wartimeregulated economic policies. Born into a fallen former-samurai family who ran a rice shop rather unsuccessfully, he had been interested in the problem of poverty in Japan and expected the state to regulate the economy in order to alleviate the gap between the rich and the poor. He extended this vision to the world economy and wrote a dissertation that theoretically endorsed Japan’s construction of the New Order against 66

Takagi, “From Recipient to Donor,” 8.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

25

the Western powers.67 He was also actively involved in research activities in Southeast Asia supported by the military between 1942 and 1945, welcoming the state order to establish a research institute of the Southeast Asian economy.68 When the war ended, he somehow escaped a purge. In the 1950s and 1960s, Akamatsu and his disciple, Kojima Kiyoshi, refined the theory into what is now known as the Flying Geese Theory by analyzing the return of a Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere, beginning with the 1956 publication, “Our Nation’s Flying Geese Pattern: On the Machinery Tool Industry.” It was a strange theory, because it was a description and prescription at the same time; it was a theory based on the analysis of empirical data, but also a prescription for Japanese (and other countries’) economic growth. As Pekka Korhonen states, “it is not possible to distinguish between the impact of Japanese history and the impact of the theory on academic, bureaucratic, business and party political audiences” because “the theory is in a sense a story of the Japanese developmental experience on the abstract level.”69 As Raymond Vernon’s product cycle theory became established in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Akamatsu’s theory was brought back to the public discourse. In the 1980s, with the success of Japan and NICs, the Flying Geese Theory was prevalently used by Asian leaders as an Asian theory to explain Asia’s economic miracle. But if we take this as a story of the lead goose successfully leading the flock, we misunderstand its real indication. In order for the flying pattern to be realized, the industry needs to have access to inexpensive resources for domestic production and the market for export—that is, for the lead goose to take off, it requires the flock of foreign countries to push it up. Indeed, in the pages of technical aid publications at the time, the focus was not on how Japan could lead Asia, but rather on how Asia could help Japan take off again. “It is absolutely necessary to expand the market of industrial goods in order for the advanced economies [such as Japan] to develop.” “We need to raise the economic level of these [Asian] countries so that they could buy imported goods and increase the capacity to provide more natural resources.” These statements were made widely and loudly.70 Japan desperately needed the market for its export goods and providers of the natural resources Japan lacked, but Asian countries were too poor to do this for Japan. This was keenly recognized as a devastating fact by Japanese political and business leaders. Ōkita Saburō, an Economic Stabilization Bureau (predecessor of the Economic Planning Agency) officer who also worked for ECAFE, made this point clearly in his publications such as Theory on the Development of Southeast Asia (1954) and The Future of the Japanese Economy (1960).71 Ōkita, electric 67 68 69

70

71

Hirakawa, “Baishō to keizai shinshutsu,” 43–7, 54. Hirakawa, “Baishō to keizai shinshutsu,” 50. Pekka Korhonen, “The Theory of the Flying Geese Pattern of Development and Its Interpretations,” Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 1 (1994): 95. These statements are from the second issue of Kaihō by Kaigai gijutsusha kenkyūkai; however, they also appeared frequently in other aid-related publications such as Ajia kyōkaishi and Gijutsu kyōryoku. Ōkita Saburō, Tōnan ajia no hatten riron (1954) and Nihon keizai no shōrai (1960). For a fuller treatment of Ōkita’s career, see Daniel Botsman, Okita Saburo: A Life in Economic Diplomacy (Canberra: Australia-Japan Research Center, 1993). See also Donna Weeks, “Okita versus Kubo: Dueling Architects of Japan’s Security and Defense Policies,” The Pacific Review 24, no.  1 (March 2011): 34.

26

Engineering Asia

engineer-cum-bureaucrat/economist, was deeply involved in the economic planning of the Japanese empire and postwar Japan. In the 1930s, he worked in northern China for projects related to electric power under the Asia Development Agency (㠸ӌ䲒), and during wartime he worked in the Ministry of Greater East Asia (བྷᶡӌⴱ) and he issued a February 1945 report entitled “Japan’s Economic Dependence on Chinese Resources and a Plan for Japan’s Resource Procurement.” Soon after, in 1946, Ōkita articulated his vision of Japan’s revival as an economic power in the famous 1946 Report. Until his death in 1993, he exercised an extremely strong influence on Japanese economic and diplomatic policies. Ōkita knew Akamatsu’s theory. In fact, he made the theory popular internationally through his speech at Seoul National University in 1984. “Japanese services and goods” were provided “for free” to Southeast Asia because the Japanese economic recovery depended on whether Southeast Asian countries could develop their purchasing power for Japan. These goods could not just be products of the falling industries in Japan such as textiles, but must also include machines, tools, ships, and the heavy industries that were going through the cycle of domestic production and export in Japan. “The only way Japan could survive, concretely speaking, is to develop Southeast Asia,” as Nagano Mamoru, politician and the vice president of the Asia Association, said in 1954.72 Rather than waiting for these countries’ industrializations to take place, Japan provided the infrastructure of industrialization to these countries through reparations aid so that the flying geese pattern of industrial development could be formed. The idea of Japan and Asia coprospering via technology was not mere propaganda or lip service—it was Japan’s desperate cry. It was in the 1970s, after Japan overcame the precariousness of its economy, that it became the logic of the victor, cheap propaganda. This was not an approach unique to Japan. US development aid, too, was based on the expectation that industrialization of underdeveloped countries would generate the market for American machines and plants. The American production capacity expanded drastically during wartime, and securing a new market to sustain the growth of its capitalist economy was crucial for stable domestic politics as well as the anti-Soviet strategy. Even before the war was over, political and business leaders drew up plans for the nation’s postwar economy, which eventually resulted in President Truman’s Point Four policy—that is, overseas development aid that centered on technical cooperation. Truman did not hide this American economic interest in his famous speech: “Experiences show that our commerce with other countries expands as they progress industrially and economically … The process of economic development would expand the marketplace for capital equipment which underdeveloped countries cannot produce but are manufactured in large quantities by the US and Europe” (Point Four speech, January 1949). As Silvia Maxfield and James H. Nolt demonstrated in their study of American aid to the Philippines, Turkey, and Argentina, US policy in the 1960s prioritized import substitution industrialization of these countries at the sacrifice of American small-scale factories and trade companies, precisely because

72

Cited in Karashima Masato, “Nihon gata chiiki kenkyū no seisei to seidoka: Sengo Nihon keizai to ajia kenkyū,” Jinbun gakuhō 105 (2014): 16.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

27

a certain level of industrialization in these countries was required for American machinery to sell.73 Bruce Cumings once argued that “if there has been a miracle in East Asia, it has not occurred just since 1960; it would be profoundly ahistorical to think that it did,” because East Asia’s economic success rested on industrialization under the Japanese Empire since the 1930s.74 We could also say that if there has been a miracle in Asia, it was not that Japan became the world’s economic power out of the ashes, but that Japan by the end of the 1960s had managed to reconstruct the trade structure in Asia that had enabled its prewar industrialization despite Asia’s strong remorse against Japan; it would be profoundly ahistorical to ignore how this reconstruction of Asia took place in the 1950s and 1960s. We could also say that what was miraculous was not the economic success per se, but the fact that Japan managed to get back into Asia. Technical aid/reparations were crucial for this process, as it was through technology that depoliticized colonial connections were achieved, as well as the peculiar transmutation of reparations into technical aid. What reparations aid did was to create a kula ring for the flying geese. The kula ring, made famous by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920s, is an exchange network of two ceremonial gifts in the Massim region in the east of Papua New Guinea. Two specific objects are circulated in a specific direction—the necklace travels clockwise and the armshells counter-clockwise—continuously traveling and sustaining direct and indirect relations among islands. This system of gift exchange has enchanted Western anthropologists, who have been debating its meanings and functions ever since. No tribe keeps the kula gift too long. Malinowski reported that keeping it as long as a year or two would risk the reputation of the tribal leader. Thus, it is not the kula gift itself that has the ultimate value; what is important is what the circulation of the gift establishes—that is, the relationship of indebtedness and trust among leaders whose statuses are not necessarily equal. The kula exchanges accompany many other gifts. They use ceremonial, rhetorical, and various other persuasion tactics to entice the partner to give more generously. Kula partners are also trade partners. Even the most powerful tribal leader’s sphere does not extend into the entire kula ring, but they know of each other, and only those belonging to the kula community can participate in commercial trade activities. It is reported that quite a large volume of commodities travel from partner to partner in the kula circle.75 Development aid functioned in Asia in a similar way to the kula gifts. Technology aid rejects the distinction between gift giving and commercial transaction. As an aid, it is a gift, not a profit-extracting activity. Yet in order for the specific technology to be

73

74 75

Silvia Maxfield and James H. Nolt, “Protectionism and the Internationalization of Capital: US Sponsorship of Import Substitution Industrialization in the Philippines, Turkey, and Argentina,” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 1990): 49–81. Cumings, “The Origins and Development,” 3. The above summary of the kula is based on the description given in Rolf Ziegler, “The Kula Ring of Bronislaw Malinowski: Co-evolution of an Economic and Ceremonial Exchange System,” Review of European Studies 4, no. 1 (2012): 15–17. Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922).

28

Engineering Asia

worthy of development aid, it has to be useful and valuable to the receiving nation—that is, technology aid has to embody “the spirit of commodity” (as we will see in Chapter 7 through the Korean concept of the “economic translation”). Therefore, the frequently made criticism that aid projects were too closely related to profit-making misses the point. To go back to the kula analogy, it would make more sense to think of the function of technical aid as a kind of keda, “the path (created through the exchange of these valuables) to wealth, power, and reputation for the men who handle these valuables.”76 The kula-style exchange is characterized by anthropologists as premodern, different from the modern commodity exchange-based economy. Even Arjun Appadurai, whose Social Life of Things challenged the reified distinction between gift giving and commodity exchange, insisted that “the most important difference between the [kula] exchange … and the exchange of commodities in modern industrial economies is that the increment being sought in kula-type systems is in reputation, name, or fame, with the critical form of capital for producing this profit being people rather than other factors of production.”77 However, like the Thai road centers, the dam construction in Burma, and Hyundai’s constructions in Vietnam and Thailand that are discussed in this volume, there were many examples in the transformative period that prioritized the completion of the contract, even if that meant going into the red, just so that the donor country and its companies could save face, improve their reputation, and gain trust internationally and domestically—that is, in order to belong to the modern kula ring. Reparation/technical aid was a modern keda. Reparation/aid is a peculiar thing. It is both an obligated payment and a giving. It is neither a commodity nor a free gift. Aid cannot become a commodity. In fact, technologies provided through the reparations and aid treaties could not become commodities; they were prohibited from being resold out of that country (see, for example, Treaty with Burma, Article III, 1). ODA is never a free gift, as it is meant to establish a relationship of a sort, whether economic, diplomatic, or military. The logic of official aid is like that of a gift exchange system. While affirming the power of the aid giver, it also exposes the dynamics wherein the giver in fact relies on the receiver to accept aid. What is most important to acknowledge here is that Japan’s obligation to compensate wartime damages was replaced by the “(mis)recognized” role as the aid giver and cooperation partner, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s language. “Recognition/misrecognition” does not mean “fooled” or “brainwashed”; rather, it is the acceptance of and participation in the game that is being played. Reparations were “recognized/misrecognized” as aid through treaties. These reparations/aid projects successfully converted Japan’s technical capital into economic and symbolic capital. Symbolic capital—the most important capital for Bourdieuian theory—is a way in which power is accorded legitimacy. Japan’s position as the leader in Asia was intact by the mid-1970s, having secured the expanding market and suppliers of raw materials in Asia. The “old Co-Prosperity Sphere” was back without that name, transformed and reconfigured under strong nudges and protection from the USA, with ambitious developmental dictators in postcolonial Asia and, most importantly and ironically, through war reparations paid via technology aid that cleared 76

77

Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 18. Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” 19.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

29

up its war responsibility while simultaneously opening up the keda for Japan. And this was dubbed “Japan’s miracle economy.” The familiar indicator of this miracle, the GDP chart, only shows the national picture, facilitating a fantasy that economic growth is a national story of insightful maneuvering of economic policy by elite bureaucrats, a skilled labor force, a superb work ethic, peaceful dedication to economic prosperity under the pacifist constitution, and perhaps American aid. Economist Akamatsu Kaname’s Flying Geese Theory was brought back from its own postwar purge, providing another layer of mythology to this picture.

Korea The economic problems resulting from the collapse of the economic sphere in 1945 hit hard not just metropole Japan, but also its colonies, whose economies had been thoroughly integrated into that of the empire. For example, 40 percent of fertilizer used in Taiwan for its rice and sugar cultivation in 1939 came from Korea, 10 percent from Manchuria, and 50 percent from Japan proper. As Chapter 6 discusses, colonial Taiwan planted high-yield hybrid rice (Hōrai rice) that required a large volume of chemical fertilizer in order to support rice consumption in the metropole and to earn cash for the Taiwanese economy. To lose the market as well as the supply of fertilizer overnight was devastating for Taiwan, which needed to not only rebuild the war-damaged island, but also to do so during the chaotic transfer of power from Japan to the Chinese Nationalist Party. Needless to say, the Taiwan government spent much energy building up its own fertilizer industry and power plants on the island. The USA was more than willing to provide aid and to invest its capital, especially after the People’s Republic of China became the USA’s enemy in the Korean War. Post-liberation challenges were even more severe for South Korea. In the 1930s, Japanese capital was heavily invested in industrializing Korea, penetrating all segments of the society, whereby colonial Korea experienced a rapid shift in occupational structure and urbanization. The major industrial base, however, was located in northern Korea, while southern Korea remained primarily agricultural. The chemical fertilizer that was exported to Taiwan, for example, was produced at Chosen Chisso’s Hungnam factory, the largest chemical industrial complex in Asia, in the northern Korean province of Hamkyŏng. Its electric power source was generated by the Pujŏn River dam, a massive and technologically sophisticated dam that also powered the city built to house 75,000 workers of the Hungnam complex. The Pujŏn project was one of the colonial projects Kubota Yutaka engaged with, the protagonist in Chapter 4.78 And the largest hydroelectric power station in Asia was also built by Chosen Chisso and Kubota on the Yalu River that bordered Manchuria and Korea.79 Overall, 90 percent 78

79

Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 167–9; and Soon-wok Park, Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 88. Aaron Moore, “‘The Yalu River Era of Developing Asia’: Japanese Expertise, Colonial Power and the Construction of Sup’ung Dam, 1937–1945,” Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013): 115–39.

30

Engineering Asia

of industrial capital was in northern Korea (see Chapter 7 for details). Like Taiwan, the collapse of the Japanese empire cut Korea off from the flow of capital, goods, and technologies that had industrialized its colonial economy, but for Korea, the 38th parallel additionally rid South Korea of access to the key industrial infrastructure on the peninsula. Those facilities instead sustained North Korea’s industrial development in the 1950s and 1960s. Expertise gained from those facilities, as Chapter 4 shows, moved with Japanese engineers and was utilized in Japan’s development projects in Southeast Asia, as Japan’s colonial interests transformed into development expertise after 1945. South Korea was left predominantly agrarian, with few industrial facilities to claim from the former colonial power. It is not surprising, therefore, that South Korea proudly named its rapid economic development the Miracle of the Han River, recalling West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder. Emerging from a violent American occupation (1945–8), to be followed by a brutal civil war (1950–3) that resulted in the destruction of much of the existing infrastructure, the Republic of Korea (ROK) aggressively pursued industrial development with a succession of five-year plans under the military government of Park Chung-hee. The familiar narrative emphasizes the role of American aid—billions of dollars—and the “guidance” of American economists and modernization theorists.80 Those who want to undermine the American influence instead emphasize Park’s leadership and Korean workers’ industriousness. While the USA held a vested interest in mobilizing the idea of the ROK being the showcase of the “free world” economy, and Korean nationalism may make it the showcase of the nation’s resilience and ingenuity, the Korean case proved to be more complicated, as we demonstrate in this book.81 The three chapters on Korea in this volume highlight South Korea’s postcolonial desire to overcome the colonial past and determination to leverage opportunities available in the neocolonial Cold War geography, while solidifying the new nation-state against its communist neighbor. Agronomists (Chapter 8) and scientists (Chapter 7) were strongly driven by their desire to create Korea’s own rice and science out of the frustration and humiliation of the colonial period that had denied such an endeavor. They utilized resources that Cold War geopolitics created, such as the international rice research infrastructure of the Green Revolution and delicate negotiation for the 1965 normalization treaty with Japan. The name of the new rice, Tongil or “the unification,” is highly indicative; not only did it straightforwardly express Park Chung-hee’s claim for the ROK’s legitimacy as the unifier of the peninsula, but the new rice was also born out of Korean agronomists’ masterful unification of japonica and indica rice—something that even Japanese breeders had failed to do—as well as the unity of Korean skills and American resources. Tongil rice was, in other words, Korea’s own Green Revolution. Joining and taking advantage of the Cold War kula ring of developmentalism, in other words, was possible and desirable for Korea because of its own ambition 80

81

Gregg Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model: South Korea and American Development Policy during the Early Park Chung Hee Era,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 1 (January 2005): 83–115. This book focuses on South Korea. For North Korea and the Soviet bloc, see Charles Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); and Young-Sun Hong, Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

31

and needs. Solidifying economic strength was necessary for the legitimation of Park’s political power domestically, which he needed as his authoritarian government was the result of his military junta overthrowing the democratically elected president. Internationally, too, the communist neighbor’s economic outperformance jeopardized the ROK’s standing in the Cold War in the early years of the Park administration. In order for Korean capitalism to grow—that is, to establish its own flying geese pattern of industrial development—Korea needed the ever-expanding market and inexpensive resources. The 1965 normalization treaty with Japan was something South Korea unwillingly accepted upon strong pressure from the USA, but just as Indonesia used the Japanese reparations for its efforts to expel Dutch capital, it was also something that enabled South Korea to be more independent of the USA.82 The large sum of Japanese capital—US$300 million in unconditional grants, US$200 million in low-interest loans, and US$100 million in commercial credit—paid to the ROK as a means of reparations not only made South Korea less dependent on US aid, but also undermined American power over South Korean economic policy. Believing that the ROK could only manage agricultural development and light industrialization, the American administrations did not initially support Park Chung-hee’s desire to build the domestic steel industry, and even made him remove it from the first and second five-year plans. For the third five-year plan, however, Park turned to Japan to build an integrated iron and steel mill in Pohang. POSCO, the Pohang Iron and Steel Company, was to become one of the world’s largest steel-making companies. It was the backbone of South Korean heavy industrialization, in a manner that the Yahata Steel Mill, built by ambitious Meiji leaders, was for Japan earlier. Not surprisingly, Yahata Steel engineers provided technical aid to POSCO. The point is not how much of a model the Yahata Steel provided, as South Korea also imported technology from West Germany at the same time. What is important here is to ask how post-independence Korea maneuvered leverage and resources to achieve its economic independence. Poised between Japan and the USA, and between colonial humiliation and neocolonial ambition, the ROK had to pull various strings skillfully. Both Japan and West Germany wanted to expand their markets and were willing to invest in the import-substitute economy of Asian countries. The ROK utilized both countries’ own needs to its advantage. Chapter 8 most clearly demonstrates these dynamics through an examination of another pivotal institution for South Korean industrialization, the Korean Institute for Science and Technology (KIST). Tracing back to the colonial hierarchy of science, in which metropole Japan presided as the “brain” of the empire, Chapter 8 highlights Korean engineers’ and scientists’ frustrations that turned into a postcolonial desire to have their own R&D institute. As science legitimized the hierarchy in the colonial world, Korean scientists shared the complex desire that Gyan Prakash found among Indian scientists and modernizers regarding science and technology.83 Their postcolonial ambition, as Chapter 8 illustrates, was the constant force amidst national leadership 82 83

Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model,” 108. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). Also see Geun Bae Kim, Han’guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illyŏk ŭi ch’urhyŏn [The Emergence of Modern Korean Scientific Manpower] (Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa, 2005).

32

Engineering Asia

changes and the Korean War pushing for the establishment of the first governmentfunded R&D institute in 1966. Therefore, it marked not only Park’s triumph over American advisors with his zealous pursuit of heavy chemical industrialization, but also Korean scientists’ successful mobilization of scientific nationalism. Like Ajiken in Chapter 3 of this book, KIST was rooted in colonial experiences and incubated by the Cold War restructuring of Asia. Yet domestic factors and US policy alone could not and did not bring out South Korea’s so-called miracle. As Japan needed to secure the overseas market and suppliers of resources for its economic growth, Korea too had to reach out. Technology indeed paved a way for Korea to join the kula ring of development, and engineers were at the forefront of the overseas construction battlefield for Korea—literally. Park Chunghee eagerly responded to the American call to join the Vietnam War, and more than 300,000 troops were sent from the ROK in exchange for economic rewards. “Vietnam was a battlefield but it was also a market,” as former ROK foreign minister Yi Tong-won said.84 If the Korean War was a powerful shot to Japan’s sluggish economy in the early 1950s, the Vietnam War for Korea was “an economic bonanza” that lasted for many more years. Between 1965 and 1968 alone, as Gregg Brazinsky explains: the ROK earned US$402 million through exports to Vietnam, sales to the US military, and other arrangements deriving from its decision to dispatch troops to the country. Moreover, the ROK began exporting products such as steel, transportation equipment, and nonelectric machinery to Vietnam. These were products that South Korea had not yet begun to export to other countries; by opening Vietnam as an export market for South Korean goods, the United States ultimately gave many budding South Korean industries the chance to develop.85

While Asia as a whole expanded exports to the USA during the Vietnam War,86 because the ROK was the only Asian country that sent such a large number of troops to Vietnam (the “More Flags” campaign, despite its name, failed to enlist other Asian countries’ troops in a significant number), the US military offshore procurement and military complex played particularly critical roles in South Korean industrialization.87 Chapter 9 demonstrates how the Vietnam War not only impacted the economy of the ROK, but also opened up the path to grow for companies such as Hyundai. Founded as a small construction company soon after liberation, Hyundai managed to 84 85

86

87

Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model,” 109. Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model,” 109–10. Similarly, Charles Armstrong has called Vietnam “a goldmine” for Korea. Charles Armstrong, “America’s Korea, Korea’s Vietnam,” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 533. By using the United Nations reports, Keunho Park calculates that “Exports by Asian countries sharply increased after 1965, rising from 8.8 billion dollars in 1964 … to 20.2 billion dollars in 1972.” See Park, “The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia,’” trans. Hiroko K Clayton, InterAsia Cultural Studies 4, no. 3 (2003): 376. For more details and specific figures, see Jim Glassman and Young-Jin Choi, “ The chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex: Cold War Geopolitical Economy and South Korean Industrialization,” Environment and Planning 46 (2014): 1160–80; Pak T’ae-gyun, Pet’ŭnam chŏnjaeng [Vietnam War] (Seoul: P’urŭn Yŏksa, 2015); and Keunho Park, “The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia’.”

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

33

win the bid for road construction projects in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and its sacrificial work earned the company a reputation and trust inside and outside of South Korea. The Pattani–Naratiwat highway in Thailand that Hyundai built was located in the southern provinces, very close to the roads the Japanese built around the same time, at the heart of the Thai Muslim minority conflicts. While war reparations/ technical aid provided an opportunity for Japanese technology to penetrate the Thai market, the Vietnam War provided such an opportunity to the ROK. As is maintained in Chapter 9, the Thai road project also provided Hyundai with a precious opportunity to learn how to carry out large infrastructure building projects and to manage workers, experiences the company utilized for its construction projects back home and later in the Middle East.88 Kubota of Nippon Kōei transformed colonial interests into postwar expertise through war reparations. Hyundai transformed American Cold War interests into Korea’s own expertise.

Violence behind the miracle What is the problem? If Asia achieved the economic “miracle” by navigating geopolitics well and devoting itself to national development, what is there to critique? We need to remember that the ultimate effect of the kula ring of development was symbolic power—domestic consolidation of the authoritarian governments’ political legitimacy, acceptance of Japan as a resumed regional power, and so on—and symbolic power is always achieved through symbolic violence.89 Accepting the “miracle” narrative commits violence twice: first, the physical violence that victims went through; and second, the symbolic violence by celebrating the kula ring elites of international development, thereby silencing the victims behind the “miracle.” Now that the Cold War is over and developmental dictators are long gone, violence committed under the (mis)recognition of this fantasy has come up to the surface. Reparations paid “in kind and in service” worked well among the kula elites of technology aid, but not necessarily for individual victims of the Japanese empire. Since the mid-1990s, various reparations issues, legal battles, and compensation movements by wartime victims have been tormenting the Japanese government, as the kula ring of technology crumbled and Japan’s economic leadership waned. The “comfort women” issue is a good example. Violence was committed against approximately 200,000 young women from Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Asian countries, who were confined in the comfort stations throughout Asia to

88

89

Also see Chihyung Jeon, “A Road to Modernization and Unification: the Construction of the Gyeonbu Highway in South Korea,” Technology and Culture 51, no. 1 (January 2010): 55–79. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). In Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “Symbolic Violence,” An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 272–4. Bourdieu treats law as the “form par excellence” of the symbolic power of “naming and classifying that creates the things named, and particularly groups; it confers upon the realities emerging out of its operations of classification all the permanence, that of things, that a historical institution is capable of granting to historical institutions.” I maintain that international treaties function similarly to laws defined here.

34

Engineering Asia

sexually serve Imperial Japan’s soldiers during wartime. Approximately 80  percent of them were Korean women. Not only were their bodies and human rights violated by the Japanese military, these women were also silenced after the war under the Korean ideology of chastity that “safeguard[ed] masculine authority at the expense of women’s lives,” as the American neocolonial, militarized power continued to emasculate the liberated Korean nation. “In other words,” Chungmoo Choi argues, “in the sacred mission of anti-colonial nationalism, the object of which is often to restore national masculinity, women of the colonized nation are doubly oppressed.” Capitalist modernization united the colonial and the colonized male elites under the banner of national development.90 Reparations and other technology aid agreements concluded by the kula ring elites of development justified silencing of the victims. The so-called Reparations and Economic Cooperation Agreement between the ROK and Japan was signed simultaneously with the normalization treaty between the two countries.91 This agreement used the exact same language as war reparations and quasi-reparations agreements with the other countries discussed earlier: that the specified amount was to be paid by “the products of Japan and the services of the Japanese people.” Almost half of the compensation/aid was used to establish POSCO and 20 percent was used for the Soyang Dam, whose power plants provided energy for the “miracle of Han River.” The Japanese corporations, factories, and consultant companies that provided goods and services were paid for by Japanese tax money. Except for a small amount set aside for the families of deceased solders or those who lost property, none of the reparations money went to victims of sexual and human rights violence in Korea.92 As soon as the Cold War was over, former comfort women took the matter into their own hands. They broke their silence and began demanding formal apologies and compensation from the Japanese government. The Japanese government maintains that the 1965 agreement between South Korea and Japan settled the reparations issue in exchange for Japanese aid. The unresolved “comfort women” issue remains to this day the largest diplomatic stumbling block between South Korea and Japan. The ROK’s eager participation in the Vietnam War also led to similar double violence. The topic of South Korean soldiers massacring Vietnamese civilians was a taboo in the ROK for a long time, until the Korean media’s expose in the early 2000s. The revelation caused sensational and even violent reactions in South Korea by upset veterans and those who feared it would jeopardize economic and diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Korea’s fourth-largest trading partner (see Chapter 8 for the 90

91

92

Chungmoo Choi, “Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea,” in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, ed. Elain H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi (New York: Routledge, 1998), 13–14. The full title of the agreement in English on the United Nations records is the Agreement on the Settlement of Problems Concerning Property and Claims and on Economic Co-operation between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The ROK distributed a small portion—2.2 hundred million yen—of the fund to those Koreans who lost properties due to the war and/or were “drafted or conscripted by Japan as soldiers, military workers, and laborers and died before August 15, 1945.” The application period for reparations request was short (ten months). The amount the family received for a deceased member was 30,000 won. Chou Song-Won, “Tainichi seikyūken shikin to kankoku keizai kaihatsu,” in Nikkan kankeishi, 1965–2015, vol. II Keizai, ed. Abe Makoto and Kim Do-Hyun (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 2015), 83–4.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

35

ROK’s investment in Vietnam through technical aid).93 As has been pointed out, the justification and evasion of responsibility expressed by Korean leaders were strikingly similar to those made by their Japanese kula ring partners regarding Japan’s atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War.94 Korean soldiers, too, suffered from Agent Orange exposure, like Vietnamese and American soldiers, but they were silenced under the military regimes; only in the 1990s did the Korean media start to report affected veterans’ conditions.95 We should include victims of environmental damage and physical destruction of livelihood that accompanied the construction of dams, roads, hotels, and other reparations and development projects in Asia, such as the Karen people discussed in Chapter 4. There are also more recent cases, such as Indonesian victims of the Koto Panjang Dam project of Suharto with Japanese ODA money. They sued the Japanese government in 2002, the first litigation case that involved Japanese ODA. Indonesian dam victims, Korean victims, and Vietnamese victims—all of these cases of violence and suppression separated in time and space nonetheless come from the developmentalist kula ring of Asia. To take for granted or even celebrate the structure that allowed violence to be perpetrated against these Asian victims with language such as “miracle economic growth” and the “flying geese” commits the second layer of symbolic violence. Such language and theories naturalize economic development as a national success story without critically examining the political and economic conditions of postcolonial Asia that enabled it. There have been other attempts to demythologize the “miracle” narrative, such as highlighting conflicts, dissidents, and diversity in postwar Japan’s domestic politics, rather than painting a picture of a diligent population working hard together.96 This volume looks outward instead of inward to critique the fundamental postwar assumption of economic growth measured by GDP statistics that blind us to each country’s interconnectedness with the surrounding region. The following chapters tell a story of how this intra-Asia technology network of the Cold War was established during the transformative period of the 1950s and 1960s: Japanese policy-makers and business communities (Chapter 2), intellectuals (Chapter 3), engineers (Chapter 4), and agronomists (Chapter 6) participated in the creation and development of this kula ring; how Indonesia (Chapter 5) was incorporated into this ring; and how Korean scientists (Chapter 7), agronomists (Chapter 8), and engineers (Chapter 9) sought to create a more powerful position for South Korea in the ring. The project to jointly examine the flows of technology and engineers in Asia has brought us to the point where we can theorize on this overall scheme of things, a big picture we could not have grasped if we had, as most historians do, researched and 93

94 95 96

For Hankyoreh Sinmun and Hankyoreh 21’s expose and Korean reactions, see Charles Armstrong, “America’s Korea, Korea’s Vietnam,” 527–39. Also see Hyun Soak Kim, “Korea’s ‘Vietnam Question’: War Atrocities, National Identity, and Reconciliation in Asia,” Positions: Asia Critique 9, no.  3 (Winter 2001): 621–35. Park, “The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia’,” 393. Park, “The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia’,” 391–2. Laura Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth-Century Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004).

36

Engineering Asia

written monographs separately. At the same time, as we are primarily specialists of Japan and South Korea, we also acknowledge our limitations. This volume leaves out stories of the socialist bloc and its own network building. Stories of Southeast Asian engineers would have enriched this volume even more. Having a section on Taiwan would also have allowed us to develop more deeply our analysis of former colonial countries’ complicated options and decisions in the ring. Our hope is that this volume will urge researchers to further develop discussions on the role of technology in intraAsia development, politics, and violence. Asia, once colonized and exploited by the powerful empires, is now the center of the new century. This “miracle” should not be understood through only national narrative. We hope that this volume encourages readers to go beyond the boundary of the nation-states by exploring contingent ties, uncomfortable alliances, and engineers’ and scientists’ ambitions for the nebulous shaping of the region called Asia.

Bibliography Akita, Shigeru, Gerold Krozewski, and Shoichi Watanabe, eds. The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan. New York: Routledge, 2015. Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things, edited by Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Armstrong, Charles. “America’s Korea, Korea’s Vietnam.” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 527–39. Armstrong, Charles. Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Baishō mondai kenkyūkai, Nihon no baishō. Tokyo: Gaikō jihōsha, 1959. Bloch, Kurt. “Japanese War Economy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 215 (May 1941): 17–23. Bloomfield, Arthur I. The British Balance-of-Payments Problem. Essays in International Finance 6 (Princeton, NJ: International Finance Section, Princeton University, 1945. Botsman, Daniel. Okita Saburo: A Life in Economic Diplomacy. Canberra: Australia–Japan Research Center, 1993. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Bradley, Mark Philip. Vietnam at War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Brazinsky, Gregg. “From Pupil to Model: South Korea and American Development Policy during the Early Park Chung Hee Era.” Diplomatic History 29, no. 1 (January 2005): 83–115. Choi, Chungmoo. “Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea.” In Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, edited by Elain H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi. New York: Routledge, 1998. Chou, Song-won. “Tainichi seikyūken shikin to kankoku keizai kaihatsu.” In Nikkan kankeishi, 1965–2015, Vol. II Keizai, edited by Abe Makoto and Kim Do-Hyun. Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 2015.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

37

Cohen, Jerome B. “The Japanese War Economy, 1940–1945.” Far Eastern Survey 15, no. 24 (December 4, 1946): 361–75. Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Cumings, Bruce. “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences.” International Organization 38, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 1–40. Eichengreen, Barry. “Mainsprings of Economic Recovery in Post-War Europe.” In Europe’s Postwar Recovery, edited by Barry Eichengreen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Feasel, Edward. Japan’s Aid: Lessons for Economic Growth, Development and Political Economy. New York: Routledge, 2014. Ferguson, James. Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Fulbrook, Mary. History of Germany 1918–2000: The Divided Nation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Gaimushō. Nihon no ODA 50 nen no ayumi. Tokyo: Gaimushō, 2004. Gao, Bai. Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931–1965. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Glassman, Jim and Young-Jin Choi.” “The Chaebol and the US Military-Industrial Complex: Cold War Geopolitical Economy and South Korean Industrialization.” Environment and Planning 46 (2014): 1160–80. Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Griffin, Keith. “Foreign Aid after the Cold War.” Development and Change 22 (1991): 645–85. Gunn, Geoffrey. “War Claims and Compensation: Franco-Vietnamese Contention over Japanese War Reparations and the Vietnam War.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 49, (December 5, 2011). http://www.japanfocus.org/-Geoffrey-Gunn/3658. Haemindra, Nantawan. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand (Part One).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7, no. 2 (September 1976): 197–225. Haemindra, Nantawan. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand (Part Two).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (March 1977): 85–105. Hardach, Karl. The Political Economy of Germany in the Twentieth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hatanaka, Jin’ichirō. “Wagakuni kensetsugyō no kaigai shinshutsu.” Keizai kyōryoku 175 (February 1997): 21–32. Hatano, Sumio. “Tōnan ajia kaihatsu wo meguru nichi•bei•ei kankei: Nihon no koronbo puran kanyū (1954) wo chūshin ni.” Nenpō kindai nihon kenkyū 16 Sengo gaikō no keisei (1994): 215–42. Hatta, Toyoaki. Chichi Hatta Yoshiaki no Omoide. Tokyo: Keisō shuppan, 1976. Hatta, Yoshiaki. “Ajia no keizai kaihatsu to wagakuni no gijutsu kyōryoku ni tsuite.” Ajia kyōkaishi (October 1958): 4–6. Hein, Laura. Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth-Century Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004. Hirakawa, Hitoshi. “Baishō to keizai shinshutsu.” Iwanami Kōza 7 Ajia•Taiheiyō sensō. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006.

38

Engineering Asia

Hodge, Joseph. Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Hong, Young-Sun. Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Immerwahr, Daniel. “Modernization and Development in US Foreign Relations.” Passport (September 2012): 22–5. Inoue, Toshikazu. Yoshida Shigeru to shōwashi. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2009. Irwin, Douglas A. Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. Itō, Takatoshi. The Japanese Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992/2001. Jeon, Chihyung. “A Road to Modernization and Unification: The Construction of the Gyeonbu Highway in South Korea.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 1 (January 2010): 55–79. Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai, ed. Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai nijūnen no ayumi. Tokyo: Kaigai kensetsu kyōryokukai, 1976. Kaigai gijtsushusha kenshūkai. Kaihō. Karashima, Masato. “Nihon gata chiiki kenkyū no seisei to seidoka: Sengo Nihon keizai to ajia kenkyū.” Jinbun gakuhō 105 (2014): 1–33. Kim, Geun Bae. Han’guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illyŏk ŭi ch’urhyŏn (Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa, 2005) [The Emergence of Modern Korean Scientific Manpower]. Seoul: Munhak Kwa Chisŏngsa, 2005. Kim, Hyun Soak. “Korea’s ‘Vietnam Question’: War Atrocities, National Identity, and Reconciliation in Asia.” Positions: Asia Critique 9, no. 3 (Winter 2001): 621–35. Kislenko, Arne. “A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand’s Role in Covert Operation, CounterInsurgency, and the Wars in Indochina.” Journal of Conflict Studies 24, no. 1 (2004). http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/article/view/292/465. Kobayashi, Hideo. Manshū to jimintõ. Tokyo: Shinchõsha, 2005. Kobayashi, Hideo. Nihon jin no ajia kan no henkan. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2012. Kobayashi, Hideo. ‘Nihon kabushiki gaisha’ no shōwashi: kanryō shihai no kōzō. Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1995. Kobayashi, Hideo. “Senkyūhyakugojūnendai ni okeru Amerika no tai ajia enjo seisaku no tenkan: jō.” Sekai keizai hyōron (July 1986): 53–8. Korhonen, Pekka. “The Theory of the Flying Geese Pattern of Development and Its Interpretations.” Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 1 (1994): 93–108. Koshiro, Yukiko. Trans-Pacific Racism and the US Occupation of Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Kwon, Heonik. The Other Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Kurita, Naoki. Ogata Taketora. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2001. Kurasawa, Aiko. Sengo Nihon = Indoneshia kankeishi. Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2011. McMichael, Philip. Development and Social Change, 5th ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011. Malik, Ahmad Ras. Pakistan–Japan Relations: Continuity and Change in Economic Relations and Security Interests. New York: Routledge, 2009. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922. Masuda, Hajimu. Cold War Crucible: The Korea Conflict and the Postwar World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Introduction: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

39

Maxfield, Silvia and James H. Nolt. “Protectionism and the Internationalization of Capital: US Sponsorship of Import Substitution Industrialization in the Philippines, Turkey, and Argentina.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 1990): 49–81. Mimura, Janis. Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Miyagi, Taizō. Sengo ajia chitsujo no mosaku to Nihon: “umi no ajia” no sengoshi, 1957– 1966. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 2004. Miyagi, Taizō, ed. Sengo Nihon no ajia gaikō. Tokyo: Mineruva shobō, 2015. Molony, Barbara. Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Moore, Aaron. “’The Yalu River Era of Developing Asia’: Japanese Expertise, Colonial Power and the Construction of Sup’ung Dam, 1937–1945.” Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013): 115–39. Mukherjee, Aditya. “Indo-British Finance: The Controversy over India’s Sterling Balances, 1939–1947.” Studies in History 6, no. 2 (August 1990): 229–51. Mustafa, Sam A. Germany in the Modern World: A New History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Nagano, Shin’ichirō and Kondō Masaomi. Nihon no sengo baishō: ajia keizai kyōryoku no shuppatsu. Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1999. Nakamura, Takafusa and Miyazaki Masayasu. Kishi Nobusuke seiken to kōdo seichō. Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpōsha, 2003. Nishigaki, Akira. Economics of Development Assistance: Japan’s ODA in a Symbiotic World. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999. Oakman, Daniel. Facing Asia: History of the Colombo Plan. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2010. Ogiwara, Hiroshi. “Shin tai dōro sentaa setsuritsu no ugoki.” Dōro (June 1970): 76–8. Ōkita, Saburō. Nihon keizai no shōrai. 1960. Ōkita, Saburō. Tōnan ajia no hatten riron. 1954. Ōkōchi, Masatoshi. “Baishō to gijutsu kyōryoku.” Gekkan Indonesia 63 (October 1951): 2–5. Oku, Kazuyoshi. “Senji•Sengo fukkōki no nihon bōeki: 1937–1955.” Kansai daigaku shōgaku ronshū 56, no. 3 (December 2011): 17–40. Orr, Robert. The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Park, Keunho. “The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia.’” Translated by Hiroko Kawasakiya Clayton. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4, no. 3 (2003): 372–98. Park, Soon-wok. Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999. Pak, T’ae-gyun. Pet’ŭnam chŏnjaeng [Vietnam War]. Seoul: P’urŭn Yŏksa, 2015. Prakash, Gyan. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Reynolds, E. Bruce. “Aftermath of Alliance: Wartime Legacy in Thai-Japanese Relations.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 21, no. 1 (March 1990): 66–87. Reynolds, E. Bruce. Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 1940–1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Rix, Alan. Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge: Policy Reform and Aid Leadership. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Spitz, Gabi, Roeland Muskens, and Edith Van Ewijik. “The Dutch and Development: Ahead of the Crowd or Trailing Behind?” (March 4, 2013). https://www.ncdo.nl/sites/

40

Engineering Asia

default/files/Report%20Analysis%20The%20Dutch%20and%20Development%20 Cooperation%20FINAL%202013%2003%2004.pdf. Suehiro, Akira. “Ajia chōsa no keifu.” Teikoku Nihon no gakuchi, Iwanami kōza, Vol. 6. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006. Takagi, Shinji. “From Recipient to Donor: Japan’s Official Aid Flows, 1945 to 1990 and Beyond.” Essays in International Finance, no. 196 (March 1995): 1–40. Tamamitsu, Hiroaki. “Tai koku heno dōro ni kansuru gijutsu kyōryoku.” Dōro 373 (March 1972): 5–10. Tokunaga Hisatsugu. “Goaisatsu.” Kaigai gijtsushusha kenshūkai Kaihō 1 (September 1960): 3. Watanabe, Shōichi, ed. Koronbo puran: sengo ajia kokusai chitsujo no keisei. Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku, 2014. Weeks, Donna. “Okita versus Kubo: Dueling Architects of Japan’s Security and Defense Policies.” The Pacific Review 24, no. 1 (March 2011): 21–41. Westad, Odd Arne. Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Woo-Cumings, Meredith. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Yamataka, Shigeru. “Tai dōro kensetsu gijutsu kunren sentaa (III).” Dōro 313 (March 1967): 55–60. Yamataka, Shigeru. “Tai dōro centaa keikaku rosen no kaitsūshiki.” Kensetsu geppō 22, no. 6 (June 1969): 74–7. Yanagisawa, Yonekichi. “Kaigai heno gijutsu kyōryoku.” I.E.C. 13 (May 1960): 1. Yokoi, Katsuhiko. “Indo kōka daigaku no setsuritsu to kokusai enjo.” In Koronbo puran: sengo ajia kokusai chitsujo no keisei, ed. Watanabe Shōichi, 85–114. Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku, 2014. Yoshida, Noriaki. CIA to Ogata Taketora. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2012. Yoshikawa, Yōko. Nippon baishō gaikō kōshō no kenkyū: 1949–1956. Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 1991. Ziegler, Rolf. “The Kula Ring of Bronislaw Malinowski: Co-evolution of an Economic and Ceremonial Exchange System.” Review of European Studies 4, no. 1 (2012): 15–27.

Part One

Engineering Asia at Home Part 1 examines the development of the domestic infrastructure of postwar Japan’s technology aid that was rooted in colonial development. While the past scholarship on official development aid has tended to focus exclusively on governmental ministries and agencies and on the 1970s onward, two chapters in Part 1 examine the understudied yet crucial segments of the technology aid machine that placed Japan in the kula ring network of development during the transformative period of the 1950s: the ubiquitous semi-public corporations that coordinated the interests of the public and private sectors (Chapter 2) and the interdisciplinary area studies that connected Japan with development network partners in Southeast Asia through the production of knowledge (Chapter 3). The reader may choose to read Chapter 3 with Chapter 7, both of which feature pivotal segments of this institutional infrastructure building and the long-standing ambitions of the scientists behind them in Japan and Korea, but with different dynamics relative to each country’s colonial positionality. Chapter 2 supplements the Introduction well and provides the context for all succeeding Japan chapters.

2

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation Jin Sato

Introduction One of the distinctive characteristics of Japanese economic cooperation policy is the private sector’s strong presence.1 This widely acknowledged feature of postwar Japan’s development aid, as the Introduction to this book discussed, facilitated Japan’s economic “miracle” and eventual rise to become the largest donor in the world. The other feature that has been noted as characteristic of Japan’s aid structure is the lack of administrative unity.2 While these two features have been commonly viewed as shortcomings by the international donor community, this chapter examines how they worked to help Japan gain the status of major world donor. It does so by paying special attention to the intermediate agencies, the quasi-governmental incorporations called tokushu hōjin that facilitated and/or implemented various development aid projects. I argue that tokushu hōjin were the catalysts that enabled the public and private sectors to work together for a common vision of the reconstruction of Japanese economic 1

2

Mainichi Shinbun (Shakaibu ODA Shuzaihan), “Kokusai enjo bijinesu: ODA wa dō tsukawareteiruka” (Tokyo: Akishobō, 1990); Alan Rix, Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Nakano Satoshi, “Baishō to keizai kyōryoku—Nihon-Tōnan Ajia kankei no saikeisei,” in Tōnan Ajia shi 8: Kokumin kokka keisei no jidai, ed. Gotō Ken’ichi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 283–304; Carol Lancaster, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Hideaki Ashitate, “Changing Relations between the Public and Private Sectors in Japan in the Era of ‘Participatory ODA’ and Their Results from the Perspective of ‘Governance of Networks’” (Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2011). As late as 2003, a peer review evaluation by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) pointed out that “Japan’s aid system remains one of the most dispersed and complex among DAC members, which presents clear challenges for co-ordination.” Development Assistance Committee (DAC), Japan: DAC Peer Review (Paris: OECD, 2004), available: http://www.oecd.org/dac/peerreviews/32285814.pdf. Also see Jin Sato, “The Benefits of Unification Failure: Re-examining the Evolution of Economic Cooperation,” in Japan’s Development Assistance Foreign Aid and the Post-2015 Agenda, ed. Hiroshi Kato, John Page, and Yasutami Shimomura (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 88–102.

44

Engineering Asia

relations with Asia. In fact, the hasty dismissal of Japanese overseas aid as purely “commercialist” and lacking administrative unity obviates an understanding of how the complicated networks of people, technology, capital, and materials operated domestically and internationally in Japan and Asian nations (our volume’s goal) and lubricated postwar Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) system. By closely examining an often overlooked but important actor in Japan’s ODA apparatus— tokushu hōjin—this chapter illustrates how Japan’s private sector worked closely with government bureaucrats and experts to mobilize people, technology, capital, and materials for specific projects throughout postcolonial Southeast Asia, thereby helping to establish Japan’s presence there, eventually facilitating its rise to become a major international donor. This infrastructure of the Japanese aid system was laid out in the 1950s and early 1960s under specific conditions—that is, the specific immediate postwar conditions that Japan faced. The Japanese per capita gross domestic product between 1952 and 1954 was US$190, which was not much higher than that of the Philippines (US$150) and far lower than that of the Federation of Malaya (US$310) in the same period.3 This condition necessitated the utilization of private resources for war reparations and economic cooperation projects. Most analyses of postwar Japan’s aid administration cover the 1970s onward, ignoring the transformative period of the 1950s and 1960s, when diverse actors and their values, through multi-centric ministries, prepared stable venues for the private sector to participate in what was inherently a state-led project. The lack of attention to the evolution and operation of quasi-governmental organizations has had the unfortunate effect of strengthening the unwarranted assumption that ministerial and inter-ministerial politics dominated the early years of economic cooperation. Based on recently disclosed archival materials, this chapter challenges the assumption that the government dominated the formative period of economic cooperation through reparations. Examining the historical trajectory of relationships between the private and public sectors helps us understand the pivotal role the private–public partnership played in shaping the kula ring of development that brought about the “miracle” of the Japanese economy. This chapter first discusses “economic cooperation” in the 1950s. Economic cooperation is an effective site for an analysis of Japanese interests in Southeast Asia for two reasons. First, economic cooperation, initially attached to reparations, was one of the few official channels through which Japan could re-establish its war-strained relations with Asia. Second, the emphasis on initial reparations with economic cooperation led by the private sector brought a large number of Southeast Asian engineers to Japan as trainees, while Japanese expert technicians also traveled and worked in the region. It was the infrastructural systems and artifacts created by these engineers that made an enduring impact in Southeast Asia and also facilitated what Mizuno calls the symbolic (see Introduction) violence that silenced issues and victims not covered by the reparation treaties. 3

United Nations, Per Capita National Product of Fifty-five Countries: 1952–1954 (New York: United Nations Statistical Paper, Series E, No.4, 1957), 8–9.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

45

Economic cooperation After 1945, the Japanese term “economic cooperation” (keizai kyōryoku) was briefly used to refer to the relationship between the United States and Japan, in the manner that the organization that ran the Marshall Plan in Europe was named the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). “Asia’s Marshall Plan” was shaped by the US Cold War interest in building up the Japanese economy as the wall against the Communist Bloc and extending American influence in Southeast Asia via Japan.4 Stronger industrial capacity in Japan also meant that the USA could reduce its aid to Japan while expanding its exports of military arms to the Asia region. Japan was seeking an opportunity through this partnership to achieve economic independence from the USA and to prevent foreign currency from flowing out of the country.5 “Economic cooperation” then shifted its meaning to signify a much broader Japanese economic relationship with Southeast Asia that was being reconstructed through war reparations. Economic cooperation functioned to supplement and compensate for the shortage of reparation funds by mobilizing private sector resources.6 The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) wanted to call this economic cooperation (keizai kyōryoku), rather than aid (enjo). Its 1958 publication explained that “benevolent cooperation based on friendship and goodwill from political-diplomatic initiatives will nonetheless invite suspicion on the side of less developed countries with regard to the political intentions of our aid, and might also disturb their ethnic consciousness.”7 As discussed in the Introduction of this volume, the Japanese government deeply feared the colonial and neocolonial appearance of its presence in Southeast Asia. Having the private sector play a prominent role in state-led aid projects and calling them “cooperation” was a way to avoid the appearance of colonial intervention under the name of development. The Japanese term “economic cooperation” thus was a political term that sought to depoliticize Japan’s return to Asia. Japan’s private sector took this as an opportunity to overcome the heavily constrained domestic market. Economic cooperation provided the Japanese business sector with a means to resume business activities after the severe disruption due to the war. It also promised a way to maintain economic ties with Southeast Asian countries after the eventual completion of reparation projects in the 1960s.8 For this reason, it is difficult to draw a clear line between Japan’s reparations and economic cooperation. Economic cooperation was closely associated with reparations, but was not subordinate to the scheme and continued on even after the reparations 4

5

6

7

8

Jong Kyong-Ah, “1950-nendai shoto ni okeru ‘nichibei keizai kyōryoku’ to tōnan ajia kaihatsu,” Hōsei kenkyū 70, no. 4 (2004): 1141–78. Takehara Norio, “Sengo baishō, keizai kyōryoku to seifu kaihatsu enjo (1),” Momoyama gakuin daigaku keizai keiei ronshū 42, no. 4 (2001): 286. The initial term commonly used until the mid-1950s was “technical assistance.” As Japan intensified its engagement with Southeast Asian countries, “economic cooperation” became more popular to reduce the paternalistic connotation attached to “assistance.” Tsūshō Sangyōshō, Keizai kyōryoku seisaku to sono gyōsei no arikata ni tsuite (Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyōshō, 1958), 1. For a major study on Japanese war reparations, see Okano Kanki, Nihon baishōron (Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpōsha, 1958).

46

Engineering Asia

projects were completed. The term “economic cooperation” had a broader meaning, one “general enough so that it could be applied in different ways to different contexts.”9 As Mizuno discusses in detail, the war reparations treaties with Asian countries specified that reparations be paid “in kind” utilizing Japanese private companies and goods. This is a prototype of “tied aid.”10 This framework brought Japanese engineers and investors to the forefront of implementing reparations projects and then economic cooperation projects. From a strategic viewpoint, the Japanese government saw reparations as an excellent way to re-enter Southeast Asia and encouraged economic cooperation projects to go along with reparation projects. Implementing economic cooperation projects was initially not easy. Despite much enthusiasm on the Japanese side along with US support for the various attempts to combine reparations with economic development projects, only a handful of projects materialized on the ground. An iron ore development project in Goa, India, was the first successful project with concrete results. Nonetheless, policy-makers perceived this “leverage” in Southeast Asia via economic cooperation to be critical to many Japanese products that met with intentional obstruction in the European market.11 In addition to facilitating reparation demands, economic cooperation projects have explicitly targeted sub-reparation countries in Asia, the countries with so-called quasireparations treaties such as Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and South Korea. They were the countries, for various reasons, that did not or could not conclude reparations treaties with Japan and therefore received compensation through economic cooperation (although Burma, a reparations country, also concluded an additional quasi-reparations treaty in 1965). While payment to reparations countries and sub-reparation countries took the same “in kind” form of Japanese services and goods, technically speaking, the latter was categorized as economic cooperation, which allowed more room for the private sector exporter’s commercial interests.12 In this process, influential people in the private sector such as Nagano Mamoru, Fujiyama Aiichirō (Chairperson of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, who became the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for the Reparation to the Philippines), Ataru Kobayashi (a key figure in the business community who became the Special Ambassador for Reparations to Indonesia), and others acted as de facto envoys of the government in carrying out the backroom dealings with claimant countries. According to Okano Kanki, professor of economics and author of a 1958 book on Japan’s reparations treaties, “Reparation negotiations involved bargaining over the total amount of compensation and the actual content

9

10

11

12

J. Alexander Caldwell, “The Evolution of Japanese Economic Cooperation, 1950–1970,” in Pacific Basin Development: The American Interests, ed. Harold Malmgren (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1972), 27. Also see Shimomura Yasutami, “Nihon no enjo no genryū ni kansuru hikaku rekishi seido bunseki,” Kokusai kaihatsu kenkyū 23, no. 1 (2014): 119. Jiyū Minshutō Taigai Keizai Kyōryoku Tokubetsu Iinkai Jimukyoku, Jiyū minshutō taigai keizai kyōryoku tokubetsu iinkai no sonogo no keiga gaiyō ni tsuite (Jiyū Minshutō, 1960), 107. See Tsūshō Sangyōshō, Keizai kyōryoku seisaku.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

47

of reparation/economic cooperation projects; therefore, they often became de facto business talks.”13 The private sector’s presence was strong because it was clear from the beginning that Japan’s economic capacity would not meet the demands of victim countries and that the private sector should supplement such shortages. Assisted by the Export–Import Bank, the private sector’s structural involvement from the early 1950s opened up opportunities for engineers to plan and implement early economic cooperation projects such as iron ore extraction in Goa (India) from 1951 to 1954, tin mining development in Thailand (1955–6), and timber logging in the Philippines in 1955.14 As Japan succeeded in concluding all of the reparations treaties by the end of the 1950s and with the completion of the reparations projects coming into sight in the early 1960s, “economic cooperation” became a major subject for policy discussion. A Ministry of Finance Officer in charge of the economic cooperation budget around that time recalled: “while the tension with Korea continued, there was a feeling that matters related to war reparations came to an end. And there was a basis to place economic cooperation within Japan’s comprehensive relationships with Southeast Asia.”15 In 1962, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) articulated the objectives of economic cooperation; these objectives were slightly broader than MITI’s, which strongly emphasized domestic economic interests. MOFA classified the goals of economic cooperation to be as follows: (1) to provide access to export markets and secure critical raw material imports (by means of export credit and foreign direct investment); (2) to contribute to the long-term development of underdeveloped countries while promoting Japanese diplomatic and economic growth objectives (by means of contributions to international organizations and technical assistance); (3) to promote the types of economic cooperation that may satisfy both objectives (by means of export promotion through soft loans and some related technical assistance); and (4) to promote specific diplomatic objectives to meet recipient countries’ demands such as economic cooperation to soothe reparations demands, credit topside trade situations, and economic cooperation as a means to counter the application of Article 35 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade against Japanese trade. Bartering economic cooperation with the lifting of discriminatory trade restrictions was an important aim attached to the practice of economic cooperation.16

13 14 15

16

Okano, Nihon baishōron, 9. Takehara, “Sengo baishō,” 298. Kaigai Gijutsusha Kenshū Kyōkai, ed. Kaigai gijutsusha kenshū kyōkai sanjyū-nen shi (Tokyo: Kaigai Gijutsusha Kenshū Kyōkai, 1990), 49. Gaimushō, Tainichi yunyū sabetsu taigū jisshi koku ni taisuru wagakuni keizai kyōryoku seisaku ni tsuite (1962 Gaikō Shiryōkan E’ 2,0,0, 29–24). The countries imposing trade sanctions against Japan included Cambodia, Nigeria, and Tanzania for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article 35; Iran and Iraq for non-GATT countries; and Ghana, which revoked GATT Article 35 and yet still imposed trade sanctions. Other countries that may impose sanctions include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kenya, Uganda, Singapore, Brunei, Northern Borneo, and Sarawak (before their integration into Malaysia). For a detailed analysis of GATT Article 35 in the context of postwar Japan, see Takase Hirofumi, Sengo nihon no keizai gaikō—“Nihon imeeji” no saiteigi to “shin’yō kaifuku” no doryoku (Tokyo: Shinzansha, 2008).

48

Engineering Asia

Multi-centered infrastructure While observers of international politics tend to treat governments as if they have a constant and unified focus, “the government” is made up of multiple stakeholders that are not necessarily well coordinated. This was (and still is) certainly the case for postwar Japan’s aid structure. It has had no single ministry with exclusive power to control aid policy. The mid-1950s saw a proliferation of departments and bureaus within various ministries engaging in economic cooperation. Reparations allocations were primarily under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, but by 1958, six other ministries also had departments officially mandated to cover aspects of economic cooperation: the Economic Planning Agency (Coordination Bureau); MITI; the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications; the Ministry of Construction; and MOFA. In the formative period of the 1950s and 1960s, inter-ministerial politics, especially between MITI and MOFA, severely hampered the government’s ability to create a unified aid structure. A British journalist who stayed in Japan for one year in the early 1960s, John White, offered a cynical view on inter-ministerial politics by highlighting the “corporate cultures” within the government: MITI officials tend to look upon Foreign Ministry officials as pretentious and rootless people, who have been beguiled by the charms of international prestige into betraying Japan’s real interests. Foreign Ministry officials tend to look upon MITI officials as narrow-minded stay-at homes, who are blind to Japan’s need to take her place in the modern world. Neither ministry is as powerful as it sometimes seems. Power is concentrated to a remarkable degree within the Finance Ministry, which is vast and anonymous, by far the most difficult ministry for a foreigner to penetrate.17

As White went on to claim that this kind of ministerial rivalry caused Japanese aid to reflect domestic business interests rather than the demands of the recipient countries, administrative fragmentation sent confusing signals to the international community as to the objectives of Japanese aid. Bureaucratic division was, however, recognized as an issue. It fragmented the decision-making structure and complicated bureaucratic procedures. The lack of coordination among ministries made economic cooperation ineffective. A sequence of attempts, therefore, was made to empower MOFA as a central coordinating ministry for economic cooperation. The pressure came mostly from Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians with strong ties to the business community. In 1958, a MOFA internal memorandum outlined the creation of an Economic Cooperation Agency that would have a mandate over planning and coordinating matters related to economic cooperation while various other ministries and agencies would be tasked with implementation. In 1959, the LDP created a special committee on this matter and recommended the establishment of an administrative unit that would oversee economic cooperation. As a result, in 1961, the Overseas Economic Cooperation Council (Taigai keizai kyōryoku shingikai) was created as a cross-ministerial body consisting of key ministers and relevant 17

John White, Japanese Aid (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1964), 29.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

49

figures from the business community. The council, however, was a coordinating body, not the unifying authority over economic cooperation policy-making. Therefore, very little changed as to how things worked. Another strong pressure for unification came in 1964, as part of the central government’s comprehensive administrative rationalization reform conducted with the guidance of the Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform (Rinji Gyōsei Chōsakai). The Provisional Commission issued recommendations on how to rationalize various administrative incoherencies that had developed in the hectic postwar reconstruction decades. Regarding the administration of economic cooperation, the Provisional Commission recommended in September of 1964 that a new Economic Cooperation Bureau, administered by MOFA, should have the authority to coordinate economic cooperation and that similar functions within the Economic Planning Agency should be transferred to this new bureau.18 MOFA not surprisingly responded positively to this recommendation and immediately drafted a new regulation on the management of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Council.19 However, various ministries voiced their opposition. The reasons stated by the other ministries were as follows20: ●

●

●

●

Ministry of Finance: “It is appropriate to place this organization in the Prime Minister’s Office, which handles issues from an overall perspective. This is because economic cooperation deals not only with economic issues, but more broadly with politics, diplomacy, etc.” Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: “Using the existing Economic Planning Agency should be appropriate [rather than creating a new organization].” Ministry of Trade and Industry: “We wish to avoid unnecessary conflicts and prefer to support the status quo, but if we are to move, then the Economic Planning Agency will be most appropriate.” Economic Planning Agency: “Since economic cooperation will impact domestic industries, the Economic Planning Agency would be most appropriate.”

In the end, no Economic Cooperation Agency was created. Masaki Sawaki, Director General of the Economic Cooperation Bureau of MOFA, explained later that such a development was hindered by the lack of a budget, the hierarchical relationship among existing ministries that would weaken the status of a new agency, the presumed increase in operational costs, and the problem of transferring diplomacy matters such as economic cooperation out of MOFA when ODA was a matter of diplomacy. But most importantly, the fundamental reason remained the same: the difficulty in changing the existing administrative territorial map when so many interested parties were involved.21 18

19

20

21

Gaimushō, Keizai kyōryoku gyōsei ni kansuru kaizen an ni taisuru gaimushō no kenkai (June 15, 1964, Gaikō Shiryōkan E’ 2,0,0, 29–2). Gaimushō, Taigai keizai kyōryoku no genjō to kongo no mondaiten (1961, Gaikō Shiryōkan, 20100458). Gaimushō, Keizai kyōryoku gyōsei ni kansuru kaizen an: Keizai kyōryokukyoku seisakuka (September 6, 1965, Gaikō Shiryōkan 2010-0459). Gaimushō, “Taigai keizai kyōryoku shingikai dai juusankai gijutsu enjobukai gijiroku,” in Taigai keizai kyōryoku shingikai, 2010–0465).

50

Engineering Asia

Increasing tensions between the ministries reflected the growing significance of economic cooperation as a policy arena, and thus the budget. However, the exclusive attention on inter-ministerial politics blinds us to two factors: (1) the critical role of the political parties—particularly the LDP—and their connection with the business community in shaping the structure of economic cooperation in the 1950s; and (2) the role of implementing organs known as quasi-governmental corporations (tokushu hōjin) in undertaking state missions. Considering the fact that Japan after all became a major donor country in the 1970s, our question should not be how the absence of a unified aid-related ministry hampered Japan’s aid policy, but rather what such a disorganized multi-centric structure in fact enabled. Japanese scholars have treated the business sector’s influence as a given, but it is important, as this chapter makes clear, to investigate how the dis-unified aid administration worked for Japan in the 1950s.22 The key to this question lies in tokushu hōjin, the quasi-governmental corporations, and the strong presence of the private sector, as discussed in the following section.

Tokushu hōjin The business sector penetrated policy-making in three important ways. First, there was financial assistance, taking the form of political contributions to parties as well as to specific politicians to which requests and favors were attached.23 Thus, the demands of private companies, expressed through the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), were hard to neglect. Demands from the business sector not only influenced the institutional structure of economic cooperation, but also its definition. Secondly, the private sector influenced policy-making via key positions in government. For example, the chairperson of the LDP’s Special Committee on Overseas Economic Assistance, Ichimada Hisato, was president of the Bank of Japan for nine years between 1946 and 1954 and became a Minister of Finance. He had an extensive network with key persons in the business sector. The Special Committee on Overseas Economic Assistance, nicknamed the “Ichimada Committee,” laid out the institutional foundation of economic cooperation in the 1950s, including the establishment of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Council, the Youth Volunteers, and technical and financial implementing agencies such as the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA) and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF).24 Finally, the private sector participated in economic cooperation through quasi-governmental corporations. These corporations implemented aid projects with governmental subsidies and facilitated the private sector’s involvement in aid policy. The function of such intermediary organizations was to transfer and share otherwise

22

23

24

Gotō Kazumi’s article is a rare effort published in a scholarly journal that situated Japanese aid administration in the international context. Gotō Kazumi, “Enjo gyōsei ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu,” Ajia keizai 20, no. 4 (1974): 66–85. Misawa Mitsuo, “Taigai seisaku to nihon ‘zaikai,’” in Taigai seisaku kettei katei no Nichi-bei hikaku, ed. Hosoya Chihiro and Watanuki Jōji (Tokyo: Tokyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1977), 179–211. Asia Cooperation, “The Liberal-Democratic Party Overseas Economic Cooperation Special Committee: Its New Plans and Accomplishments,” Glimpses of Asia 7, no. 1 (1960): 95–97.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

51

fragmented information from the government to the private sector and vice versa so that their agendas would come to a broad agreement on what should be prioritized.25 The fact that postwar Japan’s economic cooperation began with technical assistance had significant implications for the private sector, because it allowed a wider range of participation from various industries and areas of expertise with relatively low costs. Quasi-governmental enterprises were created under various ministries to facilitate and implement technical aid and economic cooperation projects. Two points should be noted about quasi-governmental enterprises. First, the private facade of these corporations was intended to depoliticize Japan’s return to Asia. The Japanese government was keenly aware of the recipient countries’ suspicions of Japanese aid and highlighted such negative feelings as a hindrance to Japan’s recovery through economic cooperation.26 The Asia Association was established as a private organization precisely to cope with this situation: “We establish the Asia Association as a new and central private organization to avoid the image that economic cooperation is a tool of economic encroachment by the [Japanese] state.”27 In the Budgetary Committee held on March 26, 1960, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fujiyama Aiichirō, responded to a question on the activities of the Asia Association as follows: “As we all know, the Asia Association was created by the gathering of business communities to collaborate for the Colombo Plan. They play an intermediary function in receiving technicians related to the Colombo Plan, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot fulfill. It is therefore appropriate that we offer a substantial subsidy to this organization.”28 “Private” enterprise therefore played an important role in fulfilling state objectives without giving such an appearance. Secondly, and more importantly for this chapter, this ambiguous semi-public/private status allowed tokushu hōjin agencies to play an important intermediary role in the government to mobilize private business resources and in the private sector to assert business interests in governmental overseas aid. The above-mentioned Asia Association, for example, was the product of overlapping business and policy interests. Its creation was proposed by the Consultative Group on the Asian Economy (Ajia Keizai Kondankai) chaired by Hara Yasusaburō, the president of a major pharmaceutical company, Nippon Kayaku (Japan Explosives). Hara was an influential member of the Keidanren, the most powerful interest group representing the business sector as mentioned earlier. This consultative group was absorbed into the newly created Asia Association.29 Table 2.1 demonstrates the proliferation of such corporations.30 Despite their “private” appearance, most of these corporations relied on government subsidies for over half of their budgets. Some under MITI relied on the government for 75 percent of their budgets.31 25

26 27 28 29 30

31

Katō Kōzō, Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku—nichi-doku no kokusaiteki ichi to kokunai seido to no renkan (Tokyo: Bokutakusha, 1998), 205. Katō, Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku, 205. Katō, Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku, 205. Fujiyama Aiichirō, “Yosan iinkai daini bunka kai 3 go” (February 26, 1960). Katō, Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku, 206. This list is by no means exhaustive, but these were the key implementers by the LDP Subcommittee on Technical Cooperation in 1959 during their interview survey. Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai, Kaigai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei dantai no katsudō jōkyō (Tokyo: Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai, 1959). Seisaku Kagaku Kenkyūjo, Hojokin no kōka bunseki (Tokyo: Zaidan Bōjin Seisaku Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1974). The proportion of subsidies from the government in the overall budget of Ajia Kyōkai (Society

52

Engineering Asia

Table 2.1 List of quasi-governmental corporations related to technical cooperation established in the 1950s Names of the organizations

Year established

Overseeing ministries

The Asia Association ˄ȪɀȪ঄Պ˅

1954

MOFA

Technical cooperation, training, and research

Japan Educational Exchanges and Services ˄ᰕᵜഭ䳋ᮉ㛢঄Պ˅

1957

MESC

Reception services for statesponsored international students

Japan Association of Latin America and the Caribbean ˄ɱɎɻȪɩɲȳ঄Պ˅

1958

MOFA

Promoting cultural exchange

Infrastructure Development 1956 Institute ˄ഭ䳋ᔪ䁝ᢰ㺃঄Պ˅

MOFA and later MIC and MIT

Research and consultation related to infrastructure development

Electric Power Development ˄䴫Ⓚ䮻ⲪṚᔿՊ⽮˅

1957

MITI

Promotion of electricity generation at home and abroad

Japan Heavy Machinery Technical Service Association ˄ᰕᵜ䕨ࠪɟɱɻɐᢰ㺃঄Պ˅

1955

MITI

Consulting Japanese companies to promote their overseas activities and investments

The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship ˄海ཆᢰ㺃㘵⹄‫؞‬঄Պ˅

1959

MITI

Training of engineers and managers

The Overseas Construction Association of Japan ˄海ཆᔪ䁝঄࣋Պ˅

1955

MIC

Promotion of overseas activities by the construction industry

Major activities

Source: Author’s compilation. MESC: Ministry of Education, Science and Culture; MIC: Ministry of Construction; MITI: Ministry of International Trade and Industry; MOFA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Each quasi-government corporation responded to specific needs and interests. For example, the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship (AOTS) was established in 1959 under the supervision of MITI, five years after the creation of the Asia Association. As discussed in Chapter 3, the Asia Association received technical trainees from abroad; it was under the jurisdiction of MOFA and handled trainees sent through the Colombo Plan (that is, through government-to-government agreements). AOTS, in contrast, was funded by MITI and initiated by the private sector to accommodate trainees who came based on non-governmental agreements between Japanese and recipient country companies. One company executive explained the background of its establishment as follows: for Economic Cooperation in Asia) amounted to 47 percent as of 1961. Ajia Kyōkai, Ajia kyōkai sono shichi-nen no ayumi (Tokyo: Shadan Bōjin Ajia Kyōkai, 1961).

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

53

What has been the biggest headache to Japan in the Colombo Plan cooperation is that requests for technical transfers arrive quite suddenly, either to MOFA or to MITI, and are then outsourced and tasked to private companies. But this does not work since private companies also have their own plans. From the perspective of the factories in the private sector, there was a need to integrate the training dimension from the beginning. This need, which was impossible to satisfy under the Colombo Plan scheme, gave birth to the AOTS.32

Japanese private corporations had a vested interest in receiving trainees from Asia. One widely acknowledged challenge for them was the lack of appreciation for the quality of Japanese technology in Southeast Asia, where Western products and influence dominated.33 To counter this, many Japanese manufacturers considered it critical to train Asian technicians in Japan so that they would promote Japanese technology in their home countries. AOTS was established with strong support from MITI, receiving a 75  percent subsidy for its operational budget. Subsidies not only financed the organization, but also helped to raise additional funding from the business sector. As one of the key founders of AOTS noted later, “Having secured subsidies from the government makes it easier to secure public support in general.”34 Quasi-governmental corporations continued to multiply in the 1960s. Under MITI alone, on top of those listed in Table 2.1, there came the International Management Association (ᰕᵜȿȲɁ঄Պ), the Institute of Developing Economies (ȪɀȪ経␸ ⹄ウᡰ, analyzed in Chapter 3), the Japan–Thailand Economic Cooperation Society (ᰕɇȬ経␸঄Պ), the International Development Center of Japan (ഭ䳋䮻ⲪɃɻ ɇό), and the Engineering and Consulting Firms Association, Japan (海ཆȻɻȽɳ ɎȫɻȸԱᾝ঄Պ), to name a few. Most of these organizations received 75 percent of their budgets from MITI.35 Not only did the number of quasi-governmental corporations increase, but also the share of work outsourced to these organizations began to grow. For example, the number of trainees under AOTS grew from 10 percent in 1960 to around 40 percent in 1965.36 The proliferation of quasi-governmental corporations since the mid-1950s means that ministerial budgets did not accurately reflect the actual size of Japan’s economic cooperation structure or the breadth of ministerial power. The increase in ministerial budgets for economic cooperation during this period was moderate; however, considering the extensive networks of quasi-governmental corporations under each ministry, ministries had more influence than their budget figures indicated. Nor does the fixed number of personnel in each ministry accurately reflect the range of their activities.

32 33 34 35

36

Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai, Kaigai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei dantai no katsudō jōkyō, 176. Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai, Kaigai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei dantai no katsudō jōkyō, 6–7. Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai, Kaigai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei dantai no katsudō jōkyō, 241. Chūtō Kyōryoku Sentā, Gijutsu kyōryoku yosan to jigyō jisshi dantai (Tsūsanshō bun) (Tokyo: Zaidan Bōjin Chutō Kyōryoku Sentā, 1975). Chūtō Kyōryoku Sentā, Gijutsu kyōryoku yosan to jigyō jisshi dantai, 58.

54

Engineering Asia

David Arase has highlighted the role of quasi-governmental corporations by focusing on their relative freedom to employ staff, their ability to generate revenue, and so forth: Because of their government backing via personnel, financing, and regulatory arrangements, tokushu hōjin are able to operate in areas where the private sector cannot be freely induced to provide resources and services, or where a fair and impartial standpoint is required. These characteristics are useful in activities that require public–private sector coordination.37

These corporations were useful for the government as well, as they helped the ministries in implementing activities for which the government had limited funding or personnel. Looking at figures from the 1965–75 period, Alan Rix observed that The surprising fact that emerges from even these [fixed numbers of employees in aid divisions within ministries] indicative figures is that in the ten-year period [1965–75] there was no real expansion in the aid staff of the main ministries, even though the funds allocated to aid—and the work load—expanded enormously.38

Tokushu hōjin took care of the expanding work of economic cooperation as the number of reparations projects and aid agreements increased. The infrastructure of economic cooperation must be understood through these quasi-governmental corporations and their functions. As Figure 2.1 shows, private capital flows overwhelmed public capital flows until 1965. Technical cooperation, which was ostensibly a government undertaking, was handled more enthusiastically by the private sector. Various companies initiated their plans to supplement state projects in the field of technical cooperation. From 1954 to 1959, 3,982 private sector engineers and experts went abroad more than seventeen times—as many as those dispatched by the government through the Colombo Plan.39 Southeast Asia absorbed 77 percent of these professionals from the private sector. It was in 1966 that the government initiated its direct involvement with yen loans, which the private sector previously had handled.40 This shift demonstrates that it was around this time that the Japanese government developed the financial capacity to be involved directly in development finance; the international criticism of Japanese commercialism was increasing. Robert Orr also has noted a similar remark by a Japanese aid official in his interview: “the implementing agencies are subject to the same conflict of loyalties as the ministries, consequently agreement over placing personnel overseas has always been stalemated. In practice, this has allowed the private sector a greater role than it might have had under a more centralized aid structure.”41 These quasi-governmental

37

38 39 40

41

David Arase, “Public–Private Sector Interest Coordination in Japan’s ODA,” Pacific Affairs 67, no. 2, (1994): 183. Alan Rix, Japan’s Economic Aid (New York: St. Martin, 1980), 92. Tsūshō Sangyōshō, Keizai kyōryoku seisaku, 229. Andō Minoru, “Seifu kaihatsu enjo no zaisei mondai,” in Seifu kaihatsu enjo mondai no kentō, ed. Nihon Zaisei Hōgakkai (Tokyo: Gakuyō Shobō, 1992), 27–44. Robert Orr, The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 60.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

55

Figure 2.1 Public and private capital flows in economic cooperation. Source: MITI, various years (Keizai Kyōryoku no genjo to kadai)

agencies were, as International Relations scholar Katō Kōzō has called them, the “nodes between the government and private sectors that function as sites that store and share information.”42 I would even go further and argue that, in contrast to the conventional view that an absence of administrative unity was a hindering feature of Japanese economic cooperation, it allowed numerous private exporters and engineers to participate in state-led aid projects and to extend their footprints into Southeast Asia. For example, Kubota Yutaka—the engineer discussed in Chapter 4 who headed the development consultancy Nippon Kōei—was himself a board member of several tokushu hōjin such as the Engineering and Consulting Firms Association, the Japan–Vietnam Association, the Asia Association, and the International Technology Cooperation Association, as well as a member of several ministerial committees on foreign aid. These important networks formed through tokushu hōjin not only helped him mobilize experts, capital, technology, and materials for his company’s projects in Southeast Asia, but also shaped the direction of those projects to ensure that they accorded with Japan’s broader, long-term interests.

Conclusion This chapter identified three mechanisms that gave rise to a particular form of public– private partnership in the postwar period of Japanese economic cooperation. First, an emphasis on technical cooperation due to a shortage of government funds opened up opportunities for the private sector to cultivate and expand its own ways of penetrating 42

Katō, Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku, 205.

56

Engineering Asia

Southeast Asian markets. Japanese reparations “in kind” gave additional opportunities to private suppliers for acquiring and developing the necessary know-how in dealing with overseas orders. Second, it was convenient for the government to let the private sector play the leading role in implementing economic cooperation projects so that such projects would effectively be depoliticized. Third, quasi-governmental corporations played a central role not just as implementing agencies, but also as the main vehicle for channeling private resources into economic cooperation projects that were more in line with the government’s mission. Politicians and influential business sectors played defining roles in providing a framework for private actors’ engagement. While the basic conditions underlying bureaucratic rivalries and the ministerial turf battles remained more or less constant, the conditions surrounding foreign aid changed dramatically. In the 1950s, economic cooperation was the only tool for Japan to reenter the Asian market and the international community while achieving economic growth. In the 1960s, the objective started to shift to joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), adhering to Western standards, and improving its status on the international political scene. In the 1970s, as both Asian and Western nations grew skeptical of Japan’s economic dominance, economic cooperation became development aid. However, the institutional arrangement based on multi-centric ministries relying on quasi-governmental corporations for implementation remained constant. Bureaucratic fragmentation may have hampered Japan’s ability to create a unified system of aid. However, the lack of bureaucratic coherency aided the proliferation of economic cooperation-related agencies in a variety of sectors. This probably helped to enlarge the volume of Japanese economic cooperation and the range of activities in the subsequent era. Quasi-governmental corporations certainly facilitated private companies and engineers to extend their activities in Southeast Asia. Japan’s ODA administration is still considered fragmented and thus problematic. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC)’s 2004 peer review on Japan states that “Japan’s aid system remains one of the most dispersed and complex among DAC members, which presents clear challenges for co-ordination.”43 This chapter traced the emergence of this multi-centeredness to the 1950s, during which Japan’s colonial network of development transformed into the network of international development aid. Rather than assuming that the unified administrative system is the only and most effective system of ODA, I have argued that the “dispersed and complex” system was precisely what Japan in the 1950s needed to amass the capital necessary for international aid while achieving domestic economic growth. The business sector was a necessary partner in this system, as capital needed to come from the private sector in order for economic cooperation projects to work, whether in the form of monetary investment or technical transfer. This does not mean that the receiving countries perceived Japan’s system as the most cooperative. The rising economic nationalism in Southeast Asian countries saw this as neocolonial invasion. Well-publicized incidents of anti-Japanese movements 43

Development Assistance Committee, Japan: DAC Peer Review. Available: http://www.oecd.org/dac/ peer-reviews/32285814.pdf.

The Domestic Infrastructure of Economic Cooperation

57

include the 1972 student demonstration against Japanese corporations in Thailand and the Malari Incident in Indonesia during Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s visit in 1974. The demonstrators in these incidents also accused their own domestic leadership and demonstrated against their corruption. While MITI characterized Japan’s economic cooperation as “mutually beneficial,” the benefits did not necessarily go to ordinary people in Southeast Asian countries, but occasionally helped the military regimes in the region to sustain their dictatorships and Japan to achieve its “economic miracle.”

Bibliography Ajia Kyōkai. Ajia kyōkai sono shichi-nen no ayumi. Tokyo: Shadan bōjin ajia kyōkai, 1961. Andō, Minoru. “Seifu kaihatsu enjo no zaisei mondai.” In Seifu kaihatsu enjo mondai no kentō, edited by Nihon Zaisei Hōgakkai. Tokyo: Gakuyō shobō, 1992. Arase, David. “Public–Private Sector Interest Coordination in Japan’s ODA.” Pacific Affairs 67, no. 2, (1994): 171–99. Ashitate, Hideaki. “Changing Relations between the Public and Private Sectors in Japan in the Era of ‘Participatory ODA’ and Their Results from the Perspective of ‘Governance of Networks.’” Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2011. Asia Cooperation. “The Liberal-Democratic Party Overseas Economic Cooperation Special Committee: Its New Plans and Accomplishments.” Glimpses of Asia 7, no. 1 (1960): 95–7. Caldwell, J. Alexander. “The Evolution of Japanese Economic Cooperation, 1950–1970.” In Pacific Basin Development: The American Interests, edited by Harold Malmgren. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1972. Chūtō Kyōryoku Sentā. Gijutsu kyōryoku yosan to jigyō jisshi dantai (Tsūsanshō bun). Tokyo: Zaidan bōjin chutō kyōryoku sentā, 1975. Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Japan: DAC Peer Review. Paris: OECD, 2004. http://www.oecd.org/dac/peer-reviews/32285814.pdf. Fujiyama, Aiichirō. “Yosan iinkai daini bunka kai 3 go,” Kokkai giji roku (February 26, 1960). Gaimushō. Keizai kyōryoku gyōsei ni kansuru kaizen an: Keizai kyōryokukyoku seisakuka. September 6, 1965, Gaikō Shiryōkan 2010-0459. Gaimushō. Keizai kyōryoku gyōsei ni kansuru kaizen an ni taisuru gaimushō no kenkai. June 15, 1964, Gaikō Shiryōkan E’ 2,0,0, 29-2. Gaimushō. Taigai keizai kyōryoku no genjō to kongo no mondaiten. 1961, Gaikō Shiryōkan, 2010-0458. Gaimushō. “Taigai keizai kyōryoku shingikai dai juusankai gijutsu enjobukai gijiroku.” In Taigai keizai kyōryoku shingikai, 1971, Gaikō Shiryōkan, 2010–0465. Gaimushō. Tainichi yunyū sabetsu taigū jisshi koku ni taisuru wagakuni keizai kyōryoku seisaku ni tsuite. 1962 Gaikō Shiryōkan E’ 2,0,0, 29-24. Gotō, Kazumi. “Enjo gyōsei ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu.” Ajia keizai 20, no. 4 (1974): 66–85. Jiyū Minshutō Taigai Keizai Kyōryoku Tokubetsu Iinkai Jimukyoku. Jiyū minshutō taigai keizai kyōryoku tokubetsu iinkai no sonogo no keiga gaiyō ni tsuite. Jiyū Minshutō, 1960. Jong, Kyong-ah. “1950-nendai shoto ni okeru ‘nichibei keizai kyōryoku’ to tōnan ajia kaihatsu.” Hōsei kenkyū 70, no. 4 (2004): 1141–78. Kaigai Gijutsusha Kenshū Kyōkai, ed. Kaigai gijutsusha kenshū kyōkai sanjyū-nen shi. Tokyo: Kaigai gijutsusha kenshū kyōkai, 1990.

58

Engineering Asia

Katō, Kōzō. Tsūshō kokka no kaihatsu kyōryoku seisaku—nichi-doku no kokusaiteki ichi to kokunai seido to no renkan. Tokyo: Bokutakusha, 1998. Kokusai Kensetsu Gijutsu Kyōkai. Kaigai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei dantai no katsudō jōkyō. Tokyo: Kokusai kensetsu gijutsu kyōkai, 1959. Lancaster, Carol. Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Mainichi Shinbun (Shakaibu ODA Shuzaihan). Kokusai enjo bijinesu: ODA wa dō tsukawareteiruka. Tokyo: Akishobō, 1990. Misawa, Mitsuo. “Taigai seisaku to nihon ‘zaikai.’” In Taigai seisaku kettei katei no Nichi-bei hikaku, edited by Hosoya Chihiro and Watanuki Jōji. Tokyo: Tokyō daigaku shuppankai, 1977. Nakano, Satoshi. “Baishō to keizai kyōryoku—Nihon-Tōnan Ajia kankei no saikeisei.” In Tōnan Ajia shi 8: Kokumin kokka keisei no jidai, edited by Gotō Ken’ichi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2002. Okano, Kanki. Nihon baishōron. Tokyo: Tōyō keizai shinpōsha, 1958. Orr, Robert. The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Rix, Alan. Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Sato, Jin. “The Benefits of Unification Failure: Re-Examining the Evolution of Economic Cooperation.” In Japan’s Development Assistance Foreign Aid and the Post-2015 Agenda, edited by Hiroshi Kato, John Page, and Yasutami Shimomura. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Seisaku Kagaku Kenkyūjo. Hojokin no kōka bunseki. Tokyo: Zaidan bōjin seisaku kagaku kenkyūjo, 1974. Shimomura, Yasutami. “Nihon no enjo no genryū ni kansuru hikaku rekishi seido bunseki.” Kokusai kaihatsu kenkyū 23, no. 1 (2014): 117–31. Takase, Hirofumi. Sengo nihon no keizai gaikō—‘Nihon imeeji’ no sai teigi to ‘shin’yō kaifuku’ no doryoku. Tokyo: Shinzansha, 2008. Takehara, Norio. “Sengo baishō, keizai kyōryoku to seifu kaihatsu enjo (1).” Momoyama gakuin daigaku keizai keiei ronshū 42, no. 4 (2001): 281–317. Tsūshō Sangyōshō. Keizai kyōryoku seisaku to sono gyōsei no arikata ni tsuite. Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyōshō, 1958. United Nations. Per Capita National Product of Fifty-five Countries: 1952–1954. New York: United Nations Statistical Paper, Series E, No.4, 1957. White, John. Japanese Aid. London: Overseas Development Institute, 1964.

3

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure for Japan’s Overseas Development Aid in Asia Masato Karashima

This chapter examines the emergence of what I call the “academic–bureaucratic– industrial–political complex” (hereinafter referred to as the “development complex”), which served as the knowledge base for Japan’s overseas development aid (ODA) system. I illustrate its trajectory from the colonial period into the postwar decades (up to the 1960s) through the example of Itagaki Yoichi (1908–2003), a Hitotsubashi University professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Economics who was widely considered to be the founding father of Southeast Asian Studies in Japan, and I analyze the important institution he helped create, the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs (Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, referred to below by its Japanese abbreviation, Ajiken).1 The creation of Ajiken in 1958 under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was an epoch-making event in the history of the development complex, and the Institute remains one of the largest think tanks for Asian and other area studies in Japan and the world. Efforts to establish Ajiken brought together academics, bureaucrats, industrialists, and political leaders from different political backgrounds. A crucial component of the institutional infrastructure of postwar Japanese development (i.e. the development complex), Ajiken should be examined more broadly in relation to Japan’s efforts to find a place in postcolonial Asia where the rise of independent nation-states intersected with Cold War geopolitics rather than purely as a domestic, purely non-partisan academic research institution. Moreover, my analysis of Ajiken provides a detailed example of the politics and activities of Japan’s “quasi-governmental corporations”—mixed private and public institutions that link the private sector with government bureaucrats, academics, and politicians into sectorspecific interest groups that help shape and implement Japan’s overseas development policy—which are the focus of Chapter 2 in this volume.

1

Today, it is known as the Institute of Developing Economies or IDE.

60

Engineering Asia

In terms of people, institutions, and ideology, postwar Japan’s development complex had strong connections with the wartime era when the military dominated the research agenda for Japan’s expanding empire. The development complex could not have been formed without the expertise and connections nurtured in Japan’s former empire. This chapter first examines the activities of three key organizations that constituted the initial phase of the establishment of the postwar development complex—the Japanese Association for Asian Studies (Ajia Seikei Gakkai—literally, the Association for Asian Political and Economic Studies; now known as the Japanese Association for Asian Studies, or JAAS), the Asian Affairs Research Group (Ajia Mondai Chōsakai), and the Asia Association (Ajia Kyōkai)—since they clearly demonstrate strong connections with the imperial era. For all of these organizations, established to deepen Japan’s expertise on Asia, Itagaki was a vital presence. He was a highly symbolic figure whose career illuminates the strong wartime connections of many of postwar Japan’s intellectuals, politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats in the development complex. A scholar of nationalism and a rising star of colonial policy studies, Itagaki conducted field research in Southeast Asia for the Imperial Army and Navy during the Asia-Pacific War. Creating a national area studies institute became his life-long dream, and he and his fellow wartime pan-Asianist economists, Yamamoto Noboru of Keiō University and Kawano Shigetō of the University of Tokyo—together known as “the Trio”—undertook a journey of twists and turns to ultimately realize this dream. I examine some of the intellectual, institutional, and personnel legacies of the wartime colonial era on postwar Japan’s Asian Studies by placing them in the context of the new political and geopolitical configuration of the Cold War. During the war, the Trio aligned themselves with Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro’s “New Order Movement,” which planned to reform capitalism and co-opt Asian nationalisms into Japan’s wartime empire.2 Their mentors, Kada Tetsuji and Tōbata Seiichi, were the intellectual giants of wartime colonial studies and served as Konoe’s policy advisors. Similar to Konoe, Itagaki regarded the state as the subject of the national economy and rising anti-colonial ethnic nationalism as the primary object of Japan’s imperial policy. These key beliefs continued into the postwar period as he sought to rebuild Japan’s Asian Studies infrastructure for the new Cold War era in the context of Asian decolonization. Itagaki thought that establishing state-controlled capitalism under the guidance of economic bureaucrats, whether for the purpose of establishing a wartime mobilization economy or a postwar planned economy, was crucial to achieving Japan’s economic development and addressing the economic roots of divisive, often radicalized ethnic nationalism arising throughout very diverse Asian societies during the colonial and postcolonial eras. State-led economic development was also critical to establishing the postwar regional order under Japan’s dominance and subsequently to rebuilding Japan’s relations with Asia on the basis of anti-communism. In short, the issues of managing ethnic nationalism and promoting economic development in Asia were Itagaki’s continuing areas of focus from the wartime to the postwar era, 2

On Konoe’s “New Order” campaign and his advisors, see William Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

61

and constituted two key pillars of the new Asian Studies knowledge complex that supported Japan’s reentry into Asia, this time as a leading developmental power rather than an imperial hegemon. Itagaki’s wartime agenda for Asia won powerful allies in the Japanese military and bureaucracy around the figure of Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, who sought to construct a “New Order” in Japan and Asia based on a strong, interventionist state and an actively mobilized population. After Konoe’s political project became deadlocked due to military resistance, most of his advisors flocked to the Navy’s brain trust, the Sōgō Kenkyūkai (Integrated Research Group), organized by a military officer who had been in charge of Konoe’s New Order project in the Ministry of Navy. Konoe represented a colonial research agenda predominant in Tōsei-ha (Control Faction) circles dominated by reformist bureaucrats (kakushin kanryō) who advocated state-controlled economies and pan-Asianist policies designed to incorporate the aspirations of colonial people’s into Japan’s empire. Konoe was opposed by the radical ultra-nationalist faction of the military, Kōdō-ha (Imperial Way Faction), which advocated more aggressive militarism and exclusivist Japanism.3 Itagaki joined the Sōgō Kenkyūkai to lead their discussions on colonial policy and later joined an Imperial Army field research project in occupied Southeast Asia to work with Indonesian and Malaysian nationalists such as Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta. Keeping in touch with Asian leaders after the war, he continued to study Asian nationalism and advocated economic aid to Asia as an insurance policy against the spread of communism, which was strongly influencing postcolonial nationalism throughout Asia. His policy proposals proved attractive to MITI, which was pushing Japanese companies into Asian markets through reparations and economic aid. MITI’s think tank, Ajiken, adopted Itagaki’s intellectual interest in organizing research projects on nationalism and economic development in Asia. While Itagaki’s collaborating partner switched from the Imperial Army and Navy during the war to MITI and the business world after the war, he carried over his wartime interest in nationalism and the state-controlled economy into the postwar project of “reconstructing Asia” through reestablishing strong relations with newly independent Asian nations. With this wartime pan-Asianist research agenda of understanding, managing, and guiding Asian nationalism toward economic development (in the form of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”) as his intellectual foundation, he actively participated in reconstructing the academic–bureaucratic–industrial–political complex of postwar Japan’s ODA system.

An economist’s dream In a 1953 local newspaper column, Itagaki urged the public to support the formation of a national research institute for Asian studies. He introduced his economist mentor and colleague Nakayama Ichirō’s report from a conference in Europe where 3

For more on the thoughts and policies of reform bureaucrats (many of whom became important members of the Manchuria Network), see Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). For more on the thought of Kōdō-ha members, see Walter Skya, Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).

62

Engineering Asia

it was recognized that Europe’s “destiny depends on Asia.” Nakayama noted that the European interest in “Asian Studies is quite serious,” and in sharp contrast, “the current situation of Asian Studies in Japan is really dismal,” with only a few existing research institutions that were usually too small and poor to employ professional researchers, while the better-funded research offices of private companies and governmental ministries were not interested in developing a centralized network for exchanging research information. Itagaki used Nakayama’s observations to propose a new institution for Japan. The new institution would have two missions: to train young scholars based on language acquisition and fieldwork and to build a library that systematically collected knowledge about Asia. These missions were accomplished earlier during the war through quasi-governmental think tanks such as the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway (Mantestu Chōsabu) and the East Asia Research Institute (Tōa Kenkyūjo), which sent numerous researchers throughout Asia for military and colonial management purposes. Itagaki concluded his plea by arguing that, “in light of the current situation in which it is impossible to discuss Japan without a good understanding of Asia, the establishment of such an institution for Asian Studies is an urgent issue.”4 While at face value Itagaki was calling for the establishment of something new to help facilitate Japan’s postwar relationship with decolonized Asian nations, a more accurate assessment of Itagaki’s desire for a comprehensive Asian Studies organization needs to also take into account the destruction of Japan’s earlier sophisticated Asian Studies infrastructure (which Itagaki was a part of) geared toward colonial development and managing the diverse peoples of its pan-Asian empire. By extending our gaze to the wartime era, we begin to see Itagaki’s desire as part of a longer narrative of reconfiguring earlier research agendas of colonial management to Japan’s new position as a key US ally in Cold War Asia. Itagaki collaborated with several colleagues to institutionalize Asian Studies in the postwar years. His most important colleagues were Kawano and Yamamoto, who were collectively referred to publicly as “the Trio.” Itagaki worked under Akamatsu Kaname (who later became an internationally known economist for his “flying geese” paradigm) during the early 1940s, while Kawano worked under Tōbata Seiichi (who later became the director of Ajiken), and Yamamoto worked under Kada Tetsuji (a prominent colonial policy expert who supported Prime Minister Konoe’s New Order policies). Akamatsu, Tōbata, and Kada organized academic societies during the war to conduct colonial economic policy studies, and their students became acquainted with each other through these activities. As promising young scholars, the Trio had built a tight inter-university network in the early 1940s. These six economists—who all contributed to pan-Asianist research societies such as the Greater Japan Colonization Association (Dai Nippon Takushoku Gakkai) and the Japan Economic Policy Association—were central players in the rebuilding of Asian Studies in Japan after World War II. Five years after his local newspaper appeal, their dream came true. In 1958, the government of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke established Ajiken under the auspices of MITI. This occurred after the Trio held a crucial meeting with Kishi. As its master 4

Itagaki Yoichi, Zoku ajia to no taiwa (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 1988), 213–16. Original articles, “Ajia Kenkyūjo o,” were published on January 31, 1953 and September 4, 1953.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

63

planner, Itagaki played a central role in the Institute’s establishment; however, he could not have realized his dream without the help of Kishi and the “Manchuria Network”—a group of powerful politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and business leaders who had high positions in Japan’s wartime puppet colony of Manchukuo. Kishi was a key figure in the construction of Japan’s developmentalist state based on his earlier experiences as Deputy Minister for Industrial Development, when he became the architect of colonial Manchukuo’s economy, which emphasized the state’s monopolization over the power to guide industry, regulate commerce, control foreign exchange, expand welfare policy, and raise national income. Many Manchukuo bureaucrats returned to Japan during the war to design Japan’s total wartime mobilization system (e.g. Kishi as Minister of Commerce and Industry), and they became key figures in Konoe’s reformist group. In fact, most of Konoe’s supporters during the war, including Itagaki, were strongly anticommunist and committed to the notion of the developmentalist state. While after the war Itagaki got close to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a party opposed to Kishi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), their shared view of state-led developmentalism and aid policy toward Southeast Asia ultimately led to the establishment of the bipartisan institution, Ajiken, and its institutionalization of Asian Studies in Japan. With the strong backing of Kishi—who became a key powerbroker in postwar Japanese politics—and the Manchuria Network, Itagaki helped reconfigure Japan’s Asian Studies knowledge infrastructure toward decolonized Asia in the postwar period based on the legacies of the extensive research infrastructure that many in the Manchuria Network helped create in colonial Manchuria and extend into occupied China during the wartime era. Itagaki and his colleagues also found enthusiastic support in another key member of the Manchuria Network—Fujisaki Nobuyuki, a former Manchukuo official who became a key facilitator of Japan’s reentry into Asia after the war. They received additional support from MITI and the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) since Asia was a fundamentally important market for the Japanese economy. Old colonial networks were thus reconfigured in the 1950s, whereby government and business took over important roles in shaping and defining Japan’s relationship with Asia, replacing the imperial Japanese military.

Rebuilding the knowledge infrastructure: The Japanese Association for Asian Studies (JAAS) The first step towards institutionalizing Asian Studies in postwar Japan was the establishment of JAAS. JAAS today is one of the largest academic societies for area studies, covering various fields in the social sciences and humanities. When it started in 1953, however, it was a small organization that relied on government support. It was also predominantly a China Studies association. China Studies, which occupied a central position in Asian Studies in prewar Japan, found itself in a precarious position in the immediate postwar years. Many Asia specialists had earlier belonged to institutions that facilitated Japan’s colonization and occupation of China, such as the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway in Manchukuo, Tōa Dōbun Shoin University in Shanghai, and the East Asia

64

Engineering Asia

Research Institute. With the collapse of Japan’s empire, these large research institutions disappeared, and the political tide within Asian Studies reversed. Socialist and communist specialists of China and scholars of Marxism, suppressed and jailed during wartime, proudly and energetically began to publish and became active through associations such as the Communist Party-led Association of Democratic Scientists (Minshushugi Kagakusha Kyōkai; or Minka), the Historical Science Society of Japan (Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai), and the Society of Contemporary China Research (Gendai Chūgoku Gakkai).5 Those who had worked in the wartime establishment as well as in the postwar Japanese government feared that China Studies was being taken over by communists and leftists. This was the background for the establishment of JAAS. Japanese policy-makers needed non-leftist China scholars, especially after the establishment of the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949. The day after its establishment, the USSR recognized the communist regime instead of the Republic of China (Taiwan) endorsed by the West, and from 1950 the Kremlin supported Beijing’s demand for a seat at the United Nations (the PRC finally joined the UN in 1971). The brief friendship between Beijing and Moscow—which turned into an ideological battle by the early 1960s and into border confrontations in the late 1960s—cast a powerful shadow over Japan. The Yoshida government wanted to maintain connections with the PRC, since China had been Japan’s largest market before 1945. However, the PRC fighting on the North Korean side during the Korean War made it extremely difficult to maintain such a diplomatic policy. By the end of 1951, the Yoshida government yielded to American demands to announce Japan’s official recognition of Taiwan over the PRC.6 The Japanese government nevertheless could not simply ignore the communist regime. Although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) desired information about the PRC, Japan did not have any diplomatic outposts on the mainland (there was only one Consulate General in British Hong Kong). With the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty opening up Japan’s diplomatic relations and the two-China problem looming large for the Japanese government, in 1952 MOFA began a monthly workshop on Asia policy, inviting non-leftist Asia specialists.7 The official founders of JAAS, Ueda Toshio at the University of Tokyo and Hanabusa Nagamichi at Keio University, both scholars of modern Chinese international relations, were among those invited to the MOFA study group. At that time, Ueda was compiling diplomatic documents for MOFA whose archival activities had resumed after the war.8 Hanabusa also worked for MOFA from 1942 to 1948 as a part-time advisor.9

5 6

7

8

9

Baba Kimihiko, Sengo nihonjin no chūgoku zō (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2010), 403–4. Iokibe Makoto, ed., Sengo nihon gaikōshi (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1999), 74. The UK recognized the PRC in 1950. Hanabusa Nagamichi et al., “(Sairoku zadankai) Ajia seikei gakkai no sanjū-nen,” in Ajia seikei gakkai yonjū-nen shōshi hensan iinkai, ed. Ajia seikei gakkai no yonjū-nen (Kanagawa: Ajia seikei gakkai, 1993), 38–9. Gaimushō Hyakunen-shi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Gaimushō no hyakunen, 2 (Tokyo: Hara shobō, 1979), 1305. Regarding Hanabusa Nagamichi, see Hanabusa Nagamichi Hakase Kanreki Kinen Ronbunshū Hensan Iinkai, ed., Gaikōshi oyobi kokusai seiji no shomondai (Tokyo: Keiō tsūshin, 1962).

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

65

Ueda and Hanabusa were among those scholars who felt marginalized by leftist China specialists and wanted to create their own academic society. In their retrospective discussion held in 1983, Hanabusa, Kawano, and China historian Etō Shinkichi recalled how MOFA bureaucrats facilitated their efforts to establish an organization consisting of non-communist, non-Marxist scholars. While their recollections emphasized “empirical studies” and “political neutrality,” they could not have been completely aloof of politics; some key China specialists involved in JAAS were in fact trained in Japan’s Consulate General in Hong Kong and already involved in MOFA policy-making, and hence closely tied to the Japanese government’s efforts to re-establish relations with Asian nations for the postwar era.10 MOFA financially supported the formation and maintenance of JAAS. In 1957, it authorized the Association as a legally incorporated body.11 JAAS in fact is only one of several academic associations to have legal status as a “foundational juridical person” (zaidan hōjin).12 According to Matsumoto Saburō, the ninth president of JAAS in the 1980s, approximately 65 percent of the JAAS total annual budget came from MOFA’s subsidies in its first years; even in the early 1990s, about 30 percent of the organization’s budget came from MOFA’s China Division.13 In 1958, JAAS began its quarterly journal, Ajia kenkyū (Asian Studies). According to Itagaki, JAAS was able to start this journal because “the society began on a robust financial base, which was different from the situation for most other academic groups.”14 The majority of JAAS members were (and still are) specialists on China. MOFA’s China Division supported the Association, and Chinese political history professor Ueda Toshio became its first president (1953–64). Itagaki said that, “in terms of the number of members and amount of academic output, scholars on China predominated. They were the driving forces in the beginning.”15 The centrality of China Studies in Asian Studies in Japan was, of course, nothing new. In Japanese academia, geographical specialties have conventionally been divided into three areas: Japan, East (Orient) and West (Occident). Chairs have been established accordingly; for example, as “Japanese Economic History,” “Oriental Economic History,” and “Occidental Economic History.” In the interwar and wartime years, most Japanese universities held chairs specifically for China Studies in disciplines such as history, literature, and politics. China Studies was well supported outside the academy as well. Mitsubishi’s Iwasaki family established the Oriental Library (Tōyō Bunko), a major library for Oriental Studies, in 1924, and the Japanese government opened the School of Oriental Culture (Tōhō Bunka Gakuin) in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1929. Overseas, a private academy, the Tōa Dōbun Shoin University in Shanghai, trained more than 5,000 Chinese and Japanese students for 10 11

12

13 14 15

“Ajia seikei gakkai no sanjū-nen,” 37–9. Matsumoto Saburō et al., “(Zadankai) Saikin jū-nen no gakkai katsudō no sōkatsu to kongo no tenbō,” in Ajia seikei gakkai no yonjū-nen, 8 and “(Sairoku zadankai) Ajia seikei gakkai no sanjūnen,” in Ajia seikei gakkai no yonjū-nen, 38. Regarding JAAS, see the JAAS website (http://www.jaas.or.jp/). JAAS is no longer financially supported by MOFA and is a non-profit organization today. “Saikin jū-nen no gakkai katsudō,” 7–8. “Saikin jū-nen no gakkai katsudō,” 40–1. Interview with Itagaki on March 9, 2000.

66

Engineering Asia

the purpose of “Japan–China Friendship” from 1901 to 1945. Perhaps most famously, the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway also housed and trained a considerable number of researchers on China. China therefore had long been the most established area of Asian Studies in Japan.16 It was this colonial China research network that developed very sophisticated research on economic development and sociocultural studies on the different peoples and regions of China during the war, and therefore, it was somewhat natural for the postwar Asian Studies knowledge infrastructure to begin with a focus on China. The fact that the Trio, who were Southeast Asia specialists, occupied the top positions of JAAS for twelve years (1964–76) attests to their significant contributions to the organization. Yet, it also reflected the weak state of Southeast Asian Studies in Japan since they did not have their own institutional base. The Japanese Empire did have research centers in South and Southeast Asia before 1945. The Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway had a Southeast Asia Section, and there was also the Pacific Association (Taiheiyō Kyōkai) established in 1938 for the study of the Asia-Pacific region that was mobilized by the Imperial Army to conduct a research project on Southeast Asia from 1942 to 1945. Itagaki himself conducted research on the specificities of colonial Southeast Asian economies and the problems of governing multiethnic colonial societies. These Southeast Asia-focused institutions, however, disappeared with the Japanese empire’s collapse in 1945. Unlike China Studies, which also lost similar institutions in the empire but continued to have academic positions and institutions at universities after the war, Southeast Asia specialists lost their institutional base just as it was being formed. Itagaki believed that Japan needed a central institution for Asian Studies that would encompass the entirety of Asia—not just China/East Asia, but also Southeast Asia. Together with his fellow Southeast Asianists, Kawano and Yamamoto, he was driven by a dream to establish a comprehensive research institution equipped with adequate staff, resources, and facilities. The establishment of an academic society was one step toward this goal, but not nearly enough. After the establishment of JAAS, the Trio therefore worked harder to realize their dream, with the help of politicians, business leaders, economic bureaucrats, and the Manchuria Network.

The Manchuria Network and the expansion of the Asian Studies knowledge complex: The Asian Affairs Research Group As mentioned earlier, the Manchuria Network played an essential role in actualizing the Trio’s dream. Itagaki could not have established Ajiken without the support of these leading Manchuria figures, particularly Kishi, the architect of wartime Manchukuo and Prime Minister of Japan in the late 1950s. Among them, Fujisaki Nobuyuki stands out as the mastermind, who successfully established other academic institutions besides 16

Regarding Japan’s oriental history and its geographical and historical recognition, see Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993).

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

67

Ajiken. He himself was not a scholar, bureaucrat, businessman, or politician. However, he excelled at bringing together economists, government officials, politicians, and business executives to realize his vision. Fujisaki was born in 1910 as the second son of a colonial officer in Taiwan. He studied folklore studies and Chinese philosophy at Keio University in Tokyo, and then went to Datong College (Daidō Gakuin), Manchukuo’s government school, which produced its public servants.17 He started working in 1936 as a local government official in Manchukuo until he was conscripted into the Imperial Army in 1944 and sent to Cheju Island in Korea, where he was tasked with analyzing foreign broadcasts. After the war, Fujisaki lived in Tokyo and worked for an opinion poll company. Fujisaki was a pan-Asian idealist who believed in the cause of Asian co-prosperity, which thoroughly permeated Japan’s colonial research institutions. Fujisaki did not doubt that “Japan must be Asia’s eldest brother” and that the creation of a multiethnic Manchukuo under Japan would bring peace and prosperity to Asia. He continued to insist, even after Japan’s defeat, that he “would never change his mind” in support of the principles supposedly embodied by Manchukuo, such as the proclaimed idea of cooperation among various ethnicities and nations.18 While many Japanese, including Kishi, held pan-Asianist views, Fujisaki’s ideas originated in his “romanticism,” as described by many of his friends, rather than from economic or strategic considerations.19 According to one of his colleagues, it was “not clear whether Mr. Fujisaki had any sense of responsibility about” Japan’s wartime aggression, especially Japan’s “unfortunate relationship” with China. Fujisaki’s nonacademic, “naïve or innocent” view sometimes created conflicts with scholars in the postwar research organizations he established such as Ajiken, while many colleagues respected his administrative contributions.20 It was his unwavering utopian belief in pan-Asian idealism, however, that led him to devote his entire postwar life to creating associations, schools, and research institutions that promoted relations with Asia and Asia-related scholarship. Fujisaki explained his motivations for developing Asian Studies in a short essay he wrote under the pen name of Kishi Reisuke (clearly a play on Kishi Nobusuke’s name). Fujisaki apparently used Kishi’s name to acknowledge Kishi’s important role in establishing Asian Studies in Japan. According to this essay, Fujisaki assisted with the closure of Manchukuo’s embassy in Tokyo after the war, worked for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers headquarters, and then began working for a polling company in the late 1940s. He did not have any personal connections to panAsianist scholars at the time, but was firmly convinced that Japan needed to deepen its

17

18

19 20

For more about the life of Fujisaki Nobuyuki, see Itagaki Yoichi, ed., Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō ajia ni michi o motomete (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 1985). Fujisaki Nobuyuki, “Kokusai kyōryoku to Tōyō shisō,” and Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō ajia ni michi o motomete, 83. Fujisaki’s romantic idealism is also manifested in the fact that he sympathized with those young army officers who, in 1936, attempted a failed but violent anti-capitalist coup. Fujisaki idealized preindustrial communities based on mutual help and criticized the materialism of industrialized society. Suehiro Akira, “Sengo nihon no ajia kenkyū,” Shakai kagaku kenkyū 48, no. 4 (1997): 45. Itagaki Yoichi, Kawano Shigetō, Yamamoto Noboru et al., “Kaisō no Fujisaki-san,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 252.

68

Engineering Asia

knowledge about Asia in order to take on a leadership role as the region’s “big brother.”21 He visited his mentor from Keio University, Koizumi Shinzō (University President at the time), and discussed his ambitions to develop Asian Studies in Japan. Koizumi then introduced Fujisaki to Kada Tetsuji, Keio University’s Professor of Colonial Economic Policy and contributor to the Konoe cabinet’s New Order plan during the war. Through Kada, Fujisaki became acquainted with the Trio and Akamatsu Kaname, Itagaki’s colleague at Hitotsubashi and former boss of the Imperial Army’s research team.22 This is how Itagaki and Kawano joined Fujisaki’s new initiative, the Asian Affairs Research Group, while Yamamoto studied abroad in Germany.23 The group began its activities in December 1951. The Manchurian connection was crucial for the new research organization. Kishi, the nucleus of the Manchuria Network, was their most powerful supporter. Kishi provided the political and financial support that Fujisaki could not do without. Both Kishi and Fujisaki were part of the Manchukuo government in the late 1930s, although Fujisaki, being a mere local officer, had little chance of knowing Kishi, who became the Deputy Minister for Industrial Development of Manchukuo in 1935. He managed to meet Kishi only in early 1953 through personal connections. At that time, Kishi was purged from public office and banned from becoming a member of the Diet.24 Kishi, Manchukuo’s chief economic planner as well as Minister of Commerce and Industry for the Tōjō administration, was arrested for war crimes in 1945, but was released from Sugamo Prison in late 1948. Before the general election of April 1953, Kishi met Fujisaki for the first time, and Fujisaki introduced him to the Asian Affairs Research Group he had started. Kishi advised Fujisaki to create a post of Governor of the Board under President Ogata Taketora (Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s lieutenant at the time) for Kishi’s close associate, Ishii Yasushi. Kishi’s classmate Ishii was a former diplomat with experience in several nations in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.25 Kishi also arranged to include another friend of his in the group—Miwa Jusō, a founder of the wartime Social Masses Party. Miwa was also Kishi’s classmate from Tokyo Imperial University and served as Kishi’s defense counsel at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. In 1955, Kishi combined his Japan Democratic Party with the Liberal Party to form the LDP, soon after Miwa contributed to the unification of the Left and Right Factions of the SDP in 1955.26 The Asian Affairs Research Group’s trustees consisted of parliament members, as well as university professors and former bureaucrats.27 Thus, 21 22 23 24 25

26

27

Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki. Kishi, “Ajiken no genryū,” 86–92. Kawano Shigetō, “Ajia ni michi o hiraku,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 198. Kishi made a political comeback in April 1953 and Ogata made his own in October 1952. Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 93–9. When Kishi launched a wartime party (Gokoku dōshikai) against the Tōjō group in March 1945 (after leaving the Tōjō cabinet), some socialists from a proletarian party joined the Kishi group, out of which some became leaders of the LDP while some organized socialist parties after World War II. And when the SDP had an internal struggle leading to its dissolution in October 1951, Kishi approached the SDP Right Faction with an interest in joining the Right Socialists. Ajia mondai, no. 6 (July 1953): 50–1.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

69

through Kishi, Fujisaki was able to enlist political support from both conservatives and social democrats, and therefore incorporate key politicians who provided muchneeded political capital for the construction of a postwar academic Asian Studies knowledge complex. The Asian Affairs Research Group was a think tank for Asian affairs, which attracted Itagaki and his colleagues to actively participate and eventually part from the more China-focused JAAS. Echoing some of the pan-Asianist language of Japan’s colonial research institutions in the new context of the postwar period, the group announced that its goal was “to study the important issues of Asia such as politics, economy, society, culture and religion, and to contribute to Asia’s prosperity and welfare.” The group expanded its influence through frequent meetings and publications. It started a typescript monthly magazine, Ajia Mondai (Asian Affairs), in July 1953. Fujisaki and the Trio took charge of the editorial work and published sixty issues between 1953 and 1958. Each issue contained feature articles covering such diverse topics as “trade with Southeast Asia,” “the rehabilitation of Korea,” “China’s Five Year Plan,” “the current situation of Ceylon,” “Asian democracy,” and “the Near and Middle East and Asia’s economy.” Contributors also came from diverse backgrounds, and included businessmen, politicians, academics, journalists, and public and international workers.28 The magazine was policy-oriented rather than academic and focused on contemporary issues. Through this publication, the group developed strong connections with MOFA. Its trustee meetings and study groups regularly included MOFA bureaucrats and Asia specialists.29 It was expected that the Asian Affairs Research Group would acquire legal status as an incorporated body under MOFA’s jurisdiction. In this manner, Japan’s key Asia bureaucrats became essential parts of the Asian Studies knowledge complex, along with important politicians, from very early on. However, the think tank still did not have enough money to recruit full-time researchers. Much of the research was done through the generous cooperation of university scholars such as Itagaki. The group decided in June 1953 to establish two research committees—one each for China and Southeast Asia—and to hold regular public lectures.30 Itagaki and Kawano led the planning of research activities and each research committee had two study groups, one for empirical research and the other for policy research.31 The Asian Affairs Research Group also organized outreach activities such as public lectures by influential politicians and businessmen. Its first public lecture in July 1953 was sponsored by one of the most widely circulated conservative pro-LDP dailies, the Yomiuri, and the group’s President Ogata (Deputy Prime Minister under Yoshida), Keio University Professor Kada (economist), Diet member Kogane Yoshiteru (the Yoshida administration’s special envoy to Southeast Asia on reparations issues in 1953), and business leader Asao Shinsuke (CEO of Nippon Yūsen) delivered speeches at this event. Ogata explained the group’s mission. He emphasized that Japan was a 28 29 30 31

Suehiro, “Sengo nihon no ajia kenkyū,” 46–9. Ajia mondai 3, no. 2 (February 1954): 50, 116. Ajia mondai, no. 6 (July 1953): 50–1. Ajia mondai, no. 7 (August 1953): 66.

70

Engineering Asia

member not only of the Western “free world,” but also of Asia, and that only Asians could understand Asia. In addition, he maintained, the liberation and prosperity of Southeast Asia was the only road to world peace. He urged Japan to take up the mission of conducting more research on Asia and concluded his speech with his personal slogan, “We are the bridge between Asia and the West.”32 Itagaki and Kawano soon incorporated this slogan into the group’s official research guidelines. The group’s members believed that Asia, especially Southeast Asia (since much of East Asia was now part of the Communist Bloc), was an important area for the world political economy, and they defined their mission as one of providing the intellectual tools for the building of bridges between Asia and the West. In this manner, pan-Asianist desire originating from the wartime-colonial era adjusted to new Cold War realities, whereby Japan was being primed as a beacon of economic prosperity and liberal democracy in Asia under American auspices. Thus, early institutions like the Asian Affairs Research group that formed the postwar Asian Studies knowledge complex were deeply connected to Japan’s geopolitical and geostrategic designs in Asia. This emphasis on Japan’s role in the new Cold War world order, however, invited criticism from the left, which viewed Japan’s new conservative domestic order as a return to wartime authoritarianism (involving some of the same wartime figures) and criticized Japan’s security alliance with the USA as participation in American neoimperialism, and therefore a betrayal of Japan’s postwar pacifism. With this vigorous left critique in the background, President Ogata, Board Head Ishii, and Trustee Miwa all emphasized “fairness and impartiality,” “pure research,” and “objective and scientific analysis” as their overall directions of study and interest.33 Fujisaki needed to defend the Group by labeling any criticism of their activities as “biased.”34 Criticism from the left was unavoidable, however, when Kishi was not only a political supporter, but also a financial sponsor of the Group. Fujisaki called Kishi the “Chairman of the Treasury” in his essay. Kishi himself was financially supported by business giant Fujiyama Aiichirō, who became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Kishi administration (1957–60).35 Some of Kishi’s biographers mention that Kishi’s wealth even came from the wartime opium trade in Manchukuo.36 In the group’s early years, Kishi provided cash to Fujisaki monthly and told him to lobby Ogata for funds. Ogata did not have enough to financially help the group. However, when Ogata became Chief Cabinet Secretary (1952–3) and subsequently Deputy Prime Minister (1953–4) of the fourth and fifth Yoshida cabinets, he commissioned the group to conduct research through the Cabinet Research Office, which he established himself in 1952. Itagaki led a government-commissioned project and reported on communist activities in Southeast 32 33

34 35 36

Ogata Taketora, “Yori yoku ajia o shiru tame ni,” Ajia mondai, no. 7 (August 1953): 64–5. Ishii Yasushi, “Ajia no heiwa to hanei no tame ni,” Ajia mondai, no.  6 (July 1953): 1; Miwa Jusō, “Chōsa kenkyū kikan no tadashii arikata,” Ajia mondai, no.  11 (December 1953): 2–3; and Ishii Yasushi, “Atarashii jidai no chōsa kikan no unmei ni tsuite,” Ajia mondai 3, no.  1 (January 1954): 2–3. Ajia mondai 3, no. 1 (January 1954): 131. Hosokawa Ryūichirō, Kishi Nobusuke (Tokyo: Jiji tsūshinsha, 1986). For example, Mark Driscoll, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–1945 (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010) and Hara Yoshihisa, Kishi Nobusuke (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten 1995), 74–6.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

71

Asia.37 Thus, the government’s anti-communist agenda brought Itagaki and his fellow researchers together under a common research program. While publicly insisting on the Group’s objective, non-partisan character, in reality, much of its research agenda was being shaped by the Japanese government’s Cold War policy toward Asia, as state and political patronage of the Asian Studies knowledge complex increased. While Ishii found it acceptable to receive patronage from his personal friend Kishi, Fujisaki was ashamed that the Asian Affairs Research Group depended on Kishi and Ogata like a “prodigal son.”38 To remedy this situation, the group started to raise funds by collecting “small amounts of money from many companies.”39 In fact, many leading heavy industrial companies, including the Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Fujiyama groups, supported the group by paying for advertisements in Ajia Mondai.40 In this context, Japan’s business community also began taking a much more influential role in shaping Japan’s Asian Studies knowledge complex.

Asian Studies and the “iron triangle” of business, government, and politics: The Asia Association The first major step by the Japanese government to establish an institution that provided detailed knowledge and analysis necessary for its increasing activities in Asia was the formation of the Asia Association in October 1954. The Asia Association was established to unify seven quasi-governmental associations, including Fujisaki’s Asian Affairs Research Group. This was a MOFA initiative under the Yoshida government’s 1953 policy to: (1) bring a swift conclusion to the issue of reparations for Asian countries occupied by Japan during the war; (2) publicly support economic cooperation projects hitherto conducted by the private sector; (3) establish a central organization to coordinate economic cooperation in Asia; and (4) begin economic cooperation with South Asian countries that did not claim wartime compensation.41 In line with the Yoshida administration’s policy, MOFA’s Asia Bureau and big business leaders established the Asian Economy Council (Ajia Keizai Kondankai) in June 1953. This was MOFA’s effort to expand its influence over the business community, which was already beginning to pursue opportunities throughout Asia.

37

38 39 40

41

Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 101–2 and Ajia Kyōkai, ed. Tōnan ajia no ippan jōsei (Tokyo: Ajia kyōkai, 1957). Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 102. Kishi, “Ajiken no genryū,” 100. Ajia mondai, no. 8 (September 1953): 76 and 80. A fraud case shows how well the institute was trusted in business circles: two swindlers impersonating “staff of the Institute of Asian Affairs” defrauded several companies of money. The institute charged them with financial fraud, and although it had no legal responsibility for the incident, the think tank gave the swindlers’ victims membership status free of charge. Hatano Sumio, “‘Tōnan ajia kaihatsu’ o meguru nichi-bei-ei kankei,” Nenpō kindai Nihon kenkyū, no. 16 (1994): 219–20; Suehiro Akira, “Keizai saishuppatsu e no michi,” in Sengo kaikaku to sono isan (Sengo nihon senryō to sengo kaikaku 6-kan), ed. Nakamura Masanori et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1995), 230–1.

72

Engineering Asia

The Asia Association was authorized as a public sector organization by both MOFA and MITI in June 1954.42 Its official English name was the Society for Economic Cooperation in Asia, and its mission was “to promote greater understanding with the nations of Asia through closer mutual cooperation toward the improvement of industrial techniques, the advancement of economies, and the preservation and dissemination of cultures.”43 Most board members were business leaders: energy industry tycoon Matsunaga Yasuzaemon became honorary president, and Kishi’s sponsor Fujiyama Aiichirō, at the time Chairman of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, became president. Compared to the Asian Affairs Research Group, the new Asia Association had a more explicitly policy-oriented platform whose mission was to orchestrate government–business relations and facilitate Japan’s return to the Asian market in the form of “economic cooperation” or development aid. The Asia Association played a significant role in advancing Japan’s war reparations projects in Asia. It organized industry groups to collect opinions and ideas about potential reparations projects and encouraged trade and investment. These activities took place at the time when Japan was concluding reparations treaties with Southeast Asian nations in the 1950s.44 Reparations projects, as discussed in Chapter 1, were crucial avenues by which Japanese companies could gain access to Asian markets. For small to midsized companies especially, the association functioned as an important channel through which to communicate with the Japanese government and Asian leaders. For example, in November 1954, Japan and Burma signed a reparations treaty. Immediately, the Asia Association established a Reparations Committee and a Burma Committee, and sent senior executive Hon’inden Yoshio to Burma.45 Hon’inden was a specialist on agricultural cooperative movements during the war who moved from Tokyo Imperial University to the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai), Japan’s mass organization for wartime mobilization. Due to his wartime policy-making career, he was banned from taking public positions, including teaching posts, until 1950. Asia Association executives Hon’inden and Kubota Yutaka (president of the engineering consultancy, Nippon Kōei; see Chapter 4) also joined the government delegation to Burma in December 1954.46 When the Hatoyama government concluded a reparations treaty with the Philippines in 1956, Asia Association President Fujiyama and Vice President Nagano Mamoru served as negotiators between the two governments.47 The Asia Association also co-organized reception parties with business associations and media companies on the occasions of visits by Asian delegates and leaders, including Elpidio Quirino (June 1955) and Jose Laurel, Jr. (September 1955) from the 42

43 44

45 46 47

Kajima Heiwa Kenkyujō, ed. Nihon no keizai kyōryoku (Taigai keizai kyōryoku taikei 5) (Tokyo: Kajima heiwa kenkyujō shuppankai, 1973), 33–4. Ajia mondai 1, no. 2 (October 1954): 124. Ajia mondai 3, no. 2 (August 1955): 144; Ajia mondai 3, no. 4 (October 1955): 128; and Ajia mondai 7, no. 4 (October 1957): 128. Ajia mondai 1, no. 3 (November 1954): 144. Ajia mondai 1, no. 4 (December 1954): 136. Fujiyama Aiichirō, “Taihi baishō no kaiketsu ni atarite,” Keidanren geppō (June 1956).

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

73

Philippines, U Nu (July 1955) from Burma, Jawaharlal Nehru (October 1957) from India, and Mohammad Hatta (October 1957) from Indonesia. President Fujiyama joined Japan’s delegation to the Bandung Conference as an advisor in 1955 and visited the Philippines as Prime Minister Hatoyama’s special envoy in 1956. Fujiyama finally became Foreign Minister during the Kishi government (1957–1960).48 The Asia Association hosted luncheons in honor of Prime Minister Kishi as well as Japanese ambassadors to Southeast Asian countries such as South Vietnam and India and for international conferences.49 In sum, the Asia Association assisted the Japanese government in mediating between Japanese businesses and the leaders and experts of Asian nations seeking to use wartime reparations for economic development projects. The association was the product of the coalescing of the “iron triangle” of business, the political world, and the bureaucracy around the Japanese government’s project of reentering Asia by means of wartime reparations and technical aid to Asia. For Itagaki and his colleagues, this increased government investment in Japan’s Asian Studies knowledge infrastructure provided further opportunities for finally establishing a unified, comprehensive Asian Studies research institute. The Trio were concerned that agendas related to academic research would become less important under the Asia association, and their fears were soon confirmed. The most important work of the association turned out to be the coordination of technical training programs established under the Colombo Plan, the UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA) and US aid programs. MOFA basically outsourced these tasks to the Asia Association. Fujisaki later described what this work entailed: “Visiting all those Japanese host companies, receiving trainees at Haneda Airport, and bringing them to Japanese companies. Simple. It was nothing more than what a travel agent would do.”50 The Association received major funding from the government to administer technical training programs. For its first fiscal year (1954), out of a total budget of 60 million yen, 30 million yen came from MOFA and 5 million yen came from MITI.51 In 1956, nearly 80 percent of the budget came from MOFA—38,462,000 yen as a subsidy and 68,262,000 yen as a grant for Colombo Plan programs—while its own revenue from sources such as membership fees only amounted to 30 million yen.52 In 1958, MOFA’s contribution increased to 215,600,000 yen.53 The rapid increase in MOFA’s payments to the Asia Association reflected the expansion of Japanese technical cooperation

48

49

50

51 52 53

When Fujiyama was appointed as minister, he did not have a seat in parliament (under Japan’s postwar constitution, it is possible for people outside of parliament to join the cabinet). In 1958, however, he left the business world for the Diet. Ajia mondai 3, no. 5 (November 1955): 128; Ajia mondai 5, no. 3 (August 1956): 136; Ajia mondai 6, no. 4 (April 1957): 136; Ajia mondai 7, no. 2 (July 1957): 128; Ajia mondai 7, no. 5 (November 1957): 128. Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 104. By December 15, 1955, the Association had received 286 Asians, including 76 Taiwanese, 62 Indians, and 36 Indonesians, while 13 Japanese specialists were sent to Asian countries. Ajia mondai 3, no. 6 (December 1955): 128. Kajia Heiwa Kenkyūjo, ed., Nihon no keizai kyōryoku, 35. Ajia mondai 4, no. 3 (March 1956): 136. Ajia mondai 7, no. 6 (December 1957): 132.

74

Engineering Asia

programs during the 1950s. This state investment dwarfed earlier investment by the government in Asian Studies institutions that Itagaki and his colleagues were involved in. For example, JAAS annually received 3,500,000 yen from the government, while Fujisaki’s Asian Affairs Research Group was not government supported, but funded privately by Kishi.54 Thus, as Japan increased its presence in Asia through technical aid programs, it also greatly increased its investment in the Asian Studies knowledge complex.

Practical vs. academic knowledge: Research activities in the association Itagaki and his fellow researchers quickly became frustrated, however, despite the fact that the research division budget was larger than ever. In 1956, when total expenditures were 136,724,000 yen, only 11 percent (15,729,000 yen) went to “research related purposes.”55 While the Association’s budget increased thanks to government funding, funds for research were still not considered to be a priority. There were not sufficient funds, for example, to employ and train young researchers or to establish an Asia library.56 Fujisaki continued to publish the monthly journal, Ajia Mondai. According to economist Suehiro Akira, the journal was “an unprecedented enterprise aimed at quickly providing thorough information about Asia.” Suehiro also gives credit to Ajia Mondai as one of the first journals that introduced developmental economics emerging in the USA in the 1950s to Japanese readers.57 Between 1956 and 1961, they also published an English quarterly journal, Asian Affairs, with translated articles from Ajia Mondai, to publicize Japanese development projects in Asia.58 Fujisaki, who became chief of the Association’s Research and Investigation Department (modeled after the Asian Affairs Research Group) in April 1955, was an “education-oriented” person, and it was on his initiative that the Asia Association carried out its publishing activities to promote mutual understanding between Southeast Asia and Japan.59 For example, the Asia Association published a comprehensive book of information on Southeast Asia, covering the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, in 1957.60

54 55 56 57 58

59

60

“Saikin jū-nen no gakkai katsudō,” 38–9. Ajia mondai 4, no. 3 (March 1956): 136. Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 105. Suehiro, “Sengo nihon no ajia kenkyū,” 49. The association’s other English-language publications included pamphlets on Japanese agriculture, industry, and fisheries, which served as public relations for technical training programs. See, for example, Ajia Kyōkai, Smaller Industry in Japan (Tokyo: Ajia kyōkai, 1957) and Ajia Kyōkai, Japanese Fisheries (Tokyo: Ajia kyōkai, 1957). Itagaki Yoichi, Kawano Shigetō, Yamamoto Noboru et al., “Kaisō no Fujisaki-san,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 245. Ajia Kyōkai, ed., Tōnan ajia seiji keizai sōran, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 1957). The second volume on India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaya, Singapore, Ceylon, Borneo, Sarawak, and Brunei was planned but never published.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

75

The Asia Association’s research activities mainly focused on education, publicity, and information exchange for business people and policy-makers, rather than deep academic research. Examples were an intensive Burmese language course supported by the Burmese Embassy and a public lecture on reparations to the Philippines given by Association President Fujiyama, as well as a seminar series on reparations in which senior MOFA and MITI bureaucrats were invited to participate.61 The association had regular meetings in which university Asian Studies specialists delivered presentations on various contemporary issues. However, most of the presentations were field reports by government economists, foreign correspondents, and company researchers who had recently returned from Asian countries.62 These activities reflected the strong policy and commercial orientation of the Asia Association’s audience. Academic scholars faced two problems. First, it was difficult for them to visit Asia for financial and political reasons after World War II. Second, the association’s audience and membership wanted quick and useful information on current events in Asia rather than academic knowledge. At that time, due to a shortage of foreign currency, Japan restricted travel by its citizens overseas. Scholars who wished to travel and study overseas would have to rely on foreign grants such as the West German government’s scholarship and the Rockefeller Foundation’s scholarship that enabled Yamamoto and Itagaki, respectively, to study abroad. In contrast, the reparation/technical aid projects provided Japanese businesses with more access to Southeast Asia and therefore opportunities to increase trade relationships. The academic community, on the other hand, lost much of its ability to conduct field research after the retreat of the Japanese colonial and military forces. Therefore, after the war, there were many “Asia-hand” business leaders, such as president of the Japan Foreign Trade Council, Inagaki Heitarō (jokingly called “Burmese”), who often visited Southeast Asia on economic missions and as political representatives.63 Despite the association’s expanded range of activities and increasing connections to powerful men, Itagaki and his colleagues were not fully satisfied since they were still unsuccessful in establishing a research institute with full-time researchers who did not merely produce instrumental knowledge for business. In the end, the Trio and Fujisaki left the Asia Association in 1962, when it was renamed the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA) and officially became MOFA’s auxiliary agency for technical aid programs. The Asia Association’s resources had mostly focused on technical aid programs due to inter-ministerial struggles (see Chapter 2),64 even though it housed five departments (General Affairs, Finance, Technical Assistance, Economic Cooperation, and Research) in the secretariat and six committees (Reparations, Agriculture, Technology, Fisheries, Burma, and Finance).65

61

62 63

64 65

Ajia mondai 4, no. 2 (February 1956): 144; Ajia mondai 4, no. 6 (June 1956): 136; Ajia mondai 5, no. 3 (September 1956): 144. Ajia mondai 4, no. 2 (February 1956): 143–4. Inagaki Heitarō, “Tai biruma baishō no jisshi o mae ni shite,” Keidanren geppō (March 1955); and Inagaki Heitarō et al., “Tōnan-a no kinjō to keizai kyōryoku no hōkō,” Keidanren geppō (June 1956). Ajia mondai 3, no. 6 (December 1955): 128. Ajia mondai 1, no. 1 (September 1954): 130–1 and Ajia mondai 2, no. 4 (April 1955): 128.

76

Engineering Asia

In the 1950s, even though MOFA was technically in charge of international aid and war reparations matters, MITI generally commanded the right to supervise the actual execution of economic aid. At that time, the annual report (White Paper) on economic aid was not produced by MOFA, but by MITI. In 1957, former Asia Association president Fujiyama became Foreign Affairs Minister. This appointment meant that the Asia Association became even closer to MOFA, while the range of the Association’s activities narrowed and became more firmly subordinated to MOFA, for which technical aid was indeed not a priority. MOFA, “poor with budget acquisition,” instead prioritized the expansion of diplomatic outposts abroad rather than the invitation of foreign technical trainees. In fact, Fujisaki even had to appeal for a technical aid program budget directly from prime minister-to-be Kishi after negotiations with the Ministry of Finance failed miserably.66 For the business world, which worked closely with MITI, technical aid was less significant than MITI-sponsored aid projects, such as exporting goods and constructing dams and bridges overseas. It was no surprise, then, that industries did not donate to the Asia Association as much as expected, even when Kobayashi Ataru, a powerful businessman, succeeded Fujiyama and became the association’s new president.67 The Asia Association was finally merged into the OTCA, MOFA’s auxiliary arm covering Japan’s official development aid, in 1962.68 The OTCA later became the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Through their participation in the Asian Affairs Research Group and the Asia Association, Fujisaki and the Trio learned that the research programs under MOFA’s technical aid programs had no future. However, more importantly for the long-term future of Asian Studies, they forged important relationships with MITI and the business community, who were increasingly taking a more prominent role in guiding and implementing ODA. Thus, in 1957 they began lobbying for an Institute of Asian Studies through Prime Minister Kishi and MITI.

MITI and big business planning of a research institute: Realizing the development complex Despite ceasing to publish Ajia Mondai in 1958 and finally severing all relations with the Asia Association in 1962, the Trio and Fujisaki were still supported by Prime Minister Kishi (1957–60). Upon the initiative of the Trio and Fujisaki, business leaders in the Keidanren established the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs (Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, or Ajiken) in 1958 under MITI’s supervision. Through trial and error, Itagaki and his associates finally realized their dream of establishing an institute for the study of Asia, 66

67

68

Kishi Reisuke (Fujisaki Nobuyuki), “Ajiken no genryū,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 106–8. Ajia mondai 8, no.  1 (January 1958): 128. The “Big Four” (Zaikai shitennō) was composed of four influential business leaders who supported Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato and his group. The members consisted of Kobayashi, Mizuno Shigeo (a founding leader of the Japanese Association of Cooperate Executives), Nagano Shigeo (a leader of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry), and Sakurada Takeshi (a leader of the Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations). Matsui Ken, Keizai kyōryoku (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1983), 62 and Tsūshō Sangyōshō, Keizai kyōryoku no genjō to mondaiten 1962 (Tokyo: Tsūsan sangyō chōsakai, 1963), 299–301.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

77

which systematically employed and trained Asia specialists and collected documents and papers on Asia. They were assisted, however, by a fortuitous coming together of various political, diplomatic, and business interests during the Kishi administration. Independently of the efforts of the Trio and Fujisaki, MITI’s officials developed their own ideas about an institution that conducted comprehensive research on Asia. One of its bureaucrats, Hayashi Shintarō, a member of Japan’s wartime research complex who had studied at Manchukuo’s Kenkoku University and worked part time in the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway, made an internal proposal to establish a research institution similar to the Manchukuo think tank. MITI’s head of the Economic Cooperation Division adopted his suggestion. The new institution was to contribute to MITI’s policy-making on economic co-operation by collecting data in Asia on issues such as the economic impact of Japanese loans on India or the benefits of Japanese economic cooperation with Indonesia.69 Around the same time, some economists who had worked in the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railway during the war established the Japan Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) Association in 1953 under MOFA. They planned to expand this into a think tank with state patronage. However, MOFA was not interested in this type of research activity.70 Economists in the Japan ECAFE Association therefore co-operated with Fujisaki’s activities at the Asian Affairs Research Group and the Asia Association, and finally worked with the Trio to establish Ajiken. Business leaders also began making demands for a research institution to support their businesses in Southeast Asia. For example, Hara Yasusaburō, the head of a chemical company, remarked in 1953 that “there is no need to emphasize how important trade with Southeast Asian nations is for Japan, whose trade with China had virtually come to standstill.” Nagano Mamoru (vice president of the Asia Association) observed in 1954 that “there is no alternative for Japan but to develop Southeast Asia.” These were typical voices from the business community, especially from the trading companies as well as the heavy and chemical industries.71 Corporate leaders were in need of economic and technical advice on Southeast Asia so that they could send their own representatives to the region, since MOFA’s outposts were unsuitable for Japanese companies.72 Keidanren business leaders, recognizing the importance of the Asian market for the Japanese economy, established their own channels to Asia independent of MOFA and therefore required better-quality information and analysis on Asian economies and politics. Keidanren therefore became a strong supporter of establishing a strong Asian Studies knowledge complex, along with MITI and former wartime researchers (now bureaucrats or business people), which ultimately took the form of Ajiken. With this increasing support from government and business circles in the background, the Trio and Fujisaki took the lead in efforts to establish a comprehensive 69 70 71

72

Konaga Keiichi et al., “Fujisaki-san o shinobu,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 207–8. Konaga, “Fujisaki-san o shinobu,” 210. Hara Yasusaburō, “Baishō mondai to tōnan ajia shokoku no dōkō,” Keidanren geppō (March 1953) and Inagaki Heitarō et al., “Biruma baishō no jisshi to keizai teikei no shomondai,” Keidanren geppō (November 1954). Inagaki Heitarō et al., “Tōnan-a no kinjō,” 24–5.

78

Engineering Asia

Asian Studies research institute. The occasion for Ajiken’s establishment was the Trio’s audience with Prime Minister Kishi on August 26, 1957, which was reported by the national newspaper, Mainichi. Kishi, who had politically and financially supported Fujisaki’s activities from early on, became Prime Minister in February 1957 after holding important posts in the ruling party and the government, such as LDP Secretary General and Foreign Minister. In 1957, Itagaki was to depart for a period of study abroad on a Rockefeller Foundation grant from September, and on August 25, the editors of the Asia Association’s journal, the Trio, Fujisaki, and the economist Hara Kakuten held a farewell gathering for Itagaki at the hot springs resort of Hakone where Kishi was coincidently vacationing. At Itagaki’s farewell dinner, they discussed Japan’s economic policy for Asia and decided to communicate their discussions to Kishi. Fujisaki rang the Prime Minister’s secretary to make an appointment, and they were able to catch Kishi the next morning before he left for golf and had an eighty-minute meeting with the Prime Minister. Itagaki presented their ideas on Asia’s economic development and aid to Kishi and requested that the Prime Minister establish a research center to assist in these efforts. Kishi asked about the budget, and Itagaki requested “three billion yen” based on the wartime South Manchuria Railway Research Department’s budget. “I got it,” was the Prime Minister’s curt reply at the meeting’s conclusion.73 Ajiken was launched with 30 million yen from the government and 21 million yen from private companies in December 1958. Key figures from business, government, and academia with deep experience from the wartime era such as business leader Kobayashi Ataru (head of the Board of Trustees), Fujisaki (head of the Research Department), and Shibusawa Shōichi (head of the General Affairs Department, which mediated between Keidanren and MITI) were appointed to leadership positions at Ajiken. Thirteen business leaders, including Ishizaka Taizō (Keidanren president), and four scholars, Rōyama Masamichi, Yabe Teiji, Nakayama Ichirō, and Arisawa Hiromi, were appointed as advisors. Rōyama and Yabe, leading political scientists, had been influential advisors to the wartime Konoe administration, and Nakayama and Arisawa, prominent economists, played a critical role in orchestrating Japan’s highspeed economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s. Other economists such as Itagaki, Akamatsu, and Tōbata became trustees. Despite the presence of such big names, however, Ajiken began as a small think tank with nineteen full-time employees and an annual budget of 37,400,000 yen.74 Ajiken grew rapidly, however, as Japan increased its economic relations with Asian nations. In June 1959, Kobayashi became the institute’s president, and Tōbata became director upon Itagaki’s request. By March 1960, fifty-two regular employees worked under Kobayashi and Tōbata’s leadership with an annual budget of more than 100 million yen.75 MITI had even greater ambitions for Ajiken than Itagaki had originally envisioned. The ministry planned to expand it into a research center with special 73

74

75

Itagaki Yoichi, Kawano Shigetō, Yamamoto Noboru et al., “Kaisō no Fujisaki-san,” in Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, ed. Itagaki, 246–8. Tsūshō sangyōshō tsūshō sangyō seisakushi hensan iinkai, Tsūshō sangyō seisakushi, Vol. 6 (Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyō chōsakai, 1990), 71 and Itagaki, Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō, 284. Tsūshō Sangyōshō, Keizai kyōryoku no genjō to mondaiten 1960 (Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyō chōsakai, 1960), 293–4.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

79

semi-governmental status that would cover not only Asia, but also all other foreign countries. In February 1960, MITI introduced a bill to expand Ajiken, and on April 1, the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs Act came into force, recreating the think tank with a budget of 100 million yen and 100 staff members. As shown in Chapter 2, the government helped set up many “quasi-governmental corporations” such as Ajiken, which brought together leading actors in specific fields and business sectors with significant interests in overseas development (e.g. the Infrastructure Development Institute, the Japan Association of Latin America and the Caribbean, etc.). Ajiken’s permanent staff played an important role in helping the institute become a leader not only in Asian Studies, but area studies as well from the early 1970s. In 1985, Itagaki was proud to say that, “in terms of the scale of its budget, it is actually a world champion.” By 1980, Ajiken, with its annual budget of 2.7 billion yen, had 269 employees (158 researchers) in some fifty areas of study. Most of them belonged to the Research Divisions of “East Asia,” “Southeast Asia,” “South Asia,” “Middle East,” “Africa,” “Latin America,” “USSR and East Europe,” and “Oceania,” while specialists— mostly economists—on economic growth, development, and contemporary issues belonged to other departments. In 1963, there were no specialists on the USSR, Eastern Europe, or Oceania. In the early 1970s, however, scholars in those areas joined Ajiken, and the institute emerged as a world-class area studies center. As the name “Ajiken” suggests, however, the institute’s main focus remained Asia. Its Research Department engaged about forty-three scholars on average between 1963 and 1980, of which approximately eleven were Northeast Asianists, ten were Southeast Asianists, and seven or eight were South Asianists. Other departments such as the Economic Growth Research Department also had Southeast and other Asian specialists, including agricultural economists. One of Ajiken’s research leaders, Kishi Kōichi, proudly claimed in a 1969 article in the 100th special issue of the Institute’s journal, Ajia Keizai (Asian Economies), reviewing Japan’s area studies, that “it is possible to say that Japan’s Indonesian Studies has achieved a great leap forward over the past ten years, which was triggered by Ajiken’s establishment. This was a decade when research subjects expanded to cover not only anthropology and history but also economics and politics.”76 The dream of Itagaki and his colleagues had been to establish an institution that would employ and train Asianists, especially scholars of Southeast Asia. After initial difficulties in the 1950s (discussed at the beginning of this chapter), they achieved this goal through the creation of Ajiken. Ajiken became an incubator of Asia specialists in Japan. During the 1970s, more than twenty Ajiken researchers moved from the Research Department into universities. Up until April 1996, a total of 130 staff had transferred from Ajiken to various universities, such as Tōbata and Itagaki’s alma maters, Kyoto University, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and Waseda University. Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, established in 1965 with support from the Ford Foundation and American scholars, has regularly recruited Ajiken researchers. Previously, Japanese universities only had the capacity to train experts in Oriental Studies (i.e. Chinese Studies); however, Ajiken fulfilled Itagaki’s dream of 76

Kishi Kōichi, “Indonesia,” Ajia keizai, no. 100 (1969).

80

Engineering Asia

creating a robust institution to supply scholars for Japanese higher education across a range of Asian Studies disciplines.77

Conclusion Itagaki and his colleagues’ dream of establishing a comprehensive national institution that trained young researchers and collected Asia-related documents was realized through a process of trial and error in establishing a series of organizations such as JAAS, the Asian Affairs Research Group, and the Asia Association. Through their activities in those groups, these economists, who subscribed to a pan-Asianist philosophy dating from their activities in the wartime research complex, extended their influence to MITI and the business world (rather than only MOFA and the Ministry of Education), who in turn began to support Itagaki’s blueprint in accordance with their own political and economic interests. The academic–bureaucratic–industrial–political complex that formed around Japan’s reparations and development aid to Southeast Asia ultimately helped facilitate the establishment of an area studies research hub in the form of Ajiken. Itagaki was the key actor within this complex. Never belonging to a political party or taking up a business position, he was nevertheless very close to policy-makers in MITI and MOFA. Coming from a wealthy business family himself and graduating from a prestigious national commercial school that produced many industrialists, Itagaki the academic was also a member of those very politico-economic circles. Itagaki’s students entered institutions that were heavily involved in Japan’s ODA throughout Asia, such as MITI, MOFA, and private companies such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, thanks to his influence. In order to build his intellectual franchise, Itagaki capitalized on his trans-war connections with the business and political worlds, which sought to re-enter postwar (Southeast) Asia as Japan’s economic frontier through economic cooperation (see Chapters 4 and 5). His dependence on government and the private sector reduced the scope of Ajiken’s research activities, which mainly focused on contemporary economies and politics in Asia. Thus, broader humanities scholarship on Asia largely developed outside the Ajiken think tank. For example, anthropologists created their own intellectual home, the National Museum of Ethnology (founded in 1974), decades after the establishment of Ajiken. The historical study of areas in Asia other than China 77

Itagaki also had a prominent role in the formation of Southeast Asian Studies in the USA. In 1958, he spent some time at Cornell University, one of the leading centers for Southeast Asian Studies, where he became attracted to the approach of scholars such as George Kahin, who emphasized the importance of understanding the particular socioeconomic conditions of Southeast Asian societies (e.g. ethnic nationalism, religious difference, etc.) in any analysis, rather than simply applying abstract models such as “modernization theory.” Itagaki was a valuable resource for Cornell Southeast Asian scholars since he had spent time in Southeast Asia as a researcher for the Japanese military and provided much information about an important transitional era (the Japanese occupation era between colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia) that few Western scholars understood. Itagaki also spent time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he interacted closely with Walt Rostow and other proponents of modernization theory such as Max Millikan at the Center for International Studies. Karashima Masato, Teikoku nihon no ajia kenkyū—Sōryokusen taisei, keizai riarizumu, mishushakaishugi (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2015), 210–14.

Itagaki Yoichi and the Formation of the Postwar Knowledge Infrastructure

81

was subordinated to sinology-based systems such as Oriental History departments in universities. In the end, despite advocating “objective” academic Asian Studies research, Itagaki had no qualms about aligning his vision for a comprehensive institute with Japan’s geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Asia for two reasons. First, Japan’s postwar foreign policy toward Asia, which took the form of “economic cooperation,” was inspired by a pan-Asianist vision that had deep wartime antecedents and infused Japan’s earlier imperial research network, which produced detailed studies on economic development and colonial sociocultural dynamics in the interests of managing its pan-Asian empire. In a way, Itagaki simply continued his work as part of an earlier wartime research complex focusing on Southeast Asia after the war. Second, with the disappearance of the military as the primary patron of the Asian Studies research complex, new patrons with somewhat similar pan-Asianist objectives and wartime experiences in Asia to Itagaki and his colleagues such as Kishi and the Manchuria Network, MITI and MOFA bureaucrats, LDP politicians, and Japanese business organizations with deep interests in Asian markets took the military’s place to help create the postwar Asian Studies research complex. In the end, the story of Ajiken’s formation was not simply the creation of world-class academic research capacity in Asian Studies in postwar democratic Japan, but rather a story about the reconstitution of Japan’s imperial knowledge infrastructure for the postcolonial, Cold War era in the form of an alignment of networks that would constitute an academic–bureaucratic–industrial–political complex or knowledge– research base for Japan’s emerging relationships with newly independent Asian nations.

Bibliography Ajia Kyōkai. Japanese Fisheries. Tokyo: Ajia kyōkai, 1957. Ajia Kyōkai. Smaller Industry in Japan. Tokyo: Ajia kyōkai, 1957. Ajia Kyōkai, ed. Tōnan Ajia seiji keizai sōran, Vol. 1. Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 1957. Ajia Seikei Gakkai Yonjū-nen Shōshi Hensan Iinkai, ed. Ajia seikei gakkai no yonjū-nen. Kanagawa: Ajia seikei gakkai, 1993. Baba, Kimihiko. Sengo nihonjin no chūgoku zō. Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2010. Driscoll, Mark. Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–1945. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Fujiyama, Aiichirō. “Taihi baishō no kaiketsu ni atarite.” Keidanren geppō (June 1956): 7–9. Gaimushō hyakunen-shi hensan iinkai, ed. Gaimushō no hyakunen, Vol. 2. Tokyo: Hara shobō, 1979. Fletcher, William Miles. The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Hanabusa Nagamichi Hakase Kanreki Kinen Ronbunshū Hensan Iinkai, ed. Gaikōshi oyobi kokusai seiji no shomondai. Tokyo: Keiō tsūshin, 1962. Hara, Yasusaburō. “Baishō mondai to tōnan ajia shokoku no dōkō,” Keidanren geppō (March 1953): 107–9.

82

Engineering Asia

Hara, Yoshihisa. Kishi Nobusuke. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten 1995. Hatano, Sumio. “‘Tōnan Ajia kaihatsu’ o meguru nichi-bei-ei kankei.” Nenpō kindai nihon kenkyū, no. 16 (1994): 215–42. Hosokawa, Ryūichirō. Kishi Nobusuke. Tokyo: Jiji tsūshinsha, 1986. Inagaki, Heitarō et al. “Biruma baishō no jisshi to keizai teikei no shomondai.” Keidanren geppō (November 1954): 528–40. Inagaki, Heitarō. “Tai biruma baishō no jisshi o mae ni shite.” Keidanren geppō (March 1955): 8–13. Inagaki, Heitarō et al. “Tōnan-a no kinjō to keizai kyōryoku no hōkō.” Keidanren geppō (June 1956): 20–33. Iokibe, Makoto, ed. Sengo nihon gaikōshi. Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1999. Ishii, Yasushi. “Ajia no heiwa to hanei no tame ni.” Ajia mondai, no. 6 (July 1953): 2–3. Ishii, Yasushi. “Atarashii jidai no chōsa kikan no unmei ni tsuite.” Ajia mondai 3, no. 1 (January 1954): 2–3. Itagaki, Yoichi, ed. Fujisaki Nobuyuki tsuisō ajia ni michi o motomete. Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 1985. Itagaki, Yoichi. Zoku ajia to no taiwa. Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 1988. Mimura, Janis. Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Kajima Heiwa Kenkyūjo, ed. Nihon no keizai kyōryoku (Taigai keizai kyōryoku taikei 5). Tokyo: Kajima heiwa kenkyūjo shuppankai, 1973. Karashima, Masato. Teikoku nihon no ajia kenkyū—Sōryokusen taisei, keizai riarizumu, mishushakaishugi. Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2015. Kishi, Kōichi. “Indonesia,” Ajia keizai, no. 100 (June 1969): 123–31. Matsui, Ken. Keizai kyōryoku. Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1983. Miwa, Jusō. “Chōsa kenkyū kikan no tadashii arikata.” Ajia mondai, no. 11 (December 1953): 2–3. Ogata, Taketora. “Yori yoku ajia o shiru tame ni.” Ajia mondai, no. 7 (August 1953): 64–5. Skya, Walter. Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Suehiro, Akira. “Keizai saishuppatsu he no michi.” In Sengo kaikaku to sono isan (Sengo nihon senryō to sengo kaikaku 6-kan), edited by Nakamura Masanori et al., Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1995. Suehiro, Akira. “Sengo nihon no ajia kenkyū.” Shakai kagaku kenkyū 48, no. 4 (January 1997): 37–71. Tanaka, Stefan. Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Tsūshō Sangyōshō. Keizai kyōryoku no genjō to mondaiten 1960. Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyō hōsakai, 1960. Tsūshō Sangyōshō. Keizai kyōryoku no genjō to mondaiten 1962. Tokyo: Tsūshō sangyō chōsakai, 1963. Tsūshō Sangyōshō Tsūshō Sangyō Seisakushi Hensan Iinkai. Tsūshō sangyō seisakushi, Vol. 6. Tokyo: Tsūshō Sangyō Chōsakai, 1990.

Part Two

Engineering Asia on the Ground Building physical infrastructure, securing energy resources, and modernizing agriculture were the three pillars of economic development in Asia in both the colonial and postcolonial periods. The chapters in Part 2 provide the ground-level stories of kula ring networking through the cases of dam construction in Burma (Chapter 4), oil extraction in Indonesia (Chapter 5), and hybrid rice cultivation in Taiwan and beyond (Chapter 6). These chapters demonstrate that they were not only significant for national economies, but also for regional economies of developmentalist capitalism as well. The reader may also choose to read Chapter 4 together with Chapter 9, which draws an inspiring parallel between Japan’s and South Korea’s footprints in Southeast Asia and its physical landscape; Chapter 5 with the Introduction to explore how Indonesia’s postcolonial politics played a crucial role in reconfiguring Asia into the Cold War order; and Chapter 6 with Chapter 8 to highlight the significance of rice breeding in aspiring Asian countries, as well as the affinity and differences between Japanese and Korean ambitions shaped by the colonial past as much as the postcolonial present.

4

From “Constructing” to “Developing” Asia—Japanese Engineers and the Formation of the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development in Asia Aaron S. Moore

Introduction: The imperial origins of Japan’s developmental discourse This chapter examines how Japanese engineers who had built large-scale public works for Japan’s empire continued to employ their technical expertise abroad after the AsiaPacific War (1931–45), as Japan reinvented itself as a democratic, peaceful nation dedicated to high-speed economic growth.1 In contrast to the conventional view of the colonial–wartime era as the polar opposite of Japan’s era of rapid transformation into an economic superpower after the war, my approach traces many of the postwar continuities of imperial discourse and power through an analysis of large-scale infrastructure projects conducted by some of the same actors who had long careers in Japan’s former empire. By analyzing the discourse on technology and development among Japanese engineers working in early postwar Southeast Asia, I demonstrate how Japan’s development system (known as “economic cooperation” in the early postwar era, as Chapter 2 details) emerged out of shared histories of Japanese colonial rule and the rise of the US Cold War order in Asia. Hence, I also examine some of the discontinuities in Japan’s postwar re-entry into Asia and the creation of a postcolonial, Cold War development system. The history of Japan’s largest development consultancy, Nippon Kōei, is a good focal point for analyzing these issues of continuity and discontinuity. Kubota Yutaka, who had supervised the construction of most of colonial Korea’s hydropower infrastructure as a head engineer for the Korea Nitrogenous Fertilizer Company (Chōsen Chisso Hiryō Kabushiki Kaisha) and president of the Chōsen Electricity Company (Chōsen Dengyō 1

I would like to thank Kaneda Hajime from Nippon Kōei for granting me access to company materials.

86

Engineering Asia

Kabushiki Kaisha), founded Nippon Kōei in 1946. Nippon Kōei’s 1967 company charter in fact emphasized the strong continuity from the wartime–colonial years: This company’s previous entities were Chōsen Electricity, Chōsen-Manchukuo Yalu River Hydropower, and their sister companies, which for many years contributed to the advance of Korea’s economy and culture, namely by carrying out many electricity development projects beginning with Sup’ung Dam on the Yalu River and its accompanying railway and river transportation projects. Moreover, during the war, these sister companies constructed a hydropower station, port, railway facilities and other accompanying infrastructure related to a coal mine development project on Hainan Island. After the war, the managers and employees of these various companies came together, made the best use of their rich technical experience under a strong unifying spirit, and established Nippon Kōei, which sought to contribute to the rehabilitation of Japan’s economy.2

As Japan quickly became a global force in the provision of overseas development assistance, Nippon Kōei also grew and prospered. Nippon Kōei was known domestically from the early 1950s as the “vanguard of Japan’s industrial advance overseas,” and Kubota himself was even called the “Shōgun of the Mekong” in international development circles for his vital role in the multilateral Mekong River Development Project in Southeast Asia.3 Kubota was part of an influential group of business leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, and academics who helped persuade Japan’s government to provide wartime reparations payments in the form of infrastructure projects, which would not only help industrialize newly independent Asian nations through technology transfer, but also provide lucrative contracts and export opportunities to Japanese firms.4 The Balu Chaung Power Station Number Two project in Burma (1954–60) was the first of several large-scale infrastructure projects supervised by Nippon Kōei in Asia and funded by Japanese reparations/aid money, such as Da Nhim Dam in South Vietnam, Nam Ngum Dam in Laos, and the Brantas River Basin Development Project in Indonesia.5 In 1972, fourteen of Nippon Kōei’s top twenty managers had formerly worked in colonial Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan, and these senior engineers supervised overseas projects in key Cold War hot spots

2

3

4

5

Shimizu Tomihisa, “Kubota Yutaka-Nippon Kōei to Chōsen-Betonamu,” Shisō 14 (November 1973): 34–5. Nagatsuka Riichi, Kubota Yutaka (Tokyo: Denki jōhōsha, 1966), 372; Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, Nippon Kōei sanjūgonen-shi (Tokyo: Nippon Kōei kabushiki kaisha, 1981), 73. The Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) led efforts to establish this system of “economic cooperation” with Southeast Asia using wartime reparations. Kubota was close to Keidanren leaders such as Uemura Kōgorō, who were instrumental in establishing such a system, and he participated in semi-private organizations such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Asian Economies Group, which made recommendations to the Yoshida Shigeru administration on how Japan could re-enter the Southeast Asian market. He was also a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Special Investigator who participated in various overseas study missions and reported directly to the Ministry. Edgar C. Harrell, “Japan’s Postwar Aid Policies,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1973, 46–9. Although Burma changed its name to Myanmar in 1989, I maintain the use of Burma for the sake of simplicity.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

87

throughout the world.6 By analyzing what would become three key discursive pillars of Japanese developmental thinking—“comprehensive development,” pan-Asianism, and “groundedness”—as manifested at Nippon Kōei’s Balu Chaung hydropower station project, I highlight some of the politics and power dynamics within Japan’s economic cooperation system that arose from its imperial history and incorporation into the US Cold War order in Asia. “Groundedness,” “comprehensive development,” and panAsianism constituted the colonial foundation to a flexible postcolonial development discourse, which Japanese bureaucrats and experts would invoke to re-establish and strengthen Japan’s presence in Asia and the Third World. In addition to the discursive power dynamics, I also examine the social, political, and environmental effects of Japan’s overseas development projects through a focus on Burma’s Balu Chaung project.

From “comprehensive technology” to “comprehensive development” Japan’s overseas and domestic development approach during the 1950s and 1960s had strong links to the colonial era. Kubota frequently used the term “comprehensive development” when selling his projects to leaders of developing nations. “Comprehensive development” meant transforming the environment into an efficient, optimal system whereby each part somehow contributed to other parts of the whole in mutually reinforcing ways—for example, building a dam not just for one purpose, such as power production for industry, but for multiple, interrelated purposes, such as regional industrial development, flood control, irrigation, transportation improvement, and so on.7 While such paradigms originated in state-led development projects during the 1930s such as America’s Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Soviet Union’s FiveYear Plans, in Japan’s case, what some wartime engineers referred to as “comprehensive technology” first took shape in the colonial context at around the same time.8 Kubota helped develop this conception through constructing dams in Korea from the 1920s and conducting comprehensive surveys for hydropower and industrial development in China, Hainan Island, Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies during the war. During his world tour in 1953 to win business for Nippon Kōei, one of his main goals was to complete an unfinished colonial project—hydropower development on the Asahan River in Sumatra (Indonesia), which originated in his 1942 study of the Lake Toba area to develop hydropower for aluminum production for the Japanese military.9 6 7

8

9

Shimizu, “Kubota Yutaka-Nippon Kōei to Chōsen-Betonamu,” 35. The National Land Comprehensive Development Law was passed in 1950, and Japan’s First National Land Comprehensive Development Plan began in 1962 to coordinate infrastructure development with high-speed economic growth. For example, Honma Norio, who led the construction of Fengman Multi-Purpose Dam in Manchukuo, stated that “total development of national land, total utilization of rivers through comprehensive technology” was a priority of the Manchukuo state. Honma Norio, “Manshūkoku suiryoku denki jigyō ni tsuite,” Kōgyō kokusaku 2 (August 1939): 31. Nagatsuka, Kubota Yutaka, 253. The quasi-governmental corporation (see Chapter 2) Japan Industrial Plant Association helped fund this trip, and Kubota also received promises from the Japan Import–Export Bank to cooperate with financing future projects overseas. Nagatsuka, Kubota Yutaka, 303, 305.

88

Engineering Asia

After making his case to Indonesia’s national planning authorities, he quickly stopped by Rangoon in Burma where, through the mediation of Japan’s Consul General, Konagaya Yutaka, an old acquaintance from the wartime Communications Ministry’s Electricity Bureau, he met with the Burma Industrial Ministry’s Secretary, U Tun Thoung. Kubota referred to his engineers’ vast experience in developing Korea’s electricity network and chemical and mining industries during the colonial era and expressed a strong interest in assisting with any of Burma’s industrial development plans, noting the lack of opportunities in Japan and his longing for the “freedom” of overseas work.10 The Industrial Secretary showed Kubota hydropower investigation materials prepared by an American engineering consultancy as part of a two-year comprehensive survey of Burma’s “natural resources and potentials” funded by the US government. Since the Industrial Ministry did not have adequate expertise to assess the American report’s conclusions about the three recommended dam sites, the Secretary asked for Kubota’s opinion. At the meeting, Kubota clearly distinguished his recommendations from American proposals to use the hydropower for light industries particular to each region. He noted his success in colonial Korea in developing hydropower to manufacture fertilizer, aluminum, soda, carbides, and gunpowder. Based on the American consultant’s studies, he also made production forecasts for ammonium sulfate and ammonium phosphate fertilizers, which immediately met with enthusiasm from the Industrial Secretary.11 Thus, in contrast to the advice of Burma’s American advisors, who recommended a more gradualist, balanced approach to economic growth, Kubota appealed to Burmese leaders’ desires for rapid industrial development by promising heavy industrial development along the lines of his achievements in northern Korea.12 After this meeting, Kubota made arrangements to have film footage of Sup’ung Dam sent from Japan.13 Sup’ung Dam, the second largest dam in the world during the 1940s, represented the height of “comprehensive technology” during the wartime era and continued to occupy a prominent place in Nippon Kōei’s promotional materials. Sup’ung Dam was constructed on the Yalu River between Korea and Manchukuo and began transmitting electricity to both sides in 1941. The dam was to become this frontier region’s “load center” for heavy industrial development.14 It not only produced

10 11

12

13

14

Nagatsuka, Kubota Yutaka, 307. Konagaya Yutaka, “U Tan Tōn kōgyō jikan to Kubota Yutaka shachō kaidan yōshi,” October 17, 1953. Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei, Reel No.  E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Agnese Nelms Lockwood, “The Burma Road to Pyidawtha,” International Conciliation 518 (May 1958): 410–11, 444. In a 1955 dialog with key development officials and experts, Kubota argued that if Japan helped Southeast Asian nations with capital and technology to develop their electricity infrastructure, these nations could immediately develop heavy chemical and metallurgical industries, thereby skipping the “middle stage” of industrialization. Ozawa Takeo, Kubota Yutaka, Itagaki Yoichi, and Ōkita Saburō, “‘Tōnan Ajia’ ni okeru Nihon no chii,” Keizai ōrai (May 1955): 19. Konagaya Yutaka, “Kubota-shi ichigyō no nittei keika no ken,” October 19, 1953. Honpō tai-biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei, Reel No. E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Harada Kiyoshi, Suihō hatsudenjo kōji taikan (Amagasaki: Doken bunkasha, 1942), 135.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

89

electricity for Japan’s wartime chemical industries in Korea and Manchukuo, but was also coordinated with the construction of large ports on both sides of the river, a coastal industrial city south of Andong, new railway lines connecting to Manchukuo’s natural resource sites, and river improvement projects.15 Japanese officials declared that Sup’ung, along with six other future dams on the Yalu, would usher in the “Yalu River Era of Developing Asia” and stimulate more industrial “load centers” on China’s Yellow and Yangtze Rivers.16 Thus, comprehensive development projects were a key pillar of Japan’s pan-Asianist ideologies of “constructing Asia,” liberating the continent from Western imperialism, and ushering in an era of Asian co-prosperity. This colonial infrastructure legacy became a key foundation of Japan’s development framework, which Nippon Kōei then marketed to newly decolonizing nations in Asia such as Burma. Speed, efficiency, and economy were the other components of Kubota’s comprehensive development framework. In his first tentative proposal to Burma’s government in 1953, Kubota seized on a site at Loikaw in Burma’s eastern Karenni State as the most promising since it utilized the area’s natural environment, thereby decreasing construction costs and enabling quick construction. He also provided rough forecasts of future fertilizer production based on the completed initial stage of power production, arguing that not only would there be savings from less imported fertilizer, but also increased rice production and therefore more national revenue as well. Cheap electricity also meant savings from imported fuel and would enable further investment into industrializing Burma’s rich natural resources. In conclusion, he offered to “design any chemical plants … as well as any metallurgical plants such as aluminum, magnesium, titanium etc., which can consume surplus electricity” and utilize the region’s rich mineral resources.17 In the final proposal, he offered to cut the American-proposed construction times by beginning partial power production midway through the construction, which would immediately generate revenue as well as save on interest payments and fuel imports—this was the technique he had employed in colonial Korea.18 In sum, for Kubota, a power plant was never thought of in isolation, but considered in relation to “the country’s future energy consumption and its conditions for developing industries to utilize that energy.”19 In contrast to wasteful, ill-fitting Western plans, comprehensive projects should be grounded in the nation’s specific economic and environmental conditions, mapped out in detail and

15

16

17

18

19

This was the Dadong Port Coastal Industrial Urban Zone plan. See Aaron S. Moore, Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 135–48. Kodaira Keima, ed., Shingishū shōkō yōran shōwa jūshichi nenkan (1942), Reprint (Seoul: Keijin bunkasha, 1989), 130. Kubota Yutaka, “Tentative Ideas on Hydro-Electric Projects for Burma,” November 3, 1953, Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei, Reel No.  E’0217, Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kubota Yutaka, “Final Estimation for Design, Survey and Supervision,” December 10, 1953, in Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei. Kubota Yutaka and Yamaguchi Hitoaki, Ajia kaihatsu no kiban o kizuku: kaigai konsarutanto (Tokyo: Ajia keizai kenkyūjo, 1967), 53.

90

Engineering Asia

planned for the long term, be efficient, quick, and cheap to construct, and stimulate growth throughout the economy.20

Japan’s pan-Asianism and the US Cold War order in Asia Nippon Kōei engineers also frequently revived pan-Asianist discourse when promoting their projects to developing countries. A 1957 article in Nippon Kōei’s newsletter by Shima Sanshirō, a former Sup’ung Dam engineer, illustrated the many tensions involved in such reassertions of solidarity with the decolonizing world as former Japanese colonial engineers returned to Asia in their new capacity as “development consultants.” The article was written two years into the construction of Balu Chaung Power Station Number Two (Figure 4.1), which would produce electricity for industrial development in Burma’s two largest cities, Rangoon and Mandalay.21 By then, Nippon Kōei, together with the subcontractor Kajima Construction Company (Kajima Kensetsu Kabushiki Kaisha) had already confronted many obstacles such as competing with a British company for the contract, incorporating the project into a peace treaty and reparations agreement between Japan and Burma in 1954, encountering resistance within Burma’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB) about developmental priorities and their skepticism about the quality of Japanese technology, adjusting to Burma’s shifting development plans, equipment order delays from Japan and customs delays in Burma, and various problems related to working in minority Karen regions such as insurgent attacks and labor disputes. These difficulties provided an occasion for consultants like Shima to rethink their roles within the new context of decolonizing Asia. Shima reminded employees that whereas for Nippon Kōei the project was simply one of its many commercial endeavors, for the Burmese government Balu Chaung was an “enormous undertaking that put the whole nation’s fate at stake.”22 He therefore urged employees to take a broader view of the project, beyond the company’s profits. He then discussed what engineers saw as the Burmese people’s strong sense of friendship with Japan. Most 20

21

22

For example, Sakaida Masanobu, Nippon Kōei’s geologist at Balu Chaung who had worked at the Lake Toba hydropower project in Sumatra during the war, stated that in contrast to half-hearted American development programs such as the export of surplus agricultural products, Japan would transfer technology in a way that closely fit the country’s specific conditions, utilizing her own experience of up and down industrial development from the Meiji era in order to help developing nations escape backwardness and thereby work together for Asian development. Sakaida Masanobu, “Hatsuden kōji o tsūjite mita Biruma no jijō,” Keizai kyōryoku 6, no. 41 (June 1960): 17. Similar to his earlier projects in Korea, Kubota designed a series of three power stations at different points along the Balu Chaung River, the largest of which was Power Station Number Two. Nippon Kōei completed the first stage of this power station in 1960, which produced 84,000 kilowatts. An additional 84,000 kilowatts of capacity were added in 1974 when Mobye Reservoir was built, and three more generators were installed under the supervision of Swedish consultants. Power Station Number One (28,000 kilowatts) was completed in 1992 by a Japanese consortium, which included many Nippon Kōei engineers. Power Station Number Three, which involved Japanese, Swiss, Chinese, and Burmese companies, was completed in 2013. Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu (Tokyo: Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 2011), 5. Shima Sanshirō, “Barūchan to Nippon Kōei,” in Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, 80.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

91

Figure 4.1 Map of the Balu Chaung hydropower project and surrounding areas. Source: Chris Miller.

engineer accounts mention groups of Karen villagers singing old Japanese military songs like the “Patriotic March” or Burmese asking them if they knew “Major so and so” or even being called “Japan Master” on the street.23 Shima acknowledged that

23

Akedo Yukio, “Sabita tetsu kabuto,” in Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, 77; Itō Hiroichi, Tongū rōdo: Biruma baishō kōji no gonenkan (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), 6, 65.

92

Engineering Asia

“Burma, as a member of the Asia–Africa group, had hopes in Japan as an advanced country just like other Asian countries.” But he warned employees that there was also a strong sense of anxiety and suspicion about whether “Japan would cooperate with and assist Asia’s interests and prosperity as a member of Asia–Africa or advance into Asia by continuing to subordinate itself politically and militarily to the United States and adopting a role as a link in overall US policy.”24 Southeast Asia did not want to see a Japan that acted like a Western colonial ruler, Shima argued, but a Japan that understood Asia’s and Africa’s national feelings and spoke correctly on their behalf to Western nations as a member of Asia–Africa. Moreover, while they recognized Japan’s wartime role in helping them achieve independence, it would be a grave mistake to interpret this as gratitude. Instead of simply expressing remorse for its wartime behavior, Japan should express its sincerity through reparations projects like Balu Chaung. In this way, Nippon Kōei played an important role not only as the project’s supervisor, but also as manager of the bids for accompanying supplies and machinery contracts with Japanese companies. Here, Shima expressed shame at the narrow commercialism of many Japanese trading companies and the subpar quality of some Japanese machinery. If such crass commercialism continued, not only would Japan not be able to meet Burma’s high expectations, they would also damage Asian and African feelings of trust toward Japan. Thus, Shima invoked the 1955 Bandung Conference language of positioning Japan as a member of decolonizing Asia and Africa, even though Japan was clearly part of the US Cold War system in the form of receiving billions of dollars in US aid and having US military installations on its soil. In fact, as Hatano Sumio has shown, with strong encouragement from the USA, Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru advocated a Marshall Plan for Southeast Asia whereby Japan would introduce the latest Western technologies and techniques in exchange for access to markets and natural resources, which in turn would help transform Japan into “Asia’s factory.” Ultimately, Yoshida believed that directing Asian nationalism toward economic development and the improvement of people’s livelihoods was the best recipe for weakening communism in Asia.25 Accordingly, during the 1950s, Yoshida and later Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke pursued programs such as the Southeast Asian Development Fund, which proposed to redirect Japanese debt payments to the USA for development projects in Southeast Asia, the US-funded 3CT (Third Country Training) Program that sent people to Japan for technical training, and the Asian Productivity Organization, which promoted the latest American management techniques. With regard to Burma, Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato made Japan’s role as Cold War mediator clear when he visited in 1961. Ikeda told Prime Minister U Nu that Japan’s economic cooperation was important for maintaining the global balance of power and that membership among the world’s free nations ensured Japan’s growth and prosperity. He then offered to help secure economic assistance from the USA and other Western nations, arguing that

24 25

Shima, “Barūchan to Nippon Kōei,” 80. Hatano Sumio, “‘Tōnan Ajia kaihatsu’ o meguru Nichi-Bei-Ei kankei—Nihon no Koronbo puran kanyū,” Nenpō kindai Nihon kenkyū no. 16 (1994): 217, 221, 234.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

93

such “collective security” arrangements would help neutralist Burma deal with threats from the USSR and China on its northern border.26 In this article, Shima also positioned the development consultant as the opposite of the wartime pan-Asianist, even though there was in fact a distinct resemblance. The consultant occupied what Shima called the “global perspective” that truly understood the needs and interests of Asian countries, while at the same time overcoming parochial Japanese nationalism and crass commercialism in order to help build a prosperous Asian community based on cooperation rather than neo-imperial subjugation.27 By distinguishing the sympathetic, sensitive Japanese development consultant from the arrogant, self-serving, neo-imperialist Westerner, Shima was actually intensifying earlier pan-Asianist discourses rather than departing from them. For example, during the war, Chōsen Yalu River Hydropower Company’s “Yalu River Hydropower Song” emphasized the magnificence of Sup’ung Dam’s generators, steel towers, transmission lines, and dam, and proclaimed the power of “Scientific Japan” and its “industrial warriors” to transform the untouched Yalu River into an “artery for the prosperity sphere.”28 The 1940 film Vow in the Desert (Nessa no chikai) starring Ri Kō Ran told the story of North China Construction Agency (Hokushi Kensetsu Sōsho) engineers heroically building a 1000-kilometer “New Anti-Communist Road” to promote economic growth, alleviate rural poverty, and eliminate chronic insurgency. Ri played a Chinese woman who fell in love with the selfless Japanese head engineer and successfully mediated between the Japanese engineers and Chinese resistance throughout the film.29 It was this earlier discourse that Shima was invoking in postcolonial Southeast Asia; however, as we shall see, the sentiment of cooperating and uniting with newly independent Asian peoples took on a higher intensity than earlier wartime forms. Similar discourses of sentimental identification with the decolonizing world appeared in the USA around the time Shima’s article appeared. Christina Klein argues that as the USA expanded its political and economic interests into Asia after 1945—a “global imaginary of integration” replaced a “global imaginary of containment” in US Cold War ideology during the 1950s.30 Whereas the “global imaginary of containment” framed US global expansion within a narrative of conflict and the struggle against communism, the “global imaginary of integration” envisioned US expansion as taking place within a system of building reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationships with the rest of the world. Instead of emphasizing conflict and suppression, American policy-makers and “middlebrow writers” imagined a world community where 26

27 28

29

30

“Ikeda sōri Tōnan Ajia shokoku hōmon no sai no kakkoku shunō to no kaidan naiyō,” December 1, 1961, Ikeda sōri Ajia shokoku hōmon kankei ikken Biruma no bu, Reel No. A’0358, Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan; “Ikeda sōri U Nu shushō kaidan yōshi (dai ikkai),” November 24, 1961, Ikeda sōri Ajia shokoku hōmon kankei ikken Biruma no bu, Reel No. A’0358, Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Shima, “Barūchan to Nippon Kōei,” 81. Chōsen Ōryokkō Suiryoku Hatsudensha, ed., Suihō kensetsu kinen shashinchō (Seoul: Chōsen Ōryokkō Suiryoku Hatsudensha, 1943), 64. Nessa no chikai, directed by Watanabe Kunio (1940; Tokyo: Tōhō kabushiki kaisha, 1990s), Videocassette. Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 23.

94

Engineering Asia

democracy and free markets would overcome national differences by spreading prosperity, stability, and freedom. Novels and stories about “jungle doctors,” aid workers, missionaries, and teachers who forged sentimental relationships of mutual understanding with Asian peoples flooded the American public sphere. Similar to Japanese representations of the development consultant, these selfless, sympathetic Americans contrasted themselves with the image of the “ugly American” who was unable to appreciate anything unfamiliar, adopted an air of racial superiority, refused to learn local languages or participate in local customs, and lived separately from the locals in isolated compounds.31 Thus, American expansion and the Japanese reentry into Asia possessed a common “structure of sentiment” that took the form of the sympathetic expert, although Japanese development discourse would emphasize a pan-Asianism/Third World solidarity that mediated the universalist American “global imaginary of integration,” which Japan itself was firmly entrenched in. In this way, Japan’s pan-Asianism engaged with alternative forms of Third World solidarity such as neutralism or socialism.

“Groundedness”: Uniting with Asia’s peoples The third pillar of Japanese developmental discourse—“groundedness,” or the idea that Japanese engineers made great efforts to always understand local conditions and adapt their projects accordingly—also had wartime–colonial antecedents. For example, Miyamoto Takenosuke, a leading Home Ministry engineer and strong proponent of sending Japanese engineers across the empire to “construct East Asia,” frequently gave examples of Japanese engineers working in China or Manchukuo who exhibited a “continental national character” of working tirelessly in far-flung imperial outposts in contrast to the class of arrogant Japanese “carpet baggers” who showed no interest in “Manchurian development” and simply advanced their careers.32 As head of the Asia Development Board’s Technology Department, Miyamoto also included what he called “local potential” (ritchisei) as a vital “technology for Asian development” that would govern how Japan would introduce advanced technology to the empire. “Local potential” meant the ability to adapt Japanese technology to a specific climate, culture, and economic context rather than apply it uniformly. In Miyamoto’s words, Japanese engineers must grasp the “actuality of East Asian peoples” and root “East Asian construction” within their everyday lives.33 It was this ideology that Nippon Kōei engineers brought with them to engineering sites throughout postcolonial Asia, but in a more intensified form of actively working with Asian engineers, bureaucrats, and workers on the ground rather than simply referring abstractly to working with and understanding “East Asian peoples” in their reports and articles.

31 32

33

Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 88. Miyamoto Takenosuke, “Nanman oyobi hokushi zakkan,” in Gijutsusha no michi, ed. Miyamoto Takenosuke (Tokyo: Kagakushugi kōgyōsha, 1939), 303. Miyamoto Takenosuke, “Kōa gijutsu no kihon seikaku,” in Gendai gijutsu no kadai, ed. Miyamoto Takenosuke (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1940), 127–8.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

95

“In Burma’s mountains and fields where the blood of 185,000 Japanese soldiers once flowed … many Japanese returned once again to shed the sweat of atonement,” wrote Itō Hiroichi, a Nippon Kōei civil engineer, in his best-selling 1963 memoir about road construction at the Balu Chaung project.34 In this way, Itō introduced the sympathetic structure of sentiment via which Japan’s new relationship with postcolonial Burma would be built. Itō and other engineers often discussed how they became close to the locals by living amongst them. He expressed pride over the fact that he lived in remote Karenni villages in bamboo huts for months without speaking Japanese, slept in tents in areas where the threat of tigers, snakes, and leeches (as well as armed insurgents) was ever-present, managed native labor crews and resolved local disputes, and served as a doctor to people without access to modern medical care.35 At several points, he referred to himself as “nativized me” and even declared himself a “Burmese patriot” in leading the construction of the 220-kilometer Toungoo Road through dense jungles and over 2000-meter-high mountains.36 The road and accompanying transmission lines would bring commerce and electricity to hitherto isolated regions with subsistence economies, thereby laying the foundation for Burma’s modern development. Whereas Western consultants or Burmese engineers hardly left their offices, Japanese engineers directly took charge of the construction, often working overtime and on weekends.37 Itō expressed frustration at Burmese workers, who worked in a leisurely manner, took many religious holidays, and refused to work more than 36-hour weeks and eight-hour days.38 During the six-month monsoon season, the work slowed even more and Japanese engineers had to “toss out their Japanese ideals of working night and day, and adjust to the slow pace of Burmese life.”39 While Itō expressed pride when he successfully increased work speed and efficiency, he concluded that the Burmese still had to overcome their ingrained unwillingness for hard work in order for national development to succeed.40 Japanese engineers like him would help improve productivity by adapting to such local conditions and customs. Other engineers similarly credited their own leadership in completing the project amidst difficult conditions. Monoi Tatsuo, a Nippon Kōei manager in Burma who was formerly Sup’ung Dam’s head of construction, also blamed Burmese “lack of will” as the main cause of the project’s numerous delays. He expressed annoyance at the Burmese government’s constant questioning of Japanese plans and seeking third-party opinion instead of trusting Japanese expertise.41 Monoi also declared that the Burmese could never have completed Toungoo Road without the “heroic work of our employees.”42

34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Itō, Tongū rōdo, 102. “Karenni” refers to the various minority peoples of Karenni State, which in 1951 became Kayah State. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 197. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 132, 154–5. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 132–3, 164. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 144. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 171. Monoi Tatsuo, “Barūchan hatsudenjo kensetsu no kiroku,” Denki zasshi OHM 47, no. 6 (1960): 47. Monoi, “Barūchan hatsudenjo kensetsu no kiroku,” 52.

96

Engineering Asia

Nozawa Noboru, an electrical engineer, recounted how during the initial road survey he managed to quell a potential mutiny by workers who sympathized with “communist bandit” insurgents. When the team had to cut short the survey and return to base camp because the other team had failed to meet at a designated rendezvous point, the “pigtailed, tattooed” workers surrounded and brandished their knives at Nozawa because they were upset that their full wages would not be paid. Apparently, he quickly silenced them with his “threatening demeanor” and ordered them to resume carrying the team’s equipment, barking out a promise that they would return at a later date.43 Nozawa also boasted about the ingenuity of Japanese engineers who concocted makeshift parts from local materials and altered the transmission tower designs instead of waiting for delayed deliveries of Japanese machinery and parts.44 Engineers emphasized the advanced nature of Japanese technology such as the heavy use of mechanization and the quality of the power station’s penstocks, which were the largest Japan had ever built and utilized a sturdy steel alloy.45 Toungoo Road’s completion was a major achievement, Itō proclaimed, since even the British failed to build an east to west road over Burma’s north to south mountain ranges.46 Thus, Japanese engineers emphasized their flexible leadership skills and technical ingenuity as the form by which they closely cooperated with the Burmese people. Engineers also insisted on their work’s non-political nature, as they did during the wartime by appealing to technology’s power to modernize and “construct East Asia.”47 By arguing that their work benefited everyone equally, they claimed to transcend the complicated postcolonial political and ethnic conflicts (discussed in more detail in the final section of this chapter) that arose during Burma’s transition from the colonial to the postcolonial era. Their accounts of interactions with Burmese and Karen employees, Karenni village elites, ESB officials, and other intermediaries, however, revealed how their engineering work inevitably became involved in Burma’s complicated postcolonial politics. For example, since the project was located at the ongoing Karen insurgency’s epicenter, as well as near communist and other insurgent strongholds, securing local cooperation was absolutely critical. Kajima Construction sent reports to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1955, which captured the area’s tense atmosphere. They described nearby insurgent attacks on military-escorted public buses, insurgents capturing Burmese employees and interrogating them about regional military movements and security arrangements at Balu Chaung, and the state’s suppression campaigns against

43

44 45

46 47

Nozawa Noboru, “Shōrai o kimeta kyōju no hitokoto,” in Niji o kakeru otokotachi: Kaihatsu konsarutanto senshi no kaisō, ed. Hyōgen Gijutsu Kaihatsu Sentā (Tokyo: Nihon Sangyō Saiken Gijutsu Kyōkai, 1994), 27–8. Nozawa, “Shōrai o kimeta kyōju no hitokoto,” 30–1. Monoi, “Barūchan hatsudenjo kensetsu no kiroku,” 50; Yoshida Ryōzō, “Kaigai ni okeru konsarutanto no katsudō ni tsuite: Biruma, Minami Betonamu, Jawa ni okeru kensetsu keikaku,” Doboku gakkai shi 44, no. 8 (1959): 37–8. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 29–30, 148. However, as I show in my earlier work, when projects were implemented, the “non-political nature” of technology was quickly revealed to be a myth since engineers had to negotiate various stakeholders and the actual political and military situation on the ground in the colonies. See Moore, Constructing East Asia, 102–87.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

97

insurgents.48 One Kajima telegram to its Balu Chaung field office emphasized the need for more security and the importance of respecting local customs and avoiding violence so as not to incite the local population.49 The ESB’s regional head cautioned Kajima about insurgents infiltrating worker ranks and noted that he could not even trust his own employees.50 Thus, although Japanese engineers believed that their work was above politics, they inevitably had to navigate the area’s tense and complicated political environment. Nippon Kōei engineers also invoked technology’s power to quickly modernize and industrialize Burma in their efforts to win over the local population. For example, after a Nippon Kōei road survey team failed to convince communist insurgents about their work’s importance, who instead threatened to detain them, the team took a detour into a powerful Karen rebel leader’s territory. Unlike the communists, this “intellectual” leader understood the project’s significance since he had an engineering degree from an Indian university.51 He therefore explained the project to his commanders and ordered them to cooperate. The survey team, however, was told not to bring Burmese military escorts or wear khaki work clothes so as not to be mistaken for Burmese soldiers.52 In another instance, after insurgents attacked a Nippon Kōei supply team, the Japanese team leader, Miyata Ichibei, met with the area’s insurgent leader, explained the project’s significance to him, and negotiated a written agreement of non-obstruction. When Burmese police demanded to see the agreement, Miyata refused, saying it was a “promise between men.”53 Whereas pan-Asianism in engineering discourse before 1945 celebrated the power of Japanese technology and Japan’s leadership role in developing Asia, after 1945 Japanese engineers emphasized deeper, person-to-person relationships and joint cooperation. Technology transfer, for example, was a major part of their work in Burma. Japanese engineers trained skilled workers, repairmen, and machine operators; taught technicians the basics of surveying and drafting blueprints; introduced systematic methods of work organization; taught the technical details of dam and power station construction; and guided power station operation and

48

49

50

51

52

53

Kido Kihei, “Insājyan no kinkyō jōhō no ken,” August 15, 1955, Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan, File Management Number 0120-2001-09610, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kajima Kensetsu Kabushiki Kaisha shachō, “Hito taisaku ni tsuite," August 25, 1955, Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan, File Management Number 0120-2001-09610, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kido Kihei, “Kido Barūchan shucchōjo-chō hōkoku,” March 17, 1955, Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan, File Management Number 0120-200109610, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan Thus, this Burmese insurgent leader was somewhat similar to “enlightened” local Chinese officials referred to by Japanese during the wartime, who understood Japan’s mission of “constructing East Asia” and worked to promote Japanese projects locally. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto: Kōei no yurikago jidai,” in Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, 55; Akai Kazuo, Kaigai ni idomu Nihon kigyō (Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 1964), 233–4. Nozawa, “Shōrai o kimeta kyōju no hitokoto,” 69.

98

Engineering Asia

repair after the project’s completion.54 Around sixty Burmese technicians were sent for advanced training in Japan at different factories to learn how to operate and repair machinery.55 But rather than staying on at Balu Chaung for long-term training, however, many workers left after one or two months for higher paying jobs.56 All in all, the technology transfer process did not go smoothly, recalled civil engineer Yamaguchi Masashi, since due to the British colonial legacy, Burma lacked a class of middling technicians with basic practical engineering skills on which to build.57 Nationalist pride also made guidance difficult and required patient, repeated efforts at communication.58 Thus, while Japanese engineers worked hard to spread the message of development at the micro-level through technology transfer, the existing socio historical context at times hindered those efforts. Basic cultural and lifestyle differences also obstructed the Japanese engineers’ efforts. As noted earlier, many unskilled Burmese workers did not possess the necessary work ethic or time discipline for this type of rapid construction. According to Monoi, the Japanese construction culture of “lightening-speed construction” or “working night and day without break” did not make sense to people who would rather work enough to get by and enjoy their leisure time, and workers often had little desire to improve their lives or save their wages. In fact, much of the wider population did not even understand hydropower’s importance or electricity’s value, and therefore showed very little enthusiasm for the project.59 Japanese engineers encountered such indifference in other Southeast Asian countries as well. For example, Satō Tokihiko, another senior Nippon Kōei engineer who had worked for over twenty years in colonial Korea, described how farmers near one irrigation dam project in Kalimantan (Indonesia) were not excited about the promise of double-cropping since it required more labor.60 Satō linked such attitudes to communism’s strength in the countryside where people’s subsistence lifestyles were more socialist in nature and where there was very little consciousness of the nation. Upon hearing this, the Japanese ambassador to Indonesia simply dismissed Satō’s observations; however, history confirmed Satō’s conclusions, since this situation in the countryside became the foundation for what Satō described as Indonesia’s “cancer” or struggles with communism and other forms of insurgency.61 Thus, through their daily interactions, some Japanese engineers understood that the 54

55 56

57 58 59

60 61

Yasumasa Sakatō, Arai Kiyoyasu, Yamaguchi Masashi, Takaguchi Kazuhiro, Takahashi Hiroaki, and Oshiba Katsu. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 57; Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, Teikaihatsu kōgyōka no gijutsuteki jōken (Tokyo: Ajia keizai kenkyūjo, 1960), 153. Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, Teikaihatsu kōgyōka no gijutsuteki jōken, 153. It was hoped that these workers who left would diffuse their advanced skills throughout the Burmese economy to help build the foundation for industrialization. Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, Teikaihatsu kōgyōka no gijutsuteki jōken, 153. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 57. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 57. Monoi Tatsuo, “Bunka hatsuru Barūchan no inshō—Biruma hatsuden kensetsu hōkoku,” Jitsugyō no Nihon 59, no. 9 (April 1, 1956): 141. Satō Tokihiko, Doboku jinsei gojūnen (Tokyo: Chūō kōron jigyō shuppan, 1969), 218. Satō, Doboku jinsei gojūnen, 220. Satō is likely referring to the communist insurgency in West Borneo from 1967–1972, which broke out after Suharto’s 1965 military coup and mass killings of communists.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development

99

benefits of development were not necessarily self-evident and universally accepted. They knew that they needed to win support at the popular level of existing lifestyles, beliefs, and histories—a level that various insurgent groups and alternative political agendas were already operating at quite effectively. In this context, Japanese engineers therefore relied heavily on intermediaries to obtain cooperation and consent. Itō noted that winning the cooperation of local leaders was just as important as their actual road surveying work.62 A Shan technician from Karenni State named U San Cha, who had served in the Japanese Imperial Army and later managed an area tungsten mine, was Itō’s right-hand man. Aside from hiring and mobilizing labor crews, he negotiated with village leaders about wages and argued passionately to residents about the road and dam project’s benefits.63 Other intermediaries included Alfonso Soe Myint, the moderate Karen rebel leader of Toungoo who provided Itō’s road survey teams with protection; a Karen schoolteacher in a mountain village who joined the project as an employee; a Karen “boss” named Peter who mediated between Karen workers and residents, Japanese engineers, and the Burmese military; and several cooks, translators, and guards such as William, a former Karen National Defense Organization fighter with connections to Karen insurgents, who received a government pension.64 This reliance on intermediaries, however, often merely highlighted the weak positions of Japanese engineers amidst the tumultuous politics and unfamiliar environment of postcolonial Burma. After witnessing his Karen assistants simultaneously working for the Burmese military and Karen insurgent groups, Itō confessed his ignorance of the area’s political situation. “I have lived in these deep mountains for several years, but I still do not understand what is really going on. Without any relationship to the locals, perhaps I am just an engineer reliant on their goodwill who in the end is making a road just like a horse simply pulls a cart,” he wrote.65 Throughout the construction, Indian technicians constantly doubted Japanese engineering skills, village heads argued for wage hikes or higher compensation amounts, divisions in the ESB between pro-coal and pro-hydropower factions delayed procurements, Burmese bulldozer operators disobeyed orders and worked as they pleased, and national elections placed pressure on the Japanese to quicken the construction’s pace. Thus, while Itō and other Japanese engineers frequently represented themselves as bold managers who could not only transform Burma’s environment but also inspire and train workers, raise productivity, persuade insurgent leaders, and resolve disputes, in the end it was often the engineers themselves who were utterly reliant on local knowledge and leadership, and at the mercy of unknown sociopolitical forces. Just as Japan’s expression of solidarity with the “Asia–Africa group” was limited by its close alliance with the USA, the Japanese engineers’ sentiment of “working for 62 63 64

65

Itō, Tongū rōdo, 80. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 112, 125. Alfonso Soe Myint is mentioned in “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 55. Other intermediaries mentioned appear in Itō’s memoirs. For more on Alfonso, see People’s Literature Committee and House, Who’s Who in Burma 1961 (Rangoon: People’s Literature Committee and House, 1961), 113. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 181.

100

Engineering Asia

the people” was also limited by their positions as government consultants. Newly independent regimes like Burma were engaged in fierce ethnic and political struggles rooted in colonial legacy, and therefore did not necessarily have popular legitimacy. This was especially the case in frontier, minority regions like Karenni State where the project was located. In his account, Itō made a brief prophecy about the project’s future effects. While promoting the road’s benefits among the Karenni people, Itō noted that it could lead to the area’s militarization, an economic invasion by ethnic Burmese, and ultimately to their assimilation.66 Yet despite such observations, Japanese engineers believed that their developmentalist agenda was above politics and culture, and would ultimately overcome any difficulties or short-term negative effects. In this sense, deep-rooted problems such as ethnic insurgencies became “irrational” obstacles to modernization—just as Chiang Kai-shek’s resistance was the “irrational” obstacle to “Asian development” during the Asia-Pacific War.67 Thus, despite their perceptiveness in recognizing resistance to their developmentalist ideologies, Japanese engineers in the end worked strictly in line with the policies of postcolonial governments asserting their nation-building visions over the people.

Japanese development and Burma’s military regime: The sociopolitical effects of the Balu Chaung project Balu Chaung Dam’s construction period was a tumultuous time in Burma’s postindependence history. From Burma’s independence in 1948, U Nu and the AntiFascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) established a parliamentary system and attempted to stabilize and unite Burma in the face of fierce ideological and ethnic conflicts with the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and the Karen National Union (KNU) in particular—for example, in 1949, the KNU nearly succeeded in defeating the AFPFL and establishing an independent Karen state. Large swathes of Burma, especially the Frontier Areas where Karenni State was located, were under the control of CPB factions and various ethnic groups, the most powerful of whom were the Karen and their allied subgroups such as the Karenni peoples. As Donald Seekins writes, the 1950s can best be described as a period of Burma’s increasing “militarization” and “politicization” (culminating in Ne Win’s military coup in 1962) rather than one of democratic nation and institution building.68 The Japanese occupation of Burma from 1942 to 1945 played a major role in laying the foundations for this chaotic situation. The Japanese Imperial Army’s Minami Kikan trained a group of ethnic Burmans called the Thirty Comrades, many of who became Burma’s postwar leaders, and established the Burmese Independence Army (BIA), which became the Burmese Armed Forces after independence.69 Meanwhile, due to their positions in the British colonial army, 66 67 68

69

Itō, Tongū rōdo, 93. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 39. Donald M. Seekins, “Japan’s Aid Relations with Military Regimes in Burma, 1962–1991: The Kokunaika Process,” Asian Survey 32, no. 3 (1992): 32. Won Z. Yoon, Japan’s Scheme for the Liberation of Burma: The Role of the Minami Kikan and the “Thirty Comrades” (Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1973).

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 101 police, and administration, many Karen (and their subgroup allies such as the Karenni) supported the British against the Japanese, which led to BIA campaigns and atrocities against the Karen and hence the minorities’ further resort to armed struggle.70 Whereas Japan’s pan-Asianist ideology and establishment of Burmese independence initially attracted ethnic Burmans, at the same time it polarized Burmese society by privileging the majority group, and therefore laid the foundation for the militarization and politicization of postwar Burmese society that Itō and other Japanese engineers witnessed firsthand around the Balu Chaung project site. As illustrated by Itō’s professed bewilderment about local politics discussed earlier, the history of ethnic conflict in Karenni State and beyond at this time was extremely complicated and fluid. Local princes who enjoyed autonomous rule under the British traditionally governed the Karenni States, which were not considered part of “Burma Proper” but rather part of the “Frontier Areas.” When the Japanese took over in 1942, they made moves to incorporate these states administratively into Burma, and upon independence, the AFPFL insisted that Karenni become part of the Union of Burma rather than have any kind of independent status. At this time, the KNU put forth a message of “pan-Karenism,” which included the Karen subgroups in Karenni State, in their push for national sovereignty and self-determination. Whereas the KNU defined the Karen population broadly, the AFPFL government insisted on Burma’s unity and resorted to tactics of divide and rule—for example, they minimized Karen census numbers and even changed the name of Karenni State to Kayah State in 1951 (the Kayah are the majority ethnic group there) in an attempt to disassociate its peoples from the Karen. The ethnic and political situation in the 1950s can be summed up as shifting periods of violent insurgency and counterinsurgency, government attempts to lure minority groups and their leaders into the Union, government dialogue and accommodation with insurgents and their aboveground organizations, various alliances among communist and ethnic insurgents, and splits within the government and insurgent groups.71 In Karenni State, this manifested itself as divisions between and among those who supported integration with Burma and membership in the AFPFL government, those who supported Karenni autonomy and negotiations toward a federal system, and those who chose armed struggle for independence under varying ideologies.72 The AFPFL also employed tactics of divide and rule; for example, in the form of the Panglong Agreement of 1947, which incorporated the Karenni States into Burma and promised the right of secession in ten years, and Ne Win’s counterinsurgency campaigns against rebel organizations such as the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) during his caretaker military administration from 1958 to 1960, which strengthened the military’s foothold in the state. Facing this dizzying array of events, Itō and his colleagues sided firmly with the Burmese government’s efforts toward Karenni State’s integration into the Union instead of trying to comprehensively understand and negotiate the area’s complex political situation. 70 71

72

Seekins, “Japan’s Aid Relations with Military Regimes in Burma, 1962–1991,” 26. Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (London and New York: Zed Books, 1991). Jean-Marc Rastorfer, On the Development of Kayah and Kayan National Identity: A Study and a Bibliography (Bangkok: Southeast Asian Publishing House, 1994), 24–5.

102

Engineering Asia

Burma’s government often invoked the promise of development in order to address ethnic unrest and integrate the minorities. The British had chronically neglected frontier areas such as Karenni State in favor of the central areas where Burmans were in the majority, and this continued after independence. For example, before Ne Win’s 1962 coup, Shan State (where parts of the Balu Chaung project would be located) leaders expressed discontent over the small amount of development funds and reparations reaching minority areas during the 1950s.73 Thus, the Balu Chaung project became a prominent test of the Burmese government’s promise to integrate the frontier areas through development. Both the Japanese engineers and the Burmese government not only emphasized the project’s benefits to national industrialization, but also its role in increasing local prosperity through roads and other infrastructure investment. Sao Wunna, the Karen Minister of Kayah State under the U Nu and Ne Win regimes, who was from the project area, enthusiastically supported the project and met frequently with Japanese leaders in the name of building “Kayah–Japan” relations. In 1954, for example, during the negotiations for the Balu Chaung project, he met with Japan’s ambassador Konagaya Yutaka and expressed hopes for the project’s contribution to “national land development” and “improving the lives and social welfare of Kayah’s residents.” He also reassured the ambassador’s security concerns, noting that the government had recently conducted a thorough sweep of the rebels.74 Sao Wunna would also later make several trips to Japan as part of Burma’s Purchasing Missions related to the reparations agreement.75 In this manner, Burma’s government mobilized pro-government Karen leaders as intermediaries who would not only sell development to minorities, but also represent their voices to Japan’s leaders. In 1963, one year after Ne Win established his military regime, the first Union Day outside of Rangoon was held in Loikaw, Karenni State’s capital.76 Ne Win and other top leaders joined in the cultural festivities attended by the state’s various minorities under the banner of “Unity and Solidarity to Build a Socialist State” and messages of equal treatment and equal opportunity for social and economic progress.77 The now operational Balu Chaung Power Station Number Two figured prominently in the 1963 festivities. In a lead article of an issue of Burma’s official magazine reporting on the events of Union Day, the banner art depicted a crowd surrounding several people raising the Union flag in the drawing’s center, flanked by larger-scale drawings of the Balu Chaung power station on one side and a long-necked Kayan woman on the other. The next article introduced Balu Chaung Dam by having the dam speak and introduce 73 74

75

76

77

Seekins, “Japan’s Aid Relations with Military Regimes in Burma, 1962–1991,” 85. Konagaya Yutaka, “Kaya-shū daijin to kondan ni kansuru ken,” March 30, 1954, Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei, Reel No. E’0217, Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives, Tokyo, Japan. People’s Literature Committee and House, Who’s Who In Burma 1961, 205–6; “(10) Sao Wunna (Kayah State Minister),” November 10, 1959, November 25, 1959, December 13, 1960, Biruma yōjin honpō hōmon kankei zakken, Reel No. A’6.1.5, Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. In this paragraph, I use “Kayah” instead of “Karenni” since the government formally changed Karenni State’s name to Kayah State in 1951. Otherwise, I use “Karenni State” to refer to the area for the sake of simplicity. In previous Union Days, members of Burma’s minorities instead travelled to Rangoon for the national holiday. “The Union Day in Loikaw,” Forward 1, no. 14 (1963): 10. “The Union Day in Loikaw,” 10–14.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 103 itself. Its “grandfather,” the Union of Burma, apparently facilitated the “marriage” between the Balu Chaung River, which originated in Shan State, and Lawpita Falls, the dam site in Karenni State. Their child, Balu Chaung power station, then recounted its own history, plans for future expansion, and finally boasted of the “53 towns and 145 villages” already receiving its electricity, its yearly increases in power production, and the cheaper cost of its electricity in comparison to foreign fuel imports.78 In this way, Ne Win’s military regime deployed technology’s symbolic power as a way to diffuse and co-opt ethnic conflict as well as integrate minority regions into the nation. Upon formally taking power in 1962, Ne Win nationalized all foreign businesses and expelled nearly all foreign corporations and organizations. Nippon Kōei had an office in Burma, and sources indicate that its engineers were training technicians, finishing transmission line and transformer station work, and advising on Balu Chaung Power Station Number Two’s operation until 1964.79 While Nippon Kōei enthusiastically lobbied Burma’s government to complete the next stage of the project—the construction of Mobye Reservoir—for reasons unclear they were not awarded the contract. One Nippon Kōei engineer suggested that it had to do with Cold War geopolitics and Burma’s aggressive turn toward socialism—in particular, Ne Win’s closer relationship with China and wanting to strictly maintain a neutralist stance in the Cold War conflict.80 As a result of Japan’s continuing aid relationship with Burma, however, many Japanese trading companies continued to maintain a presence there during Ne Win’s military rule (1962–88) and Nippon Kōei engineers made periodic consulting visits.81 Burmese government publications in the 1960s downplayed or erased the original Japanese role in planning the entire project, placing Burmese engineers and officials at the forefront instead. From 1967, Burma’s ESB led the construction of Mobye Reservoir with assistance from the Swedish engineering firms Orrje & Company, and Widmark and Platzer, who designed, planned, and supervised the construction of the Mobye Reservoir and irrigation projects, and the Dutch firm International Land Development Consultants, who conducted the preliminary investigations.82 Although a Swedish firm took over this part of the project from Nippon Kōei, Japanese influence was still quite significant. Japan continued to provide reparations aid to Ne Win’s military regime until 1977 to fund various development projects as other donors such as China (in 1967) and the USA ended their aid relationships. Japanese engineers originally trained many of the ESB’s personnel in accordance with the 1954 reparations agreement. For example, Chief Executive Officer U Ohn had been involved in the entire project since 1953 when Kubota conducted the first surveys—he 78 79

80 81 82

“Balu Chaung Project,” Forward 1, no. 14 (1963): 15–19. Nozawa, “Shōrai o kimeta kyōju no hitokoto,” 32. The company newsletter reports visits by Nippon Kōei executives as late as 1965 to finalize the Mobye Reservoir contract. See “Kaigai bumon,” Shahō, no. 129 (February/March 1965): 15. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 55. One engineer notes a visit in 1974. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto,” 55. Government of the Union of Burma Electricity Supply Board, Report on the Preliminary Design and Layout of the Mobye Irrigation Project (Rangoon: Government of Burma Electric Supply Board, 1968); Government of the Union of Burma Electricity Supply Board, Mobye Reservoir Project June 1967–May 1970 Completion Report on Construction and Supervision, Volume 1: Text, (Rangoon: Government of Burma Electric Supply Board, 1970).

104

Engineering Asia

knew “the whole area like the palm of his hand and every figure is at his finger-tips.”83 Much of the heavy construction equipment also came from the original project or was likely purchased earlier through reparations money.84 Moreover, in line with Kubota’s vision of “comprehensive development” and Nippon Kōei’s initial plans, Mobye became a multi purpose project, although the ESB and Swedish/Dutch consultants adjusted those plans to fit the government’s changing objectives and subsequent investigative studies. The dam would improve regional transportation through a series of locks and gates that connected the Mobye Reservoir to Inle Lake, thereby: allowing for small-vessel traffic between Shan and Karenni States and more control over the water flowing into the Balu Chaung power station; supplying water to irrigate at least 20,000 acres on both sides of the Balu Chaung River; eliminating the annual floods that traditionally threatened farms between Mobye and Loikaw; generating enough power to meet increased demand from a range of factories in the fertilizer, cement, tobacco, paper, and other industries; encouraging the modernization of local cottage industries related to agriculture, forestry, and livestock breeding through access to cheap electricity; increasing the supply of fish throughout the region by linking the region’s rivers; and even facilitating the creation of a “pleasure resort with swimming, fishing, golfing, yachting, and boating facilities” to attract “world tourists.”85 In these ways, while Japanese engineers no longer played a role in the project’s later stages, their influence was still strongly felt. Nippon Kōei not only designed the original project, which relied and built on a longer history of centralization and militarization extending into the wartime–colonial era, but also passed on their visions, expertise, and technologies of comprehensive development that were subsequently utilized by Burma’s military regime to integrate contested regions—with significant sociopolitical effects.86 While there is evidence that the various peoples in Karenni and Shan States affected by the project welcomed the increased commercial and employment opportunities and utilized the new infrastructure such as schools, clinics, roads, and reclaimed farmlands, even the state’s news organs revealed a degree of resistance toward efforts to integrate them through state-led development. “Simple” subsistence farmers who moved every year “shuddered at the thought of hard labour” at the Mobye construction site and usually quit after one or two months, which necessitated labor recruitment from Burma’s central ethnic majority areas instead.87 Over sixty villages had to be evacuated and resettled to reclaimed areas nearby. But apparently, “the villagers were quite indifferent to the idea of sponsored resettlement” and preferred moving to a higher plateau “at their own expense.”88 They therefore had to 83 84 85 86

87 88

Ba Thaw, “Early Days of Mobye Dam,” Forward 7, no. 24 (1969): 12. Maung Cho Pyone, “The Little Sea in the Hills,” Forward 11, no. 12 (1973): 14. Ba Thaw, “Early Days of Mobye Dam,” 16–17; Maung Cho Pyone, “The Little Sea in the Hills,” 13–15. Kubota’s willingness to conduct studies and projects in Cold War conflict areas such as Burma, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in fact suggests a continuity with his earlier colonial career of doing investigations and projects in wartime occupied areas, which required similar levels of centralization and militarization. Maung Cho Pyone, “The Little Sea in the Hills,” 14. Maung Cho Pyone, “The Little Sea in the Hills,” 15.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 105 be persuaded to settle the newly reclaimed lands with irrigation works and “coaxed into modern method[s] of farming with a lot of patience and understanding.”89 Another article describing land reclamation and irrigation schemes in Karenni State recounted how “hill people” pursuing “wasteful” slash and burn (tuang-ya) agriculture had to start life from scratch on the plains, purchase tools and cattle, and “meet other requirements, all of which had been very taxing.”90 In the end, however, the hill people forgot their old lives on the hills and were “exceedingly happy” with their new lives in the settlement schemes.91 The ultimate result of these schemes was not only the more rationalized use of water and land, but also “improving kindred relations” between the ethnic groups through the breaking down of barriers between “isolated” hill villages.92 Information from Karenni memoirs and reports from Karenni advocacy organizations portray a starker history of militarization, violence, socioeconomic displacement, environmental destruction, and cultural loss surrounding the dam project. Despite government promises of cheap electricity for local industrial development, most of the power benefited the large cities of Rangoon and Mandalay. In 2006, 80 percent of Karenni State’s residents still did not have access to electricity.93 As one regional song about the project declared in the 1970s, the power lines (“silver rays”) simply passed by villages toward distant places “without resting,” despite invitations to “relax at home at least for a while.”94 This song contrasted sharply with the poetic reveries of visitors to the project during the 1960s, such as this ratu verse on Mobye Reservoir, composed by a visitor in the style of a famous Konbaung Dynasty court poet when the country was reunified under Burman kings: “Do not hesitate, my love. Please come along with me to see the wonderful Mobye Reservoir because I am calling out of love for you.”95 In addition to displacing around 12,000 residents, the power stations and dam disrupted existing forms of Shan and Karenni subsistence agriculture and fishing.96 Before Mobye Reservoir was built, residents could draw water throughout the year from simple reservoirs built along the many creeks and streams that flowed into the Balu Chaung River. They farmed the rich soil along the many tributaries and relied on the fish to supplement their diets. Once the dam was completed, however, water was prioritized for hydropower production and the tributaries and streams began drying out, requiring farmers to draw from the main river. With the aid of international experts, a large-scale irrigation project was planned to replace existing rice cultivation practices, which were now deemed wasteful in their use of water for irrigation, “primitive” in their use of tools and implements, and low yielding due to 89 90 91 92 93

94 95 96

Maung Cho Pyone, “The Little Sea in the Hills,” front page, 15. Moe Kyaw Aung, “Progress Through Land Development,” Forward 11, no. 10 (1973): 15. Moe Kyaw Aung, “Progress through Land Development,” 15. Moe Kyaw Aung, “Progress through Land Development,” 16. Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals: The Karenni Experience with Hydropower Development—From Lawpita to the Salween (Burma: Karenni Development Research Group, 2006), 1. Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 49. Ba Thaw, “Early Days of Mobye Dam,” 17. Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 36.

106

Engineering Asia

“ineffective cultivation practices” and the non-use of fertilizers and improved seeds.97 The government and power station engineers took control of local water resources and restricted how much water could be used for irrigation by, for instance, banning the use of traditional water scooping wheel systems and patrolling the riverbanks for illegal water siphoning. This immediately affected people’s livelihoods since they could not properly irrigate their fields, which often resulted in crop failure.98 Other ecological damage from the project such as deforestation and a decline in the fish population also drastically affected Karenni livelihoods.99 The area’s increased militarization began in 1961 after Power Station Number Two was completed. Camps were set up in main towns and at economic sites such as mines and the power station. As Itō saw firsthand, Karenni rebel forces had dominated the rural areas in the state at the time, which led to the increased militarization. Under Ne Win’s military regime, the Four Cuts Campaign against Burma’s myriad insurgencies was launched from the mid-1960s. Similar to British tactics in defeating the communist insurgency in Malaya and the strategic hamlet program employed by the USA in Vietnam, its purpose was to cut the four main links—food, funds, intelligence, and recruits—between insurgents, their families, and local residents. Burma was divided into a “vast chessboard” under the different regional commands and painted in three colors: black for insurgent-controlled areas; brown for disputed areas; and white for cleared areas. Theoretically, the Four Cuts Campaign was designed “to liquidate the insurgents, to organize the people and to study the party’s Programme and Policy.”100 However, in reality, black and brown areas were cordoned off, their people ordered to move to new “strategic villages” under military control, and anyone remaining was either shot or had their food, crops and paddies confiscated.101 Black areas where Karenni insurgents operated were declared “free fire zones” and civilians in these areas or those moving about without permission were often shot on sight for being suspected insurgent guides or simply out of frustration, and torture was frequently used to obtain information.102 Militarization accompanied each project stage such that, by 2006, there were twenty-four permanently based battalions in the area. Each stationing of a battalion led to more land confiscations and displacements to make way for military camps, plantations, and other infrastructure. The army also planted land mines around the transmission pylons and near the power stations to protect them from Karenni rebel attacks, which led to further evictions and land confiscations. By 1990, around 18,000 land mines had been laid around the power stations, and the number of land mines in Karenni State today could be as high as 100,000.103 Loss of livestock and death or maiming from accidently setting off land 97

Government of the Union of Burma Electricity Supply Board, Report on the Preliminary Design and Layout of the Mobye Irrigation Project, 37, 43–4. 98 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 30–3. 99 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 46–8. 100 Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, 259. 101 Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, 259. Itō witnessed (and supported) the precursors to the Four Cuts Campaign. He described how the Burmese military imposed road blockades and a strict permit system for food and fuel in their area during the agricultural offseason when insurgents were likely low on food. Itō, Tongū rōdo, 180. 102 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 44–5. 103 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 45.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 107 mines were frequent occurrences, and villagers were ordered to pay to replace the land mines instead of being offered compensation or medical treatment.104 At their own expense and at the cost of their livelihoods, villagers were frequently ordered by the army to carry equipment, dig trenches, patrol roads, fetch building materials and food, run errands, clear areas around camps, and harvest plantations. Noncompliance resulted in heavy fines or even death in some instances.105 The heavy army presence created a culture of impunity and many opportunities for extortion and theft—looting during counterinsurgency raids and an array of “porter fees, gate fees, military fund contributions, sport fees, road and bridges fees, fire sentry fees, labor contribution fees, and levies on farms, farm water and crops.”106 Rape and sexual assault occurred with impunity, and was in fact encouraged by the granting of extra privileges to Burmese soldiers who married minority women—with the implication that ethnic women were at the disposal of its soldiers in implementing a Burmanization policy.107 In sum, under the neutral banner of “economic cooperation,” Japanese reparations and technical aid have played a major role in strengthening the military regime’s power and sustaining its campaigns against ethnic minorities in exchange for maintaining Japanese influence in Burma and access to Burmese markets and resources. Such support was rooted in a longer history of encouraging Burmese militarization and centralization from the wartime–colonial era when Japan’s occupying military regime sponsored Burma’s future leaders such as U Nu and Ne Win, who went on to encourage those same tendencies in the name of unifying and strengthening independent Burma in the postcolonial world—once again, with Japanese assistance that invoked their “special relationship.” Moreover, the visions of “comprehensive development” rooted in large-scale infrastructure construction that Kubota and the Japanese government sold to Burma’s leaders also had some of their origins in projects conducted in heavily militarized regions of Japan’s wartime empire such as Korea and Manchukuo. These top to bottom, multi-purpose infrastructure projects mobilized Burmese bureaucrats, engineers, politicians, and affected residents to radically transform the landscape, with the goal of integrating the nation through technology and development. While these development visions put forth by Japanese engineers and experts through the Balu Chaung project tapped into deep-seated desires for rapid industrialization and economic independence on the part of Burma’s leaders, as well as development and economic opportunity among many Karenni peoples, in the end the project’s successful completion relied significantly on state militarization and centralization, which in turn brought violence, displacement, and jarring socioeconomic transformation to Karenni State. As the Japanese government and engineering consultants like Kubota sought to erase memories of brutal wartime occupations among newly independent nations in Asia by promoting a development vision of peaceful, high-speed economic growth, the 104

Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 40, 45–6; Akimoto Yuki, “Baruchaun hatsudenjo no ima: Tōgenkyō kara jiraigen ni: Shōsū minzoku to kaihatsu no genba,” P’s Pod. No. 0 (January 2013): 3-5, accessed February 2, 2018, http://peacebuilding.asia/wp-content/ uploads/2013/10/Myanmar.2013_web.pdf. 105 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 38–40. 106 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 41–2. 107 Karenni Development Research Group, Dammed by Burma’s Generals, 43–4.

108

Engineering Asia

effects of projects on the ground in fact bear a certain continuity with aspects of earlier Japanese militarization and colonial campaigns to “construct” and therefore “liberate” Asia through technology from the wartime era. This is yet another crucial aspect of Japan’s postcolonial technical aid system, which was enthusiastically embraced by other Southeast Asian dictatorships such as South Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia.

Conclusion: The limits of Japanese development in Asia Oh southern friends! Who live in the same Asia Your hopes are our hopes To build a prosperous nation We bring new technology Arriving with a mission We, the Nippon Kōei Technology Corps!! —Nippon Kōei Song of Southern Development108

Shima composed this song during the company’s next large-scale river control project in South Vietnam, Da Nhim Dam (1955–64). It captured the sentiment of engineers working for years on end in remote, often dangerous regions throughout newly independent Southeast Asia. Yet it was also the product of a broader discourse of Asian development dating from his earlier career during Japan’s colonial era and the tumultuous politics of transition from the imperial to the Cold War era. With the Japanese government’s support, Kubota marketed “comprehensive development” schemes originating from Japan’s colonial era to postcolonial regimes eager to promote rapid industrial development. In exchange, he helped Japan acquire markets for its capital goods and resources for its growing economy. These efforts to re-enter Southeast Asia were enabled by a US policy that encouraged Japan to become a regional power. They were part of a larger American “global imaginary of integration” in which Japan became a beacon of a thriving democracy and capitalist economy for postcolonial Asia. The Japanese government actively embraced its new role as a leading Asian member of the “free world” and regional Cold War mediator. As shown by Shima’s song, a reinvigorated message of pan-Asianist development became the ideological vehicle for Japan’s re-entry into Asia. But however sincere such sentiment of uniting with “Asia’s hopes” was, ultimately such sentiment was bounded by Japan’s relationship with American political, military, and economic power throughout Asia. As shown by the song’s title, which used the wartime term “Southern Regions” instead of “Southeast Asia,” Japan’s pan-Asianist discourse of development had strong connections to the wartime–colonial era. Superior Japanese technology and wellplanned development projects grounded in each area’s specific conditions would transcend national differences and stimulate prosperity throughout Asia. However, in the new postcolonial context of independent nation-states, this discourse took 108

Shima Sanshirō, “Sekai ni hibike!! Nanpō kaihatsu no uta,” Kōei (April 1969): 11.

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 109 on a more intense, sentimental form of emphasizing interpersonal relationships and cooperation rather than simply asserting Japanese leadership and superiority. Through their work among the people, many Japanese engineers acquired a sense of the difficulties their development message faced in the midst of fiercely divided societies emerging from legacies of war and imperialism. But in the end, their status as consultants for national governments asserting legitimacy over diverse, fractured societies somewhat undermined their claims of working directly for the people. Japanese engineers finally resolved this tension between their beliefs and positions by claiming that their work was above politics and would ultimately benefit everyone equally. In the end, however, under the banner of apolitical technical aid, Kubota, Nippon Kōei, and the Japanese development community helped strengthen militarist, centralized regimes at the expense of minorities and other political forces with competing visions. Upon returning to Asia, Japanese engineers invoked technology’s promise of modernization and development, which appealed to authoritarian regimes attempting to solidify power over contested territories and divided publics in newly emerging nation-states. As Nick Cullather writes, “dams symbolized the sacrifice of the individual to the greater good of the state” and allowed “a state to appropriate and redistribute land, plan factories and economies, tell people what to make and grow, and design and build new housing, roads, schools, and centers of commerce.”109 River valley projects enabled governments to enter rural areas and make the peasantry “accountable to schedules, targets, and oversight.”110 Thus, in selling large-scale infrastructure projects to developing nations, Japanese engineers continued a tradition of “high modernist,” top-down development and planning dating from the colonial era. Such an approach acquired international legitimacy during the early Cold War era since the USA and the United Nations also promoted large-scale river valley projects as a prescription for development. The consequences of Japan’s approach of separating politics from aid on the ground, however, meant increasing militarization, repressing minorities and dissent, destroying ecologies and environments, and threatening local socioeconomic practices and cultural traditions.111 A closer look at the politics and power dynamics involved in the formation of Japan’s development system in Cold War Asia at multiple levels can contribute to more nuanced studies of Japanese aid’s effectiveness, since these dynamics directly pertain to issues of inequality, human rights, and democracy that affect the development process.

109

Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 110. 110 Cullather, The Hungry World, 111. 111 For more, see Sumi Kazuo, ODA enjo no genjitsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989). Others have claimed that Japan’s infrastructure-oriented approach to development laid the groundwork for dynamic growth and the lifting of millions out of poverty throughout Asia. For example, see Koizumi Hajime, Kaihatsu wa jigyō toshite toraeyō—Kubota Yutaka ni manabu kaihatsu kyōryoku no arikata (Tokyo: Kaihatsu seisaku kenkyū kikō, 2008).

110

Engineering Asia

Bibliography “(10) Sao Wunna (Kayah State Minister).” November 10, 1959, November 25, 1959, December 13, 1960. In Biruma yōjin honpō hōmon kankei zakken. Reel No. A’6.1.5. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Ajia keizai kenkyūjo. Teikaihatsu kōgyōka no gijutsuteki jōken. Tokyo: Ajia keizai kenkyūjo, 1960. Akai, Kazuo. Kaigai ni idomu Nihon kigyō. Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 1964. Akedo, Yukio. “Sabita tetsu kabuto.” In Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, edited by Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 77–8. Tokyo: Nippon Kōei kabushiki kaisha, 2011. Akimoto, Yuki. “Baruchaun hatsudenjo no ima: Tōgenkyō kara jiraigen ni: Shōsū minzoku to kaihatsu no genba.” P’s Pod. No. 0 (January 2013): 3–5. Accessed February 2, 2018, http://peacebuilding.asia/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Myanmar.2013_web.pdf. Ba, Thaw. “Early Days of Mobye Dam.” Forward 7, no. 24 (1969): 12–15. Chōsen Ōryokkō Suiryoku Hatsudensha, ed. Suihō kensetsu kinen shashinchō. Seoul: Chōsen Ōryokkō Suiryoku Hatsudensha, 1943. Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Government of the Union of Burma Electricity Supply Board. Mobye Reservoir Project June 1967-May 1970 Completion Report on Construction and Supervision, Volume 1: Text. Rangoon: Government of Burma Electric Supply Board, 1970. Government of the Union of Burma Electricity Supply Board. Report on the Preliminary Design and Layout of the Mobye Irrigation Project. Rangoon: Government of Burma Electric Supply Board, 1968. Harada, Kiyoshi. Suihō hatsudenjo kōji taikan. Amagasaki: Doken bunkasha, 1942. Harrell, Edgar C. “Japan’s Postwar Aid Policies.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1973. Hatano, Sumio. “‘Tōnan Ajia kaihatsu’ o meguru Nichi-Bei-Ei kankei—Nihon no Koronbo puran kanyū.” Nenpō kindai Nihon kenkyū. No. 16 (1994): 215–42. Honma, Norio. “Manshūkoku suiryoku denki jigyō ni tsuite.” Kōgyō kokusaku 2 (August 1939): 28–38. “Ikeda sōri Tōnan Ajia shokoku hōmon no sai no kakkoku shunō to no kaidan naiyō.” December 1, 1961. In Ikeda sōri Ajia shokoku hōmon kankei ikken Biruma no bu. Reel No. A’0358. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. “Ikeda sōri U Nu shushō kaidan yōshi (dai ikkai).” November 24, 1961. In Ikeda sōri Ajia shokoku hōmon kankei ikken Biruma no bu. Reel No. A’0358. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Itō, Hiroichi. Tongū rōdo: Biruma baishō kōji no gonenkan. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963. Kajima Kensetsu Kabushiki Kaisha shachō. “Hito taisaku ni tsuite.” August 25, 1955. In Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan. File Management Number 0120-2001-09610. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Karenni Development Research Group. Dammed by Burma’s Generals: The Karenni Experience with Hydropower Development—From Lawpita to the Salween. Burma: Karenni Development Research Group, 2006. Kido, Kihei. “Kido Barūchan shuchōjyo-chō hōkoku.” March 17, 1955. In Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan. File

Japanese Engineers and the Postcolonial, Cold War Discourse of Development 111 Management Number 0120-2001-09610. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kido, Yoshihira. “Insājyan no kinkyō jōhō no ken.” August 15, 1955. In Nihon Biruma baishō oyobi keizai kyōryoku kyōtei kankei ikken: Jisshi kankei dai ni kan. File Management Number 0120-2001-09610. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Archives. In Tokyo, Japan. Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Kodaira, Keima, ed. Shingishū shōkō yōran shōwa jūshichi nenkan (1942). Reprint. Seoul: Keijin bunkasha, 1989. Koizumi, Hajime. Kaihatsu wa jigyō toshite toraeyō—Kubota Yutaka ni manabu kaihatsu kyōryoku no arikata. Tokyo: Kaihatsu seisaku kenkyū kikō, 2008. Konagaya, Yutaka. “Kaya-shū daijin to kondan ni kansuru ken.” March 30, 1954. In Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei. Reel No. E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Konagaya, Yutaka. “Kubota-shi ichigyō no nittei keika no ken.” October, 19, 1953. In Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei. Reel No. E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Konagaya, Yutaka. “U Tan Tōn kōgyō jikan to Kubota Yutaka shachō kaidan yōshi.” October 17, 1953. In Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei. Reel No. E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kubota, Yutaka. “Tentative Ideas on Hydro-Electric Projects for Burma.” November 3, 1953. In Honpō tai-Biruma keizai gijutsu kyōryoku kankei. Reel No. E’0217. Japan Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Archives. Tokyo, Japan. Kubota, Yutaka and Yamaguchi Hitoaki. Ajia kaihatsu no kiban o kizuku: Kaigai konsarutanto. Tokyo: Ajia keizai kenkyūjo, 1967. Lockwood, Agnese Nelms. “The Burma Road to Pyidawtha.” International Conciliation 518 (May 1958): 385–450. Maung, Cho Pyone. “The Little Sea in the Hills.” Forward 11, no. 12 (1973): 12–17. Miyamoto, Takenosuke. “Kōa gijutsu no kihon seikaku.” In Gendai gijutsu no kadai, edited by Miyamoto Takenosuke, 111–29. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1940. Miyamoto, Takenosuke. “Nanman oyobi Hokushi zakkan.” In Gijutsusha no michi, edited by Miyamoto Takenosuke. 280–340. Tokyo: Kakgakushugi kōgōsha, 1939. Moe, Kyaw Aung. “Progress through Land Development.” Forward 11, no. 10 (1973): 15–16. Monoi, Tatsuo. “Barūchan hatsudenjo kensetsu no kiroku.” Denki zasshi OHM 47, no. 6 (1960): 47–52. Monoi, Tatsuo. “Bunka hatsuru Barūchan no inshō—Biruma hatsuden kensetsu hōkoku.” Jitsugyō no Nihon 59, no. 9 (April 1, 1956): 140–1. Moore, Aaron S. Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Nagatsuka, Riichi. Kubota Yutaka. Tokyo: Denki jōhōsha, 1966. Nessa no chikai.Videocassette. Directed by Watanabe Kunio. 1940. Tokyo: Tōhō kabushiki kaisha, 1990s. Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha. “Kaigai bumon.” Shahō. No. 129 (February/March 1965): 10–17. Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha. Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu. Tokyo: Nippon Kōei kabushiki kaisha, 2011.

112

Engineering Asia

Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha. Nippon Kōei sanjūgonen-shi. Tokyo: Nippon Kōei kabushiki kaisha, 1981. Nozawa, Noboru. “Shōrai o kimeta kyōju no hitokoto.” In Niji o kakeru otokotachi: Kaihatsu konsarutanto senshi no kaisō, edited by Hyōgen Gijutsu Kaihatsu Sentā, 21–32. Tokyo: Nihon sangyō saiken gijutsu kyōkai, 1994. Ozawa, Takeo, Kubota Yutaka, Itagaki Yoichi, and Ōkita Saburō. “‘Tōnan Ajia’ ni okeru Nihon no chii.” Keizai ōrai 7, no. 5 (May 1955): 7–20. People’s Literature Committee and House. Who’s Who in Burma 1961. Rangoon: People’s Literature Committee and House, 1961. Rastorfer, Jean-Marc. On the Development of Kayah and Kayan National Identity: A Study and a Bibliography. Bangkok: Southeast Asian Publishing House, 1994. Sakaida, Masanobu. “Hatsuden kōji o tsūjite mita Biruma no jijō.” Keizai kyōryoku 6, no. 41 (June 1960): 13–17. Satō, Tokihiko. Doboku jinsei gojūnen. Tokyo: Chūō kōron jigyō shuppan, 1969. Seekins, Donald M. “Japan’s Aid Relations with Military Regimes in Burma, 1962–1991: The Kokunaika Process.” Asian Survey 32, no. 3 (1992): 246–62. Shima, Sanshirō. “Barūchan to Nippon Kōei.” In Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, edited by Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 79–81. Tokyo: Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 2011. Shima, Sanshirō. “Sekai ni hibike!! Nanpō kaihatsu no uta.” Kōei. no. 175 (April 1969): 11. Shimizu, Tomihisa. “Kubota Yutaka-Nippon Kōei to Chōsen-Betonamu.” Shisō 14 (November 1973): 33–47. Smith, Martin. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London and New York: Zed Books, 1991. Sumi, Kazuo. ODA enjo no genjitsu. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989. “The Union Day in Loikaw.” Forward 1, no. 14 (1963): 10–14. Yasumasa, Sakatō, Arai Kiyoyasu, Yamaguchi Masashi, Takaguchi Kazuhiro, Takahashi Hiroaki, and Oshiba Katsu. “Zadankai Biruma Barūchan purojekuto: Kōei no yurikago jidai.” In Myanmā renpō kyōwa koku Barūchan dengen kaihatsu, edited by Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 53–9. Tokyo: Nippon Kōei Kabushiki Kaisha, 2011. Yoon, Won Z. Japan’s Scheme for the Liberation of Burma: The Role of the Minami Kikan and the “Thirty Comrades.” Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1973.

5

The Hydrocarbon Ring: Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order in Asia Eric G. Dinmore

Considering how Indonesian labor and raw materials fed the postwar Japanese “miracle,” as well as how Japanese capital, chainsaws, and cement helped guide Indonesian development, the lack of attention Japan historians to date have paid to the countries’ bilateral relationship since 1945 is striking. Part of the gap in historical scholarship stems from disciplinary boundaries; until the 1990s, most post-1945 topics were the territory of journalists, economists, and political scientists. Language issues have imposed another barrier, since a full reading of available source material would entail mastery of English, Japanese, Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia, and Javanese. As a consequence, while a comparatively large body of careful historical scholarship exists on Japan’s wartime colonization of the Netherlands East Indies and its transformative postwar legacies, only a handful of historical studies continue the story into the ensuing decades. Similarly, although historians have written plenty of country-specific volumes on primary-sector industries in both Japan and Indonesia, few to date have rigorously explored intra-Asian connections through resources and energy. Yet such areas require greater scrutiny. American neo-imperialist imperatives in Asia, the ambivalent legacies of the wartime empire, and seemingly “complementary” economic strengths1 thrust Japan and Indonesia together into a close but often prickly relationship within the US-led Cold War bloc—to the point where, by 1974, student demonstrators in Jakarta rioted against the obtrusive Japanese presence in their country. A fuller historical understanding of how these disparate countries affected one another, as well as how American Cold War aims shaped the range of actions each could take, will provide a more complex account of both Japan’s rise to global pre-eminence and Indonesia’s postcolonial effort to cobble together a motley archipelago into a functioning nation-

1

Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 212.

114

Engineering Asia

state and regional power under the twin ideological banners of Pancasila (Five State Principles) and “development.”2 With this essay, I have taken initial steps to address these gaps in scholarship in the hope of inspiring further investigations. I shall focus on a crucial and overlooked area of the trans-World War II Japanese–Indonesian relationship: the extraction and appropriation of Indonesian petroleum with Japanese capital, technical education, and technology. It is well known that Japanese war planners in the 1930s and 1940s fixated on the political control of Southeast Asian oil resources. Long after the war, however, Indonesian petroleum continued to service a rapidly growing Japanese economy. When urban Japanese were choking on smog in the early 1970s, politicians and industrialists coveted the waxy crude oil from central Sumatra’s Minas oilfield for its remarkably low sulfur content.3 In 2005, when the Co-Prosperity Sphere was fading into historical memory and more of Japan’s imported fossil fuel supplies came from the Persian Gulf than anywhere else, 2.8  percent of crude oil, 10.2  percent of petroleum products, and 28.6 percent of liquefied natural gas imports by value came from Indonesia.4 In 2014, 26 percent of Indonesian crude oil exports still went to Japan—more than any other country—at a time when Indonesia had become a net importer of fossil fuels in response to rising domestic demand and stagnating production.5 Here, I highlight the central roles that Japanese played in the development of the Indonesian petroleum industry across two major divides in Indonesia’s postcolonial history. First, I investigate the trans-1945 story of how Japanese “oil corps” (sekiyu butai) and wartime policies qualitatively altered the structure of the Netherlands East Indies oil industry. After the war, these changes helped to create a postwar policy environment where newly independent Indonesians desperate to nationalize the oil industry eventually courted Japanese investors and developers eager to re-establish Japanese influence in Southeast Asia through the channel of “economic cooperation.” After the Sukarno-era rapprochement between Japan and Indonesia in 1958, Japanese bankrolled Indonesia’s first major national oil development project, the Permina wells near Pangkalan Brandan, at the border of Aceh Province in North Sumatra. The success of this project in the early 1960s led to further nationalizations and the creation of Pertamina, Indonesia’s national champion in the oil industry. Second, and much more

2

3

4

5

The original five principles of Pancasila, which Sukarno named during the Indonesian Revolution in 1945, were: (1) Structuring a Free Indonesia in Faithfulness to God Almighty; (2) Consensus or Democracy; (3) Internationalism or Humanitarianism; (4) Social Prosperity; and (5) Nationalism or National Unity. Much like Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles in Chinese history, interpretations of Pancasila have changed over time, most notably when Suharto’s New Order after 1965 tried to purge the ideology of any radical social principles. See Adrian Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 117, 177. “Dokuji no tachiba de shin-kakaku—Indoneshia sekiyu kōsha no Sutoo-sōsai kataru,” Asahi shinbun, February 20, 1971, 9. Figures derived from Economic Research Department, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Japanese Trade in 2005 (Tokyo: JETRO, 2005), 52, 95. This is a translation of Nihon no bōeki dōkō 2005-nen. United States Energy Information Administration, “Indonesia: International Energy Data and Analysis,” (October 7, 2015), accessed May 31, 2016, http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/ analysis_includes/countries_long/Indonesia/indonesia.pdf.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

115

briefly, I turn to the 1965 divide, when Suharto seized power from Sukarno after the September 30 Movement, murdered close to a million communists and other political enemies, and founded an authoritarian “New Order” based on promises of stability and economic development. The very survival of the New Order, especially in its early years, depended on firm backing from the USA and Japan, as well as oil revenue from a rapidly expanding Pertamina. Increased flows of Japanese economic assistance and oil imports played an essential role in consolidating Suharto’s army-state, and Japan built and sustained a Cold War relationship with Indonesia based on the unsustainable extraction of natural resources. In addition to filling gaps in the scholarship on the history of Japanese–Indonesian relations, this chapter informs growing bodies of scholarship in two areas. First, it illustrates an under-researched chapter in twentieth-century energy history by documenting how Japan, an oil-poor industrial power, and Indonesia, a postcolonial oil exporter, both tried to sabotage the established rules of the international oil industry by circumventing the power of Western oil “majors” such as Royal Dutch Shell and the Standard Oil companies. The “majors” had amassed their immense power in the first half of the twentieth century by convincing North America and Europe to adopt oil as a chief energy source, producing and distributing that oil with technology and pipelines they monopolized, and exploiting oil fields in the Middle East, Latin America, and the East Indies, where the power of laborers to resist was weak.6 Japan and Indonesia during World War II, decolonization, and the Cold War evinced an increasing capacity to loosen the tight grip that the majors had on Southeast Asian oil supplies, but in so doing, often caused tensions with each other, as well as with their Cold War sponsor, the USA. Second, in exploring the important role of Japanese economic assistance to Indonesia, this chapter illuminates a specific case where the form of aid in the early postwar years reflected Japan’s status as an emerging Cold War donor during the “transformative” period described in Hiromi Mizuno’s introduction to this volume. In the 1950s, when Japan first began dispensing aid bilaterally to Asian neighbors, and often tied in with reparations settlements, Japanese proponents of such “economic cooperation” hoped to cultivate relations with Southeast Asia as a means of alleviating resource shortages at home. Resource policy leaders such as Ōkita Saburō and Aki Kōichi had served in the Resources Council of the Economic Stabilization Board during the Allied Occupation, and they keenly felt a need to approach domestic and overseas resources in a “comprehensive” manner, drawing inspiration from the Tennessee Valley Authority and other New Deal models from the USA.7 Although Ōkita and Aki

6

7

Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (New York: Verso, 2011). Mitchell’s work looks almost exclusively at the Middle East, but much of his argument about the oil majors in the Middle Eastern mandates could readily apply to the colonial regime in the Netherlands East Indies. Jin Sato, “Domestic Functions of Economic Cooperation: Japan’s Evolution as a Donor in the 1950s,” in The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors, ed. Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 11–28. On the Tennessee Valley Authority model in Japan, see Eric G. Dinmore, “Concrete Results? The TVA and the Appeal of Large Dams in Occupation-Era Japan,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 39, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 1–38.

116

Engineering Asia

were not central figures in the joint Japanese–Indonesian oil ventures formed in the 1950s and 1960s, it comes as little surprise that oil factored centrally in the reopening of bilateral trade. Much early Japanese aid to the Indonesian oil industry also took the form of technical assistance and exploration equipment, which fit in with the broad American foreign policy goal of deputizing Japan as an Asian provider of technical assistance to Southeast Asia under programs such as 3CT (Third-Country Training).8 It also formed part of what Mizuno describes as the wider “kula ring” exchange of resources, goods, technology, and services across post-1945 East and Southeast Asia. During the 1960s, the Vietnam War and fears about spreading communism in Southeast Asia amplified American expectations that Japan would serve as its deputy in the region. Even though Japan was less immediately concerned with domestic resource issues by then, it continued to ply Indonesia with economic aid and import quantities of crude oil under a liberalizing trade relationship with Suharto’s New Order.9 Thus, although Japanese importers of nationalized Indonesian oil were often working against the wishes of the American majors, Japan’s economic links to Indonesia furthered American neo-imperial goals. Indeed, Indonesian petroleum flows, Japanese petroleum investments, and American petroleum-fueled Cold War policies by the 1960s formed a “hydrocarbon ring”—a fossil-fueled “kula ring” relationship that maintained capitalist hegemony in Southeast Asia.

Wartime occupation and the transformation of Indonesian oil politics Any study of oil in the Japanese–Indonesian relationship necessarily begins with World War II and the attempt by Japan to assimilate the material and human resources of the Netherlands East Indies into a Tokyo-centered Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. After the invasion of Manchuria and the global drift toward zero-sum economic nationalism in the early 1930s, “reform” bureaucrats, military planners, and other commentators on resource vulnerabilities had begun to strategize ways to circumvent the hold of American, British, and Dutch multinational firms over Japan’s oil supplies. Initially, such schemes focused on finding suppliers outside the reach of the Western firms, such as when the prominent shipping magnate and art collector Matsukata Kōjirō successfully brokered a deal with the Soviet Union in 1932 to import northern Sakhalin oil at tremendously discounted rates.10 After Japan launched total war with China in 1937, though, increasing numbers of Japanese resource strategists urged for the political control of Asian oilfields. The most productive oilfields in Asia at the time lay within the Netherlands East Indies, and the archipelago came to constitute

8

9 10

See Toshihiro Higuchi, “How US Aid in the 1950s Prepared Japan as a Future Donor,” in The Rise of Asian Donors, Sato and Shimomura 29–48. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 210–12, 216. Richard Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 175–7. The deal specifically allowed for the import of 35,000 tons of Sakhalin oil annually at rates 40 percent below what Western firms charged.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

117

the grand prize in the wartime Japanese Empire’s “southern advance” to fuel the CoProsperity Sphere. Prewar operations under the control of Western oil companies were, indeed, large in scale by the standards of the day, and adequate to serve Japan’s war needs. According to Dutch records, a total of 733 “European” and 1066 “other” non-European field staffers working for subsidiaries of Royal Dutch Shell, StandardVacuum (Stanvac), and Standard of California Texas Corporation (the future Caltex) oversaw a workforce of 18,967 field laborers and produced 7,938,933 metric tons (approximately 58.2 million barrels) of petroleum in 1940.11 Most relevant to this essay are two important legacies of the Japanese military occupation of the Netherlands East Indies: first, personnel in Japanese oil companies acquainted themselves with the geology of the Indonesian archipelago and advanced extraction and refining technologies. Second, although Japanese occupiers mistreated and brutalized Indonesian workers, and although they stole large volumes of Indonesian oil, the legacy of Japanese occupation fundamentally transformed labor relations and emboldened Indonesians after 1945 to enter the oil business on their own terms. Even before the American oil embargo and Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese war planners, especially those in the Army, began developing schemes for the rapid appropriation of Southeast Asian oil. Nihon Oil (Nisseki)’s company history noted that, by as early as February 1941, the Army instructed its managers to prepare employees for a possible invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. By June of the same year, the Army and Navy ordered Nisseki to dismantle much of its drilling equipment in Taiwan and the naichi and ready it for transport to Southeast Asia. The Army requisitioned a total of 118 rotary table rigs and 15 cable-tool rigs from Nisseki by mid-1941, while the Navy requisitioned 10 and 5 of each.12 On October 1, 1941, the focus of these military plans moved from physical to human capital when the Army and Navy ordered the large-scale draft of civilian oil technicians. Virtually every Japanese firm connected to the oil industry provided employees for “oil corps” units (sekiyu butai), which were attached to either the Army or Navy depending on the territory and tasked with bringing enemy oilfields into the service of Greater East Asia. Despite severe shortages of skilled workers in Japan proper in the 1940s, over 12,000 people, or a full 70 percent of the oil industry’s workforce—far more than the numbers of field staffers for Western oil companies working in the East Indies at the time—ended up in Southeast Asia by 1945.13 Thus, as an outgrowth of World War II, the Japanese oil industry became firmly committed to exploring and exploiting Southeast Asian resources. As Japanese forces swept into Southeast Asia in early 1942, wartime ideologues celebrated the vast infusion of material resources that would supposedly accompany the expansion of the empire. News reports hailed the February 1942 capture of Sumatra, proclaiming the new territory to be a “treasure island of petroleum and 11

12

13

John O. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi: Politics in a Changing Economy, 1940–1955,” Southeast Asia Program Data Paper 36, Vol. 1 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Department of Far Eastern Studies, 1959), 66. Conversion calculated at 7.33 barrels equaling 1 metric ton. Nihon Sekiyu Kabushiki Kaisha/Nihon Sekiyu Seisei Kabushiki Kaisha Shashi Hensan Shitsu, ed., Nihon sekiyu hyakunenshi (Tokyo: Nihon sekiyu kabushiki kaisha, 1988), 360. Teikoku Sekiyu Shashi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi: kaigai hen (Tokyo: Teikoku sekiyu kabushiki kaisha, 1992), 24, 120–1.

118

Engineering Asia

rubber.”14 Following closely behind the soldiers and journalists were oil technicians, who scrambled to assume control over oil sites. Many of these sites, however, were badly damaged from scorched earth retreats, especially by British and Dutch workers for BPM (Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij), a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, who destroyed an estimated half billion (in 1942) dollars in equipment as they left. These sabotages angered General Terauchi Hisaichi enough that he threatened to execute anyone found willfully destroying the instillations. Japanese troops, in fact, put eighty-one Dutch to death for sabotaging oil installations in Balikpapan in eastern Borneo later in 1942.15 Over the first year of occupation, the oil corps units managed to gain control of the abandoned sites, often using transported equipment that had been purchased from the USA just before the war. Oil corps officers also reportedly had offered to employ any BPM or NKPM (Nederlansch Koloniale Petroleum Maatschappij; a subsidiary of Stanvac) technicians regardless of nationality, but these “Europeans” refused.16 As these operations took place, government and private capital poured into the newly established, government-backed Teikoku Oil Company, whose workers in oil corps units led the drive to rehabilitate sabotaged oil production facilities in Borneo, Burma, and the Netherlands East Indies. Alongside the oil corps, Nisseki and Mitsubishi Oil (Sanseki) willingly sent refinery technicians to staff special “Nisseki” and “Sanseki” units that oversaw operations at the enormous refinery works in Palembang, Sumatra, and Balikpapan.17 Although these and other Japanese firms generally lost money in working alongside Japanese military occupiers in Southeast Asia, they found enormous opportunity in gaining intelligence and placing themselves for potential concessions after the war.18 Indeed, oil workers in the occupied Netherlands East Indies learned volumes from their experiences. By 1943, roughly a year after Japanese forces seized control, oil corps and refinery workers managed to restore 80.6 percent of all oil wells and produce crude oil and refined products at 76 percent of prewar levels.19 Despite these successes on the ground, transporting the oil back to industrial centers in Japan remained a critical weak spot. An oil distribution department in Singapore served as the major collection and distribution point for exported products, but transportation even to that nearby location became nearly impossible by the end of the war. Allied submarines and bombers entered Southeast Asian waters around the moment oil exports began, and by 1944, they sank Japanese tankers at a much faster rate than shipyards could replace them. Japanese authorities abandoned attempts to ship oil to the Home Islands altogether by early 1945.20 14

15 16 17

18

19

20

“Sekiyu to gomu no takarajima—Sumatora shingeki no igi,” Tōkyō Asahi shinbun, February 22, 1942. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 1, 134–5. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 1, 142–3. Mitsubishi Sekiyu Kabushiki Kaisha Shashi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Mitsubishi sekiyu gojūnenshi (Tokyo: Mitsubishi Sekiyu Kabushik Kaisha, 1981), 81–2. Hikita Yasuyuki, “Japanese Companies’ Inroads into Indonesia,” in Japan, Indonesia, and the War: Myths and Realities, ed. Peter Post and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997), 149–51. Nihon Sekiyu, Nihon sekiyu hyakunenshi, 362; Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 123. Jerome Cohen, Japan’s Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1949), 140–2.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

119

The war was lost, but in the process of restoring and operating equipment left behind by the retreating multinational firms, Japanese oil workers acquired advanced technologies and overseas experience. Specifically, well workers from Teikoku Oil achieved better understandings of geological and geophysical exploration equipment, new unit standardizations, and methods of measuring pressure in geological strata. Using captured US–Dutch surveys from NPPM (Nederlandsche Pacific Petroleum Maatschappij), a subsidiary of the California Texas Oil Company, prospectors in central Sumatra discovered the Minas oilfield, which would become Indonesia’s largest in the postwar decades.21 Refinery workers, meanwhile, repaired and operated enormous systems like the Sungai Gerong works outside of Palembang, which measured ten times larger than Japan’s largest refineries at the time in Kawasaki.22 Finally, Japanese occupiers commanded a local workforce that vastly outnumbered them and was apparently far larger than in 1940: Japanese oil technicians and their military overseers totaled 15,165 at their peak, while Indonesian workers at oil sites totaled around 132,000.23 While more research needs to be done on the undoubtedly tense, if not oppressive, labor relations at Indonesian oil sites, the wartime occupation nevertheless marked the first extended period of contact between Japanese and Indonesians in the history of oil development. On this last point, much has already been written on how Japanese occupation policies, though often clumsy and heavy-handed, nonetheless fed into post-1945 decolonization in Southeast Asia. Gotō Ken’ichi has examined Sukarno and other postcolonial regional leaders and their close relationships with wartime Japanese authorities.24 Other studies and memoirs have highlighted enigmatic “pan-Asian” idealists like Nishijima Shigetada, who personally involved himself in the Indonesian independence movement even before the Japanese takeover of the Netherlands East Indies in 1942.25 Keeping this larger context in mind, it is important to note how the institutional and ideological footprints of oil corps operations in Indonesia helped shape that country’s independent oil industry after 1945. Although Japanese occupiers primarily focused on sending as much Indonesian oil as possible back to Japan, they nevertheless transformed local labor markets by organizing workers into a group that evolved into the Indonesian Oil Workers Union after the war. In keeping with a wartime push in the Home Islands to train more skilled workers in institutions like Teikoku Oil’s technical schools in Akita and Niigata Prefectures, Japanese also established an Oil and Gas Institute in Bandung and trained Indonesians in petroleum engineering and management. Western companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Stanvac before the war saw fit to hire local populations only as 21 22 23 24

25

Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 20. Mitsubishi Sekiyu, Mitsubishi sekiyu gojūnenshi, 83. Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 121. Gotō Ken’ichi, “Cooperation, Submission, and Resistance of Indigenous Elites of Southeast Asia in the Wartime Empire,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 274–304. See Nishijima Shigetada, Shōgen Indoneshia dokuritsu kakumei (Tokyo: Shin jinbutsu ōraisha, 1975); and Nishijima Shigetada, “Indoneshia dokuritsu kakumei ni sanka shite,” in Kaigai e yūtopia o motomete—Bōmei to kokugai konkyochi, ed. Tamura Norio (Tokyo: Shakai hyōronsha, 1989), 269–73.

120

Engineering Asia

unskilled coolies, but their field staffers and managers could not operate in the same fashion when they returned after 1945.26 Indonesia’s anti-colonial leaders furthermore had witnessed Japan’s successful seizure of Western multinationals’ concessions on their home turf, and they concluded that Indonesians should assume control over their own natural resources.27 Two days after the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands, touching off a four-year war with its former colonial master and considerable ambiguity about the future of the Indonesian oil industry. The Western oil majors were eager to return to their concessions and refining installations, many of which had been heavily damaged by Allied air raids, but Indonesian oil workers in Sumatra and Java quickly seized control of the facilities from the departing Japanese and “Indonesianized” them. The Oil Workers Union took control of major refineries, such as the Plaju and Sungai Gerong works in Palembang, Sumatra, as well as many interior oilfields and former Japanese distribution facilities. Other oil workers in the port of Tanjung Priok seized Royal Dutch Shell facilities and declared themselves an “Oil Workers Party” (Partai Boeroeh Minjak). Dr. Mohamad Isa established the Permiri Company, the fledgling Republic of Indonesia’s first attempt at a national oil company.28 An Indonesian debate over nationalization began and would continue well into the 1960s. The majors did return, however. In 1946, British troops handling the details of the Japanese surrender on Sumatra took possession of the Palembang refineries and allowed Dutch technicians to investigate the installations. After the British troops departed, Dutch troops battled with Indonesians to take Palembang by the end of the year. The Oil Workers Union at Plaju nearly rioted, but it then moved northward to join with Permini personnel in the Sumatran interior. Nevertheless, Royal Dutch Shell production of refined petroleum products resumed by late 1946, Stanvac by 1948, and California Texas by 1950.29 By 1949, the Indonesian Republic agreed to guarantee colonial-era property arrangements as part of the accords that ended the war with the Netherlands, and the newly independent state officially recognized the legality of the majors’ operations. The atmosphere at the installations remained tense, though, and the Indonesian parliament in 1951 suspended the granting of new oil concessions and created a commission to look into the future pricing and tax structures of oil and other extractive industries. The concessions freeze lasted into the 1960s, much to the anger of Royal Dutch Shell and Stanvac, who had few new oil reserves.30 Importantly, some former Royal Dutch Shell installations remained in the hands of Indonesian workers, and they would later form the kernel of Indonesia’s first joint venture with Japan. One of these was a refinery in Cepu, in east-central Java, where an

26

27

28 29 30

Simpson, Economists with Guns, 100. On Teikoku’s wartime training programs, see Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Keiei hen), 35. Keizai Hatten Kyōkai Kokusai Shihon Idō Chōsakai, ed., Perutamina (Indoneshia kokuei sekiyu kaisha), Special Report No. 5 (Tokyo: Keizai hatten kyōkai, 1974), 4. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 2, 307–8. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 2, 485, 603. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 100–1.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

121

“Oil Workers Front” attached to the 1948 communist-led uprising in the nearby town of Madiun seized control and operated it in a syndicalist fashion. Although workers set it ablaze when the Indonesian Republic retook the area, it remained “Indonesianized” throughout the 1950s and came under the supervision of the Sukarno government’s Ministry of Prosperity.31 The others were the war-damaged oilfields near Pangkalan Brandan mentioned in the Introduction. Like the Cepu refinery, these North Sumatran oilfields came under the direction of the Ministry of Prosperity, but unionized oil workers ran the day-to-day operations. The Ministry of Prosperity continually spoke of returning the installation to the BPM subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, but many workers rejected the idea and demanded nationalization. After protracted discussions among rival union leaders in North Sumatra and political parties interested in the question of nationalization, the Indonesian government announced in 1956 that it would not return the oilfield to BPM, and that the operation would be known as North Sumatran Petroleum Operations, Inc.32 Cold War politics and the need for oil revenues made it difficult for the new Republic of Indonesia to oust the Western oil majors outright, but the Japanese occupation had crucially reshaped the politics of Indonesian oil and guaranteed the industry would not return to the colonial-era rules.

Toward Japanese “cooperation” with Indonesia’s oil economy From World War II to the mid-1950s, Japanese–Indonesian relations were distant, and both countries were too preoccupied with more immediate tasks of national reconstruction to pursue major overseas ventures in oil or other industries. Japan until the end of the 1940s was absorbed in the pressing matters of economic stabilization and the repatriation of civilians and soldiers from the former empire. Included in this mass migration of people were the approximately 10,000 oil workers who remained in Southeast Asia at the time of surrender in August 1945. Most returned to Japan in 1946 or 1947, depending on where they were stationed, though hundreds perished in guerrilla clashes, in jungles while attempting to elude capture, or amid poor health conditions in prisoner of war camps. Those who did return found limited employment prospects, since the Japanese oil industry operated under an Allied trade embargo and could only develop Japan’s small-scale oilfields in northwestern Honshū until 1949.33 These oilfields only met around 10 percent of Japan’s needs during the 1940s, and even less as the Japanese economy began to grow again during the Korean War. Japanese policy-makers in the 1950s deeply concerned themselves with securing energy resources for the economic growth they deemed was necessary to support a 31 32

33

Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 2, 374, 570. Sutter, “Indonesianisasi,” Vol. 3, 815–19, 846. The chapter on “Mineral Production” in this volume is carefully detailed and has much to offer for scholars interested in this topic. Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 24–5, 130–3. During the Allied Occupation, American petroleum geologists in the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) Natural Resources Section, Mining and Geology Division, operated under the assumption that Japanese oil prospecting techniques were underdeveloped and that the introduction of American extraction technologies would dramatically boost Japan’s domestic petroleum yields. This situation never came to pass, and by 1949, Japan was again permitted to import oil from overseas.

122

Engineering Asia

peacetime population swollen with repatriates.34 This link between domestic energy demand, especially for oil, and overseas trade figured prominently in their goals as Japan emerged as a “kula ring”-style provider of economic assistance in the 1950s. Moreover, oil had replaced coal as Japan’s primary industrial fuel, in part because of the glut of cheap oil arriving in global markets from the go-fast exploitation of Persian Gulf oil in the early 1950s, but also because the US Cold War bloc drew much of its power from oil. The American economy that anchored the Bretton Woods system of international finance depended enormously on sales and distribution of petroleum products by American major oil firms, which in turn meant the US government expected its Cold War allies to base their economies on imported oil. For instance, American Marshall Plan aid compelled reconstructing Western European economies to purchase imported oil from major firms in US dollars, even when Europe had ample reserves of domestically available coal.35 Japan’s Cold War alliance dictated its energy options, which accelerated its conversion to oil. Once Japan regained its sovereignty after the Allied Occupation, it looked overseas to secure the capital, technology licenses, and resources required for growth. Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War politics of Japan’s new American patron precluded Japanese resource importers from re-establishing trade ties with mainland China after 1949. Instead, many importers turned their attention to Indonesia and its Southeast Asian neighbors. The Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, which formally ended the state of war between Japan and Indonesia, created opportunity for the two countries to re-engage diplomatically within the US-led Cold War bloc, but such re-engagement proved difficult. Indonesia in the late 1940s and early 1950s remained cool toward Japan, owing to political, ideological, and economic factors. The country had plunged into violence after Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta, and other anti-colonial leaders declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945. Although Dutch colonial authorities fought to reassert political control, they withdrew from all their East Indian possessions except Western New Guinea by 1949. Indonesia had gained its political independence, but the new regime under Sukarno still battled regional insurgencies and struggled to impose a largely Javanese notion of nationhood over thousands of islands with distinct geographies and traditions. Internationally, Sukarno’s government in the 1950s pursued non-aligned “active independence” amid the intensifying Cold War, and in the spirit of the 1955 Bandung Conference, it preferred to identify with other postcolonial Asian and African states rather than Japan, its former wartime occupier. When Indonesian intellectuals did seek foreign guidance, they tended to gravitate toward the People’s Republic of China as a suitably post-imperial model of assertive Asian resistance to Western neo-colonialism.36 As Sukarno’s regime moved in an authoritarian direction under “Guided Democracy” after 1957 and supported the Indonesian Communist 34

35 36

See Laura Hein, Fueling Growth: The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990). Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 120. Hong Liu, “The Historicity of China’s Soft Power: The PRC and the Cultural Politics of Indonesia, 1945–1965,” in The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds, ed. Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu, and Michael Szonyi (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 147–82.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

123

Party (KPI) as a political counterweight to the Indonesian National Army, frightened American and Japanese cold warriors viewed Indonesia as a country tilting toward communism. More specific to bilateral Japanese–Indonesian relations was the issue of reparations payments for wartime damages, which precluded any official re-establishment of diplomatic ties. During the six-plus years of negotiations over reparations between 1951 and January 1958, Indonesia at first demanded US$17 billion from Japan, while Japan successfully resisted making any specific counteroffers. Japanese commentators on the issue either denied any reparations were due or suggested more modest amounts, in the hundreds of millions. A breakthrough in relations came during the Kishi Nobusuke cabinet in the late 1950s. Japan’s economy had strengthened considerably, and although it was quickly growing more dependent on export markets in the USA than Asia, Indonesia’s natural resources, including oil, remained attractive to both Japanese industrialists and former architects of the wartime empire involved in reparations negotiations. This group included economic liberals such as Matsunaga Yasuzaemon, an electric power magnate and head of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. However, it also included Ayukawa Yoshisuke, former head of Nissan and Manchurian Heavy Industries and president of Teikoku Oil; Takasaki Tatsunosuke, Ayukawa’s successor in Manchuria and chairman of the postwar Electric Power Development Company; Kubota Yutaka, a planner of hydroelectric projects throughout the CoProsperity Sphere and postwar president of Nippon Kōei Corporation; and Prime Minister Kishi himself, formerly an industrial planner in Manchuria and Tōjō Hideki’s minister of commerce and industry. Drawing from the model of a separate 1954 reparations agreement reached with Burma, these men and other leaders advocated a reinterpretation of the reparations clauses in the Treaty of San Francisco that would allow Japan to pay using overseas aid projects tied to Japanese business interests.37 Based partly in neo-mercantilist resource strategies, but also in Japan’s fervent desire to reintegrate into international society and join “advanced” nation clubs such as the incipient Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this policy shaped the ultimate reparations agreement of late 1957. According to its terms, Japan would pay Indonesia a meager US$223 million over twelve years, cancel Indonesia’s trade debt, and offer another US$400 million in so-called “economic cooperation” projects.38 Under the influence of domestic resource specialists, such as Ōkita and Aki, “economic cooperation” in the 1950s primarily meant a form of aid aimed at securing industrial resources that were scarce at home but necessary for economic growth. Japan at the time ranked around the level of Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, and Spain in terms of per capita income, and it was ill placed to offer “aid” in the form it would later take during the post-1965 Suharto era. Instead, Japanese foreign 37

38

Nishihara Masashi, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia: Tokyo–Jakarta Relations, 1951–1966 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), 54–7; Miyoshi Shunkichirō, “Indoneshia baishō no mitooshi,” Ajia mondai 5, no.  1 (July 1956): 93–103. On the agreement with Burma and its historical significance for Japanese “economic cooperation” policies, see Patrick Strefford, “How Japan’s Post-War Relationship with Burma Was Shaped by Aid,” Asian Affairs 41, no. 1 (March 2010): 35–45. Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 56.

124

Engineering Asia

aid specialists hoped to use bilateral reparations agreements as a key mechanism for alleviating their country’s resource anxieties. Japan’s American allies, in turn, hoped that by forging economic links with Southeast Asia, Japan would become less dependent on US assistance, which had continued into the 1950s beyond the Allied Occupation and Korean War special procurements.39 Under the terms of the reparations agreement and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in April 1958, Indonesia quickly became Japan’s largest recipient of overseas aid. The influx of Japanese capital and investment bolstered Sukarno’s regime and furthered his consolidation of power across the Indonesian archipelago. Japanese investors in reparations and “economic cooperation” projects, meanwhile, obtained immense quantities of Indonesian natural resources. Nishihara Masashi’s pioneering diplomatic history of this period has traced the emergence of a Japanese “Indonesia lobby” connected to the 1957–8 normalization and centered on figures with wartime experience in the Netherlands East Indies, such as Nishijima Shigetada and Kubota Yutaka. “Indonesia lobbyists” had used their wartime connections to powerful Indonesians like Sukarno and Foreign Minister Ahmad Subardjo during the reparations negotiations to ensure that “economic cooperation” would be a key part of the agreement. After the agreement, the lobbyists were among the first Japanese to scramble for project contracts funded by the US$223 million in reparations. Kubota Yutaka, who, during World War II, had led the Japanese Sumatran Water Resources Development Survey Mission, lobbied hard but unsuccessfully to launch the Asahan River Development Project in Sumatra under the aegis of Nippon Kōei, while others pursued similar but smaller-scale “comprehensive development” schemes in other parts of the archipelago. Along with dams and other infrastructural works, reparations projects included paper mills, textile plants, hotels, and an office building featuring Indonesia’s first escalator.40 In addition to the Japanese goal of resource procurement, early assistance to Indonesia dovetailed with American Cold War aims of winning “hearts and minds” through technical training. Japan brought in 195 Indonesian trainees for technical training through the end of 1960, in conjunction with the US 3CT Program and the Colombo Plan, which Japan joined in 1954. Indonesians made up over 10 percent of all technical trainees brought to Japan through 1960—a large total when one considers that diplomatic relations had not resumed until the middle of 1958.41 Indeed, by the time “hearts and minds” came into frequent usage during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations, American policy-makers ardently urged Japan to play a large role in luring Indonesia away from communism through “economic cooperation.” Japanese aid to Indonesia eclipsed American aid by 1965, on the eve of Suharto’s seizure of power.42

39 40 41 42

Sato, “Domestic Functions of Economic Cooperation,” 13–15. Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 90–5. Higuchi, “How US Aid in the 1950s Prepared Japan as a Future Donor,” 42–3. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 84–5.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

125

Japanese–Indonesian “production sharing” Because the reparations settlement entailed US$400 million in “economic cooperation,” most Japanese projects in Indonesia fell under that category of resource acquisition. A particular form of this cooperation known as “production sharing,” which I further explain below, channeled much of Japan’s investment in the Indonesian oil industry. Although this production sharing helped to bolster the Indonesian economy, and therefore serve the Cold War interests of the USA, it also became part of a watershed moment in Indonesian oil history, where incursions by Japanese and other outside investors, as well as moves toward nationalization under the Sukarno government, dissolved the control that oil majors once had over Indonesian oil production. In other words, production sharing furthered Cold War political goals and strengthened the “hydrocarbon ring” mentioned in the Introduction, but it also stirred conflict among the business elites who interacted in Indonesia’s oil economy. Ultimately, this conflict factored importantly into the ousting of the Sukarno government in 1965–6. Among the “economic cooperation” ventures that emerged after 1958, the largest was the public–private North Sumatran Oil Development Company (Nosodeco), which in 1960 inaugurated Japan’s postwar importation of Sumatran oil and instrumentally served in the creation of Indonesia’s national oil company, Pertamina. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, economic cooperation projects were still a tough sell for Japanese investors because they themselves were supposed to assume responsibility for raising funds. Private companies remained wary of sinking capital into an Indonesia that was politically unstable and governed under Sukarno’s socialist-inspired “guided democracy.” Yet the Japanese business community remained interested in Indonesia’s petroleum endowments, in part through information gleaned during the wartime military occupation and the activities of oil corps technicians. Moreover, Japanese companies at the time did not operate “upstream” extractive oil operations anywhere in the world; rather, they needed to purchase all necessary crude oil from the AngloAmerican majors. Strategically minded business and government leaders embarked on a long-standing policy of pursuing greater control over oil supplies. The government under the Kishi cabinet provided state backing to Nosodeco investors, and the new company paved the way to even greater Japanese involvement in Indonesia’s fossil fuel industries.43 Nosodeco’s investment opportunity emerged as Indonesia began to nationalize its oilfields and as the Indonesian National Army inserted itself into the oil business. Few established Indonesian oilfields had been open to Japanese investment in the 1950s, because Royal Dutch Shell, Stanvac, and California Texas (Caltex) Oil aggressively and successfully re-established ownership over their prewar concessions. Yet in the North Sumatran oilfields near Pangkalan Brandan, unionized Indonesian oil workers had wrested control away from their prewar operator, BPM. Japanese occupation troops in October 1945 transferred control of the BPM oilfields to this group of Indonesian oil workers, who, amid the war of independence versus the Netherlands, went on to form the Indonesia Republic Oil Mining Company (Perusahaan Tambang Minjak Negara 43

Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 117.

126

Engineering Asia

R.I.).44 Because of entrenched local worker resistance to any reassertion of Western control, the Jakarta government by 1956 moved toward nationalizing the oilfields, but delegated day-to-day operations to the local technicians and militarized “oil troops” who guarded the installations. When Sukarno launched his authoritarian “Guided Democracy” policies in 1957, he left the Indonesian National Army with wide powers to act independently and to intervene in governmental affairs in the name of social stability. Chief of Staff Major General Abdul Haris Nasution then took it upon himself to assume Army control over nationalized former Dutch enterprises, including the North Sumatran operations. Nasution’s second deputy, Colonel Ibnu Sutowo, carried out a violent takeover of the Pangkalan Brandan oilfields, crushed the “oil troops,” and placed them under the control of Permina, an Army oil enterprise he formed in 1958.45 Ibnu rose alongside Permina to become a charismatic tycoon and Indonesia’s top oilman under the Suharto regime until his downfall in the Pertamina Scandal of 1975–6. Ibnu was a medical doctor by training, but he made his career as a “financial general” in the Army and a broker of personalized international business agreements outside the confines of the formal economy. During the Indonesian Revolution and early 1950s, he cut his teeth as a deal-maker when he worked in South Sumatra as a doctor remaining on active army duty. South Sumatra had rich export resources, including not only products from the Plaju and Sungai Gerong refineries, but also accumulations of cash crops, such as rice and coffee left over from Japanese wartime stockpiling. Ibnu figured centrally in smuggling these goods to Singapore to purchase weapons and supplies for the Army, and this trade continued long after the war had ended.46 After 1958, this wheeler-dealer and his new company faced the challenge of rehabilitating the North Sumatran oilfields, which had remained in their damaged state since the end of World War II. With scant funding from the Indonesian government, Permina began to look for overseas assistance, but it refused to surrender control and management. In keeping with the assertive anti-colonial posture of many Indonesian elites after independence, Ibnu and his backers bristled at the continued domination of foreign oil companies over the country’s energy resources. Instead, they came to advocate a “production sharing” policy, which called for oil nationalization while acknowledging that Indonesians lacked the capital and equipment to develop oilfields. In an effort to increase oil production revenue and to train indigenous personnel, Ibnu proposed a system where foreign contractors would be granted rights to a minority share of oil from a given project in return for capital, material, and technical assistance in exploration and extraction—in essence, a “kula ring” arrangement. He intended to outsource the risky and expensive process of exploration to overseas companies with 44 45

46

P.N. Pertamina, ed., The Story of the Oil Industry in Indonesia (Jakarta: P.N. Pertamina, 1970), 13. Harold Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Hiroyoshi Kano, Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850–2000: Economic Structures in a Southeast Asian State (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), 226–30. The oilfields were also adjacent to restive Aceh Province, where a rebellion against the Jakarta government continued for most of the 1950s. Hamish McDonald, Suharto’s Indonesia (Melbourne: Fontana Books, 1980), 145.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

127

more experience and capital, and he particularly looked to smaller independent firms outside the sway of multinational corporations like Royal Dutch Shell as potential contractors.47 It should be noted briefly that not all Indonesians involved in the oil business shared Ibnu’s views. For instance, the lower-profile Julius Tahija, a staunch political conservative and economic neoliberal, despised the way Ibnu operated his oil interests as an Army fiefdom with privileged state ties. Tahija had joined Australian troops against Japan during World War II, favored a gradualist path to political independence over the violence of 1945–9, and later emerged as the Indonesian businessman Western oil executives most trusted. He became chairman of the board of directors for Caltex’s Indonesian operations in 1966 and the first Indonesian to attain such a high position in a major oil firm.48 Ibnu also clashed with government ministers attached to the civilian oil sector, such as Minister for Mining Slamet Bratanata, who unsuccessfully tried to place Pertamina under his ministry’s supervision in the late 1960s. Outside the oil industry, the Minister of Central Bank Affairs, Jusuf Muda Dalam, sharply criticized production sharing as nothing but “a system of cooperation with foreign interests which reduces the Indonesian party to the role of comprador.”49 Ibnu, however, had developed Pertamina into his own lucrative fiefdom by then, and as a major funder of Suharto’s New Order, enjoyed privileged protection from the regulations of the formal economy.50 Well before Ibnu reached such lofty heights, however, he was searching for partners to develop his North Sumatran fields. Ibnu entered the oil business at a time when a plethora of “outsider” oil producers, refiners, and distributors around the world had risen to challenge the market dominance of the majors by undercutting their cartellike price arrangements. The entry of Pan American Oil into the Indonesian oil market in 1962, for instance, severely disrupted the relationship that Royal Shell-Dutch Shell, Stanvac, and California Texas had cultivated with the Sukarno regime. Permina’s first overseas partner in North Sumatra was an independent oil marketer from California who arranged marketing details for exporting crude oil from Pangkalan Brandan in 1958.51 Far more crucial, however, was Ibnu’s partnership with “outsider” Japanese oil interests. Since before World War II, Japanese business and government leaders had shared Ibnu’s dislike for Shell and other “majors” and sought ways to curb their power. The first breakthrough came in 1957 when Japan Petroleum Trading Company president, Yamashita “Arabia” Tarō, another business magnate with a Manchurian past (he had formerly been nicknamed “Manchuria Tarō”), outbid several powerful competitors to obtain Japan’s first postwar oil concession from the Saudi Arabian government. Yamashita offered the Saudi government a majority share in profits and established the 47

48 49

50 51

Anderson G. Bartlett III et al., Pertamina: Indonesian National Oil (Jakarta: Amerasian Ltd., 1972), 8–10; 154–5. “Leading Oil Figure Julius Tahija Dies,” The Jakarta Post, July 31, 2002. Joyce Gibson, “Production Sharing (Part One),” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 2, no.  3 (February 1966): 57. R.E. Elson, Suharto: A Political Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 151. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 102–3; Bartlett III et al., Pertamina, 142–3.

128

Engineering Asia

Arabian Oil Company, which in 1960 discovered the Khafji oilfield with the assistance of technicians on loan from Teikoku Oil.52 While Yamashita began to capitalize on his success in the Persian Gulf, members of the “Indonesia lobby” strove to establish a second overseas Japanese oil operation in North Sumatra. Nishijima Shigetada, the pan-Asianist with deep connections to Indonesia’s postcolonial leadership and a fluent speaker of Indonesian, was a primary mover in these efforts. Shortly after the conclusion of reparations negotiations, in which he also played a crucial go-between role, Nishijima visited Jakarta in June 1958 and used his connections to meet with Ibnu Sutowo on behalf of Japanese investors interested in liquefied petroleum gas development. This meeting marked the first direct postwar contact between Japanese capital and Indonesian oil, and by September 1958, Nishijima had helped clear the way for negotiations between Permina and the “Kobayashi group,” an investment group coordinated by industrialist Kobayashi Ataru. The negotiations shifted focus to the Permina-owned oilfields in North Sumatra. In 1959, Ibnu met with the Kobayashi group in Tokyo, while Nishijima, as Kobayashi’s envoy in Jakarta, helped fashion a memorandum pledging cooperative development of Permina’s North Sumatran oilfields. On April 7, 1960, Permina and the Kobayashi group signed a formal production sharing agreement: Japan would provide US$52.3 million in credit over ten years, as well as machinery, material, and technical assistance, for which it would receive 40 percent of the oil brought into production.53 The Kobayashi group subsequently set up Nosodeco on June 1, 1960, as the company to execute the terms of the production sharing agreement. Nosodeco opened offices in Jakarta, and it sent technical advisors, some of whom came courtesy of Teikoku Oil, to a second base of operations in Pangkalan Brandan. The state Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) backed Nosodeco with generous support, and a series of “Indonesia lobbyists,” including Nishijima Shigetada, went on to serve in its leadership. The company’s efforts focused on the Rantau oilfield near Pangkalan Brandan, and over the course of thirteen years, it obtained from Permina well over the 5.6 million kiloliters of crude oil promised in the original 1960 agreement. Already by 1963, Permina began constructing its own fleet of tankers to handle the volume of crude oil exports to Japan. Nosodeco found success in Northern Sumatra, and its precedent permanently changed oil politics in Indonesia.54 During Sukarno’s final year in power in May 1965, Japanese cemented their position in the Indonesian oil industry when Nosodeco and twenty other Japanese firms formed the Far East Oil Trading Company, which gained exclusive rights to imports from the rapidly expanding Permina.55 Japan would soon become Indonesia’s most important export market and its keenest partner in production sharing. In the words of an overseas analyst in 1966: “the immediate future of production-sharing lies with Japanese business consortia and to a less extent with Communist state corporations, both of which combine marketing with capital

52 53 54 55

Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 25–6. Bartlett III et al., Pertamina, 155–7; Teikoku Sekiyu, Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi (Kaigai hen), 26–8. Bartlett III et al., Pertamina, 225; Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 118–20. Khong Cho Oon, The Politics of Oil in Indonesia: Foreign Company–Host Government Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 64–5.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

129

equipment … The weakness of the Indonesian economy, far from acting as a deterrent, has apparently increased the confidence of the Japanese in their own bargaining strength.”56 The new Nosodeco–Permina arrangement did not please everyone, and it exposed tensions within the “hydrocarbon ring.” American diplomats in the early 1960s deputized Japanese to steer Sukarno’s Indonesia toward the US-led Cold War bloc, but American major firms like Stanvac and California Texas resented the intrusion of Nosodeco and other outsiders into what they had viewed as “their” market. Meanwhile, at the site of production, many Indonesian workers grumbled at having to work with Japanese technicians, who began arriving in significant numbers in 1961. Along with lingering memories of the wartime occupation and perceptions that Indonesia was contracting with the enemy, there were practical, albeit temporary concerns, such as technological incompatibilities. A language barrier also divided the workers at Rantau, and older Indonesians who remembered Japanese resisted using it. Japanese, for their part, were apprehensive about the left-leaning Sukarno regime and feared for Ibnu’s political longevity. They tended to regard the new arrangement as a necessary “experiment,” given the political climate of the early 1960s.57 Along with these international tensions were likely class-based tensions among Indonesian oil workers. For example, a journal of Indonesian economics reported on a 1962 incident at a foreign (non-Japanese)owned South Sumatran refinery, where newly employed Indonesian oil engineers with university degrees vociferously protested when their managers asked them to train with “‘uneducated’ low-class workmen,” and particularly at “having to carry their own equipment and loads and having to soil their hands and clothing.”58 Yet at a time when Shell, Stanvac, and California Texas still controlled 90 percent of Indonesia’s oil market, the entry of Nosodeco made clear to Ibnu, Sukarno, Suharto, and other Indonesian leaders the future potential for production sharing agreements. The Sukarno regime moved decisively to accelerate the pace of nationalization. In October 1960, it issued Ordinance Number 44, which declared that state enterprises would have exclusive rights to oil and gas extraction and that foreign companies would only be permitted to operate in Indonesia on the basis of production sharing at a 60:40 state-to-foreign profit ratio, as opposed to the prior 50:50 ratio. The provision annulled the prewar oil concessions and drove Shell’s decision to sell its remaining assets to Permina in 1965, since it was not eager to become a contractor in production sharing. Eventually, thirty-five companies signed more than fifty production sharing contracts by 1975, including Stanvac (renamed Mobil) and Caltex. Despite this short-term victory for production sharing, the combination of Ordinance Number 44, Indonesia’s 1962 decision to join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and Ibnu’s eagerness to nationalize Indonesian oil angered the oil majors and drove the American, British, and Australian governments away from supporting Sukarno. 56

57

58

Joyce Gibson, “Production Sharing (Part Two),” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 2, no.  4 (June 1966): 98. Bartlett III et al., Pertamina, 156, 224; “Japan’s Role in Arabian and Sumatran Oil: A New Form of Technical Assistance to Indonesia?” Far Eastern Economic Review 28, no. 7 (February 18, 1960): 13. M.A. Jaspan, “Tolerance and Rejection of Cultural Impediments to Economic Growth: The South Sumatran Case,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 3, no. 7 (June 1967): 53.

130

Engineering Asia

The USA also managed to pressure its deputy, Japan, into opposing nationalization, even though Nosodeco and other Japanese companies were profiting from their new partnerships with Permina. Only after Suharto’s seizure of power and his December 1965 order to abandon a Sukarno-era proposal to nationalize Stanvac and California Texas assets did the USA and its Cold War allies back down from threatening to cut off all economic aid to Indonesia.59 Production sharing became a crucial form of Japanese–Indonesian rapprochement and economic cooperation within the emerging American neo-imperialist order of the late 1950s and early 1960s. It helped shape the Cold War hydrocarbon ring, in that it placed fossil fuels extraction at the center of postcolonial Japanese–Indonesian relations, it brought together Japanese and Indonesian entrepreneurs who shared a desire to circumvent the reach of the oil majors, and it enmeshed both Japan and Indonesia within the petroleum-fueled US bloc. Yet it also infuriated the politically influential leaders of multinational oil firms, who then strove to push the USA and Japan away from Sukarno. Sukarno’s regime eventually did topple under domestic and international pressures in 1965–6, but production sharing survived past the ouster. American and Japanese strategic considerations, economic profits, and petroleum dependence sustained Ibnu and the hydrocarbon ring throughout the Vietnam era in Southeast Asia.

Epilogue: The New Order, Pertamina, and the breakdown of the hydrocarbon ring In the years following the 1960 Nosodeco agreement, Japan greatly expanded its profile in Indonesia, while Indonesia’s economic stability hinged on energy exports and other linkages with Japan. This relationship, originally based on fossil fuel extraction, drew Japan and Indonesia closely together in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite Japan’s stable diplomatic relationship with the Sukarno government, Japanese government and business leaders wasted little time in embracing Suharto’s New Order, whose murderous anti-communism they viewed as good for bilateral trade. Ibnu Sutowo discreetly backed Suharto during the September 30 Movement, and his Permina then merged with two other national oil firms to become the Pertamina national oil monopoly in 1968. New enterprises such as Pertamina’s subsidiary, the Japan–Indonesia Petroleum Company, joined Nosodeco and the Far East Oil Trading Company in the eager rush to funnel Indonesian crude oil toward Japan’s highgrowth economy.60 Pertamina and Japan went on to become key sources of funding for Suharto’s regime, much to the pleasure of the USA, which was increasingly embroiled in the Vietnam War and pleased to delegate its Cold War undertakings. Although Sukarno and others who figured centrally in its creation had passed from

59

60

Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 275–6; Kano, Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850–2000, 230–2; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 101–2, 197–9. See Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 188–209.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

131

the scene, the hydrocarbon ring actually reached its functional peak in the early years of Suharto’s New Order: oil linked Indonesia, Japan, and the USA through a ring of trade, patronage, and perceived strategic concerns. The New Order, especially at its inception in the late 1960s and early 1970s, arose as an army-state outside the formal institutions of the Indonesian Republic, and oil revenues from Pertamina served as its cash cow. Unlike many other military takeovers of the Cold War, Suharto’s seizure of power phased in over several years of murderous violence and did not unfold as a lightning-paced coup d’état. His ability to develop unofficial sources of income factored crucially in his establishment of a parallel state and eventual removal of Sukarno by 1968. Ibnu Sutowo became chief funder of the New Order and part of its inner circle by 1966. His decision to finance the New Order importantly led to Suharto’s decision to move against Sukarno.61 Although Suharto famously employed a brain trust of US-trained economists termed the “Berkeley Mafia” to restructure and rebuild the moribund national economy in the late 1960s, his regime depended even more on Ibnu’s off-budget sources of income to build support in the armed forces. One of Suharto’s biographers estimated that revenue from Pertamina paid for nearly half of all national expenditures in the 1960s. Another study estimated that oil overall provided one-third of Indonesia’s export earnings in the 1960s, and two-thirds by the time of the OPEC price hikes in 1973–4.62 Ibnu Sutowo also became known as one of the New Order’s top personal connections to Japanese finance, by virtue of his experiences with Nosodeco and the Far Eastern Oil Trading Company. Along with Sujono Humardani, another “financial general” and one of Suharto’s closest advisors, he became almost synonymous with the pervasive Japanese presence in everyday life. Both Ibnu and Sujono formed part of a New Order policy faction that argued for privilege and contacts over market competition, as well as a late nineteenth-century Japanese style of state-led, bureaucratic economic nationalism. They often clashed with advocates of liberal, American-style models in the “Berkeley Mafia,” such as Wijoyo Nitisastro.63 This developmentalist style was not a hard sell to Suharto: like many in the Army, he had cut his political teeth during the Japanese occupation and had served in the Peta (Defenders of the Fatherland), a Japanese-trained Indonesian self-defense force, where he regularly encountered examples of military–bureaucratic economic nationalism.64 At a time when Suharto was still building his army-state, Ibnu and Sujono forged many informal connections with individual sources of overseas finance, and especially with Japanese who shared their approach. It was through Sujono’s intermediary work, including several trips to Tokyo, that Kubota Yutaka realized his Asahan hydroelectric and aluminum project, which began in earnest after Nippon Kōei gained access to the site in 1972. Ibnu and Sujono facilitated the 1972 deal that created the Japan– Indonesia Petroleum Company, under which the Japanese OECF and Toyota extended US$300 million in soft and private loans in return for 58 million kiloliters (3.65 million 61 62 63

64

McDonald, Suharto’s Indonesia, 150; Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia, 185. Elson, Suharto, 151; Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 275–6. Elson, Suharto, 171. According to Elson, Sujono also looked to modern-day Singapore as another developmental model. Elson, Suharto, 9–11.

132

Engineering Asia

barrels) of low-sulfur crude oil, mostly from the Minas oilfield that Japanese oil corps prospectors located during World War II.65 Investment flooded into the country in the 1970s, and Japanese invested more than any other nationality, often in the form of joint ventures with economically privileged senior military officers and Sino-Indonesian businessmen outside Indonesia’s political mainstream.66 This expanded investment in association with the corrupt “financial generals” succeeded all too well in delivering Japanese construction machinery, consumer goods, and advertising to Indonesia, and it helped to solidify the New Order’s membership within the American-led bloc during the Vietnam War. However, and like many other “aid” investments of the period, it was less successful in winning hearts and minds for Cold War capitalism. Two mid-1970s events precipitated the breakup of the hydrocarbon ring network as it had operated since the 1960 Nosodeco agreement. The first was the so-called “Malari Affair” of January 1974, during which public anger about the rising tide of Japanese investment boiled over and called into question the continued dominance of energy extraction in Japanese–Indonesian relations. As Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei arrived for a state visit with Suharto, students and other demonstrators took to the streets of Jakarta to protest corruption in the New Order and its association with foreign, and especially Japanese, investment. The initially peaceful demonstrations turned into riots, with protestors burning Tanaka and Sujono Humardani in effigy, destroying Japanese cars, and looting Astra showrooms that displayed Toyota vehicles. Eleven died in the violence, and Tanaka had to flee by helicopter to the airport.67 Malari forced a toning down of Japan’s conspicuous presence in Indonesia, as many analysts at the time identified it with Japan’s poor public image abroad. The New York Times quoted an Indonesian economist, who argued Japanese were guilty of being “oblivious, insensitive, unthinking, short-sighted” and “excessively competitive … They do not look at whose garden they are trampling on.”68 Humanitarian aid to Indonesia increased after Malari, in large part to improve Japan’s image, though yen loans and energy investments continued to dominate the overall aid profile.69 Still, Japanese investors needed to maintain a cleaner profile in an effort to preserve the economic links they had; support for Ibnu and Pertamina could no longer publicly characterize Japanese investment practices. On the heels of the Malari Affair came the second event: the fall of Ibnu Sutowo from power in the 1975–6 Pertamina Scandal. The scandal signaled the decline of the shadow oil economy that Japan had been funding for fifteen years, as well as a shift in the structure of the New Order political economy away from resource extraction. Ibnu had long been associated with smuggling, shady dealings, political corruption,

65

66 67 68

69

Michael Malley, “Soedjono Hoemardani and Indonesia–Japanese Relations 1966–1974,” Indonesia, no. 48 (October. 1989): 49, 53–6. Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 287. Elson, Suharto, 206–7. Richard Halloran, “Tanaka’s Explosive Trip: Roots of Anti-Japanese Outbursts in Southeast Asia Seem Psychological,” The New York Times January 21, 1974, 3. Specific figures are available in the “Data & Statistics” section of Embassy of Japan in Indonesia, “Half Century of Partnership: Official Development Assistance from Japan to Indonesia,” accessed July 17, 2014, http://www.id.emb-japan.go.jp/oda/en/datastat_01.htm.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

133

and extravagance, but Indonesia’s oil boom, which came especially after OPEC members raised prices in 1973, emboldened him to embark on a rash of purchases and diversifications financed through unmonitored borrowing on international financial markets. Because Pertamina answered only to Army leadership, Ibnu never obtained official authorization for these loans, and by 1975, the company found itself in a liquidity crisis. Investigations in 1976 revealed he had purchased a fleet of oil tankers that brought Pertamina’s debt total to US$10 billion, more than the total Indonesian government debt during the combined Sukarno and Suharto eras. The scale of the debt threw the national economy into crisis, but high oil prices and confidence in the Suharto regime among overseas creditors eventually allowed Indonesia to recover.70 More important in regard to the long-term health of the Indonesian economy, the Pertamina Scandal indicated that the formal economy under the purview of the state ministries and the “Berkeley Mafia” had matured and permitted Suharto’s regime to survive the debt crisis and decrease dependence on oil exports. The increase in orthodox funding meant Pertamina was no longer the indispensable source of funding it had been in the 1960s. By extension, Indonesia’s economic relationship with Japan and other key creditors could no longer center on oil, a fact that the choice of targets in the Malari Affair had already made clear. To borrow the words of a comparative politics scholar familiar with the New Order, Indonesia’s “degree of ‘petro-stateness’ … was significantly less than that of the other developing oil countries” of the 1970s.71 The aftermath of the Malari Affair, the Pertamina Scandal, and Indonesia’s reduced dependence on energy exports compounded with important longer-term policy shifts in the mid-1970s that marked the end of an era. Détente and defeat in the Vietnam War forced a thorough reassessment of US foreign policy and falsified the “domino theory” that had motivated unquestioning American support for Suharto’s repressive New Order. Meanwhile, Japan was emerging as an important middle power after years of high economic growth in the 1960s, and as it became accepted as a “developed” country in the 1970s, its overseas patterns of investment began to change. The resource-focused “economic cooperation” projects that undergirded Japanese–Indonesian normalization in 1958, as well as other “kula ring” deals with capitalist Southeast Asia, gave way to more liberalized, multilateral trade agreements and “aid” as a distinct foreign policy realm.72 Petroleum and other energy resources still factored crucially in Indonesian, Japanese, and US foreign policy discussions, but they never again dominated the trilateral relationship to the extent that they did in the 1960s and early 1970s. As cracks appeared in the Asian “postwar” order and its energy foundations, the bonds that once held together the hydrocarbon ring similarly broke down.

70 71

72

Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 327–8; Elson, Suharto, 214–17, 251. Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 210–11. Sato, “Domestic Functions of Economic Cooperation,” 20–1.

134

Engineering Asia

Bibliography Asahi Shinbun. “Dokuji no tachiba de shin-kakaku—Indoneshia sekiyu kōsha no Sutoosōsai kataru.” February 20, 1971, 9. Bartlett, Anderson G., III et al. Pertamina: Indonesian National Oil. Jakarta: Amerasian Ltd., 1972. Cohen, Jerome. Japan’s Economy in War and Reconstruction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1949. Crouch, Harold. The Army and Politics in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. Dinmore, Eric G. “Concrete Results? The TVA and the Appeal of Large Dams in Occupation-Era Japan.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 39, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 1–38. Duus, Peter, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds. The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Economic Research Department, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). Japanese Trade in 2005. Tokyo: JETRO, 2005. Elson, R.E. Suharto: A Political Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Embassy of Japan in Indonesia. “Half Century of Partnership: Official Development Assistance from Japan to Indonesia.” http://www.id.emb-japan.go.jp/oda/en/ datastat_01.htm. Gibson, Joyce. “Production Sharing (Part One).” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 2, no. 3 (February 1966): 52–75. Gibson, Joyce. “Production Sharing (Part Two).” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 2, no. 4 (June 1966): 75–100. Gotō Ken’ichi. “Cooperation, Submission, and Resistance of Indigenous Elites of Southeast Asia in the Wartime Empire.” In The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, edited by Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, 274–304. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Halloran, Richard. “Tanaka’s Explosive Trip: Roots of Anti-Japanese Outbursts in Southeast Asia Seem Psychological.” The New York Times, January 21, 1974, 3. Hein, Laura. Fueling Growth: The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990. Higuchi, Toshihiro. “How US Aid in the 1950s Prepared Japan as a Future Donor.” In The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors, edited by Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura, 29–48. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Hikita, Yasuyuki. “Japanese Companies’ Inroads into Indonesia.” In Japan, Indonesia, and the War: Myths and Realities, edited by Peter Post and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma, 134–76. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997. The Jakarta Post. “Leading Oil Figure Julius Tahija Dies.” July 31, 2002. “Japan’s Role in Arabian and Sumatran Oil: A New Form of Technical Assistance to Indonesia?” Far Eastern Economic Review 28, no. 7 (February 18, 1960): 13. Jaspan, M.A. “Tolerance and Rejection of Cultural Impediments to Economic Growth: The South Sumatran Case.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 3, no. 7 (June 1967): 38–59. Kano, Hiroyoshi. Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850– 2000: Economic Structures in a Southeast Asian State. Singapore: NUS Press, 2008. Karl, Terry Lynn. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Indonesian Fossil Fuel, Japanese “Cooperation,” and US Cold War Order

135

Keizai Hatten Kyōkai Kokusai Shihon Idō Chōsakai, ed. Perutamina (Indoneshia kokuei sekiyu kaisha). Special Report No. 5. Tokyo: Keizai hatten kyōkai, 1974. Khong, Cho Oon. The Politics of Oil in Indonesia: Foreign Company–Host Government Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Liu, Hong. “The Historicity of China’s Soft Power: The PRC and the Cultural Politics of Indonesia, 1945–1965.” In The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds, edited by Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu, and Michael Szonyi, 147–82. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Malley, Michael. “Soedjono Hoemardani and Indonesia–Japanese Relations 1966–1974.” Indonesia, no. 48 (October 1989): 47–64. McDonald, Hamish. Suharto’s Indonesia. Melbourne: Fontana Books, 1980. Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. New York: Verso, 2011. Mistubishi Sekiyu Kabushiki Kaisha Shashi Hensan Iinkai, ed. Mitsubishi sekiyu gojūnenshi. Tokyo: Mitsubishi sekiyu kabushiki kaisha, 1981. Miyoshi, Shunkichirō. “Indoneshia baishō no mitooshi.” Ajia mondai 5, no. 1 (July 1956): 93–103. Nihon Sekiyu Seisei Kabushiki Kaisha Shashi Hensan Shitsu, ed. Nihon sekiyu hyakunenshi. Tokyo: Nihon sekiyu kabushiki kaisha, 1988. Nishihara, Masashi. The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia: Tokyo–Jakarta Relations, 1951–1966. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1976. Nishijima, Shigetada. Shōgen Indoneshia dokuritsu kakumei. Tokyo: Shin jinbutsu ōraisha, 1975. Nishijima, Shigetada. “Indoneshia dokuritsu kakumei ni sanka shite.” In Kaigai e yūtopia o motomete—Bōmei to kokugai konkyochi, edited by Tamura Norio, 269–73. Tokyo: Shakai hyōronsha, 1989. Pertamina, P.N., ed. The Story of the Oil Industry in Indonesia. Jakarta: P.N. Pertamina, 1970. Post, Peter and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma, eds. Japan, Indonesia, and the War: Myths and Realities. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997. Samuels, Richard. The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Sato, Jin. “Domestic Functions of Economic Cooperation: Japan’s Evolution as a Donor in the 1950s.” In The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors, edited by Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura, 11–28. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Sato, Jin and Yasutami Shimomura, eds. The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Simpson, Bradley R. Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US– Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Strefford, Patrick. “How Japan’s Post-War Relationship with Burma Was Shaped by Aid.” Asian Affairs 41, no. 1 (March 2010): 35–45. Sutter, John O. “Indonesianisasi: Politics in a Changing Economy, 1940–1955.” Southeast Asia Program Data Paper 36. 4 Vols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Department of Far Eastern Studies, 1959. Tamura, Norio, ed. Kaigai e yūtopia o motomete—Bōmei to kokugai konkyochi. Tokyo: Shakai hyōronsha, 1989. Teikoku Sekiyu Shashi Hensan Iinkai, ed. Teikoku sekiyu gojūnenshi: kaigai hen. Tokyo: teikoku sekiyu kabushiki kaisha, 1992.

136

Engineering Asia

Tōkyō Asahi Shinbun. “Sekiyu to gomu no takarajima—Sumatora shingeki no igi.” February 22, 1942. United States Energy Information Administration. “Indonesia: International Energy Data and Analysis.” October 7, 2015. http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis_ includes/countries_long/Indonesia/indonesia.pdf. Vickers, Adrian. A History of Modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu, and Michael Szonyi, eds. The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

6

Colonial Seeds, Imperialist Genes: Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development Tatsushi Fujihara Translated by Hiromi Mizuno and Aaron S. Moore

Introduction This chapter positions the Japanese Empire’s rice engineering project within broader, twentieth-century processes of ecological imperialism. On the surface, Imperial Japan’s rice project in the 1920s and 1930s may seem unrelated to the Green Revolution of the 1960s. The Green Revolution was initiated and developed by the USA in the context of the Cold War rather than territorial colonial expansion like Imperial Japan’s. However, it is not far-fetched to connect the two. The DNA of IR-8, the famous “miracle rice” of the Green Revolution, in fact came from a rice gene developed by Imperial Japan’s scientist breeders. This genetic connection is only a minor part of the story I tell here. Japan’s imperial regime and the US Cold War state also shared similar industrial– agricultural development structures and idealized hybrid high-yield crops reliant on chemical fertilizer. The legacies are ambivalent. Rice production increased under both Japanese breeding programs and the Green Revolution; however, both programs met with farmers’ resistance and resulted in the destruction of local ecology and culture. In prewar Japan, crop engineering was considered the most important area of agricultural science among government and academic agronomists. The Japanese used the term ikushu (literally “developing varieties”) for crop engineering.1 This involved the genetic manipulation of crops via crossbreeding and the purification and stabilization of genes with favorable characteristics. This chapter focuses on seed engineering in colonial Taiwan manifested in Hōrai rice and follows the seeds after the fall of the Japanese Empire into the 1970s. Hōrai rice was developed by Iso Eikichi, one of the Japanese Empire’s most renowned rice breeders. Because of the success of 1

The textbook definition of “breeding” is “the production of a new life form through the genetic improvement of a life form.” Ukai Yasuo, Shokubutsu ikushugaku: Kōzatsu kara idenshi kumikae made (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 2003), 2.

138

Engineering Asia

Hōrai rice, he has been called the “father” of modern Taiwanese rice farming. His apolitical nature, concern for the wellbeing of Taiwanese farmers, and critique of the American-led Green Revolution has given him a reputation for anti-imperialism. The Green Revolution has since been critiqued in development circles and civil society. While recognizing the key differences, I will argue that it is important to point out the similarities between Iso’s project and the Green Revolution. Iso’s Hōrai rice, and especially its successful variety Taichung 65, was regarded as the Japanese empire’s “Miracle Rice,” in the same way as IR-8 was the USA’s “Miracle Rice” during the Cold War. In my earlier work, I argued that Imperial Japan’s empire-wide rice breeding could be seen as a prototype of Cold War America’s Green Revolution.2 Haixun Li, in his work on Northeast China under Japanese rule, has further argued that Japan’s imperial policies engendered a Green Revolution, well before the American one.3 My attempt here is to understand the breeding projects of Imperial Japan and Cold War America as part of the same twentieth-century processes of “ecological imperialism,” using the concept elaborated by Alfred Crosby.

The Green Revolution In 1973, Tōbata Seiichi, one of Japan’s most famous agricultural scientists, noticed the clear connection between Imperial Japan’s agricultural development and Cold War America’s Green Revolution: Many IR [International Rice] varieties were developed after the war at the IRRI [International Rice Research Institute] in the Philippines (headed by Robert Chandler), and they were most likely crossbred with Taiwanese rice. In the case of wheat too, Dr. Norman Borlaug developed new high-yield varieties in Mexico by using the Nōrin 1 variety from Japan as the parent. In both cases, farmers are raising the new seeds in India, Pakistan, and other areas. By greatly increasing the production of rice and wheat, these varieties are proving very useful. This is now being referred to as the “Green Revolution.” Thus, what Professor Iso did in colonial Taiwan should clearly be called the first green revolution.4

Tōbata and many others after him made clear the direct genetic connection between the Japanese seeds developed during the colonial period and the high-yield varieties of the Green Revolution. A great number of the grains developed by Imperial Japan 2

3

4

Fujihara Tatsushi, Ine no daitōa kyōeiken: Teikoku Nihon no “midori no kakumei” (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2012). Li Haixun, “Kindai tōhoku ajia ni okeru kanreichi inasaku to yūryō hinshu no fukyū: Mōhitotsu no ‘midori no kakumei’,” Shakai keizaishi 79, no. 2 (2013): 213–33. Li undertook empirical research on northeast Asia and critiqued my work for not sufficiently developing the connection between breeding techniques and fertilizer. Most importantly, Li made an argument that Imperial Japanese plant breeding in northeast China constituted a “Green Revolution” within a colder climate. Tōbata Seiichi, Nōsho ni rekishi ari (Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 1973), 46. Parentheses in original; brackets are mine. Tōbata was director of Ajiken (see Chapter 3 in this volume).

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

139

were inherited by the Green Revolution, but in particular, two varieties exerted critical influence: Dee-Geo-Woo-Gen (teikyaku usen, hereafter DGWG), the indica rice discovered and purified by Japanese agronomists in colonial Taiwan, and Wheat Nōrin 10, the wheat variety developed by Inazuka Gonjirō who worked at the Akita and Iwate Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Stations (AES) in Japan. During the Cold War, DGWG became the parent of IR-8, the famed “miracle rice” of the IRRI in the Philippines, and Wheat Nōrin 10 became the parent of Sonora 64 at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico (CIMMY), since the semi-dwarf genes—Sd1 in DGWG and Rht1 and Rht2 in Wheat Nōrin 10—made the crops tolerate larger amounts of fertilizer. These rice and maize seeds became the two pillars of the Green Revolution in the 1960s; they also became the parents of numerous other hybrid varieties thereafter.5 This chapter examines yet another rice variety, Taichung 65. However, before we trace the migration route of Taichung 65, we need to first clarify what the Green Revolution was. William S. Gaud, head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), invented the term “Green Revolution.” In a speech on March 8, 1968, Gaud described the American crop engineering project as a revolution and explained its nature and vision: “This revolution is not a violent, red revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a white revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the green revolution.”6 That is to say, the Green Revolution was a potent political agent against communism and the Shah’s reformist populism. By 1974, when Tōbata linked Iso to the Green Revolution, the vocabulary of the Green Revolution and its political significance had already circulated widely throughout the world. Tōbata wanted to acknowledge the Japanese agronomists’ contribution to this effort, which had been ignored by the world. IR-8 and Sonora 64 seeds increased agricultural production around the world by leaps and bounds due to their superior responsiveness to fertilizer. The Filipino and Mexican research centers that developed these seeds received great financial support from influential organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation (which now supports the Monsanto Corporation) and the Ford Foundation, as well as from multinational agribusiness enterprises. The Green Revolution greatly contributed to opening the new market for these corporations. The global effect of the Green Revolution has been debated. It certainly did improve agricultural production per unit of land in developing countries and helped raise standards of living. Larger profits became possible simply through planting genetically 5

6

Nōrin 10 is a variety drawn from Daruma, a native Japanese wheat variety. It was acquired by Samuel Salmon, a plant breeder from the US Department of Agriculture who was an agricultural advisor to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). His assigned responsibilities included bringing genetic resources from Japan back to the USA. This connection has not been lost in memory. Nobel Peace laureate Norman Borlaug, the “father of the Green Revolution” and breeder of Sonora, made a speech at the Japanese Society of Plant Breeding in 1981, praising the high ability of Japanese breeding scientists such as Inazuka Gonjirō. Also, the works of Henry M. Beachell, who developed IR-8 out of DGWG, were awarded the Japan Prize. In terms of seed DNA, the direct contribution of Imperial Japanese breeding to the Green Revolution is quite apparent and significant. William S. Gaud, “The Green Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions,” Address to the Society for International Development, Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C., March 8, 1968, accessed November 21, 2016, http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/borlaug/borlaug-green.html.

140

Engineering Asia

improved crops with massive doses of chemicals, without the need to reclaim land or pursue expensive land improvements. On the other hand, the Green Revolution also led to higher dependence on fertilizers, pesticides, and water since the high-yield seeds required these inputs in larger amounts. In fact, the new hybrid varieties did not produce more than the conventional varieties unless one applied fertilizer to a certain degree. Extracting oneself from this structure of dependence is as difficult as overcoming drug dependence. Multinational corporations sell fertilizer and agricultural chemicals. Water is brought to the fields through large-scale irrigation projects that very often rely on foreign capital. Dwarf rice, moreover, no longer produced stalks that were long enough for everyday use, and plastic commodities from developed countries began to replace them in the daily lives of ordinary people. As has been well recorded, many IRRI crops also ended up failing after initial success, because water resources began to dry up and salt damage soon emerged. Many of these areas are in fact poorer now than before the Green Revolution. For example, in 1970, Swedish journalists Lasse and Lisa Berg reported as follows: It can be positively stated that in the eyes of what came to be hundreds of millions of poor Indian farmers, in the Indian farming villages where the new agricultural techniques were adopted, “the Green Revolution” became not a symbol of hope, but a symbol of fear. As has already been indicated, from long ago farm villages had countless social structural problems that became worse—problems related to new techniques have suddenly surfaced in recent years. For example, along with the introduction of new techniques came the consequence of using large quantities of such things as toxic substances, chemical fertilizers, and agricultural chemicals— these give rise to new problems in farm villages such as environmental pollution, which they did not previously have. Also, where before the variety of seeds used in a region numbered in the hundreds, under the influence of the “Green Revolution,” this has fallen to around ten varieties. Once there is an outbreak of a contagious disease, the danger that the rice plants in the remaining areas will suffer an annihilating blow has heightened.7

Numerous others, including journalists, scholars, and activists, have made similar observations and criticisms. A seed exchange movement has arisen as a counter to the Green Revolution. For example, in 1989, a “nationwide network for the purpose of protecting farmers’ seeds” was formed in France, followed by similar initiatives all over the world. Such initiatives have criticized Fordist agribusiness that has solidified a division of labor between seed breeding and planting, and between fertilizer production and consumption. Various attempts continue today to find an alternative form of agriculture after the “mistake of the Green Revolution.”8 7

8

Lasse Berg and Lisa Berg, Indo: “Midori no kakumei” to “akai kakumei,” trans. Moriya Fumiaki (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1973), 277. The English translation of this originally Swedish work is available as Lasse Berg and Lisa Berg, Face to Face: Fascism and Revolution in India (Berkeley, CA: Ramparts, 1970). Suda Fumiaki, “Furansu ni okeru sakumotsu ikushu kenkyū no tenkai: Seibutsu tayōsei no bunsanteki kanri no tame ni,” Sōgō seisaku (June 2009): 183–203.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

141

Engineered seeds have exerted a strong agency over the environment, both physical and social. Monsanto and other powerful multinational corporations have developed seeds that have specific genetic information favorable to their businesses. High-yielding, genetically modified seeds require more fertilizer and pesticides, better irrigation systems, and changes in farming methods and lifestyles. We can, indeed, see the world being changed physically and biologically as new seeds spread. Once these changes are made, it is impossible to turn the clock back to the era before the introduction of these seeds. Although the Green Revolution has received much critical attention, its prewar counterpart has not. This chapter attempts to remedy this by focusing on Taichung 65, a short-stem japonica rice engineered in the 1920s by Iso and his technician, Suenaga Megumu, specifically to grow in tropical Taiwan, and known to consumers as Hōrai rice. Taichung 65 is usually not the variety one hears about in connection with the Japanese empire’s legacy for the Green Revolution. A great number of grains developed by Imperial Japan have been inherited by the Green Revolution, but DGWG and Wheat Nōrin 10 stand out most for their critical influence, as I explained earlier. While both Wheat Nōrin 10 and DGWG exhibit fascinating connections between Imperial Japanese agricultural development and its postwar counterpart during the Cold War, their connections have been well acknowledged and documented.9 Taichung 65 does not have a direct genetic relationship to the Green Revolution. However, or perhaps because of this fact, its story and journey illuminate what Japanese colonial agricultural development shared with the Cold War development project.

Hōrai rice: “Miracle rice” for the Japanese empire Colonial efforts to increase agricultural productivity in Korea and Manchuria often meant bringing japonica seeds from Japan and distributing them as superior varieties, but Taiwanese agricultural development began differently. In Taiwan, initial efforts rather focused on improving the irrigation system and local indica varieties. As soon as Japan acquired Taiwan as a result of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, it established its first oversea AES in Taipei. Five years later, on November 5, 1901, the fourth GovernorGeneral of Taiwan, Kodama Gentarō, summoned major government officials and influential private citizens to his official residence and gave a speech, “the famous speech that established agricultural policy on this island.”10 Kodama told everyone that the problem with Taiwan was that the irrigation systems were too underdeveloped, yields too small, and crop quality too poor. In this climate, he declared, yields of rice three times more than the current level could be achieved if irrigation systems were improved, allowing the Taiwanese people to eat three full meals a day. A surplus could even be exported. In 1901, the Taiwan Public Cooperative Irrigation Regulation was

9

10

For example, see Senda Atsushi, Sekai no shokuryō kiki o sukutta otoko: Inazuka Gonjirō no shōgai (Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 1996); and Tōbata, Nōsho ni rekishi ari. Tsutsumi Kazuyuki, “1910-nendai Taiwan no beishu kairyō jigyō to Suenaga Megumu,” Tōyō shihō 12 (March 2006): 12.

142

Engineering Asia

promulgated to reform “hishū” (ดൣ). The character “hi” (ด) is a native Taiwanese word that indicates water stored for the purpose of irrigation. The character “shū” (ൣ) means the construction of channels to distribute water. Under the new system, the Governor-General publicly supervised individually managed hishū. An extensive survey of hishū begun in 1908, and hishū improvement fees and water usage project fees were assessed based on estimates. This emphasis on the irrigation system was drastically different from the approach promoted in colonial Korea that placed an emphasis on urging Koreans to plant high-yield Japanese varieties brought from Japan proper.11 The intensity and massive scale of irrigation reform can be attributed to what Taiwan uniquely offered to Japan’s empire: its vast sugar cane plantations and the climatic promise of a second growing season for rice. Both depended on improved irrigation systems. The large-scale Kanan irrigation project illustrates just how much Taiwan’s lands and waterways were transformed. The Taiwanese colonial government invited Hatta Yōichi, one of Japan’s most famous civil engineers, to plan and oversee this project, which involved the construction of the Wushantou Dam, irrigation canals from Zengwun River, water ponds, drainage trenches, and so forth. By the time the entire project was completed in 1930, a total of 530,000 hectares were drained; subsections of the system were managed by 106 irrigation associations (49.13 percent of total acreage), two public hishū associations (26.30 percent), and by 13,554 unofficial groups of individuals (24.57 percent).12 Kodama’s approach seemed successful. As works on irrigation and drainage facilities progressed, crop improvement emerged as the next desirable step to secure better rice yields. A discussion arose over whether to improve local Taiwanese (indica) varieties or transplant Japanese (japonica) varieties instead. The debate, which took place around 1907, was settled when the Governor-General decided that the former option would be given priority. This was more realistic at the time, as earlier efforts to grow japonica rice in Taiwan had not been successful. The Governor-General’s project of improving local varieties was aggressively pursued from 1910 to the early 1920s. DGWG, which was later adapted by the IRRI, was discovered, purified, and distributed throughout Taiwan as part of these efforts. However, although indica rice grew well in Taiwan, it did not sell in the Japanese market because Japanese consumers preferred gluttonous japonica rice instead. When a severe rice shortage hit Japan during World War I (leading to the famous “Rice Riots” in 1918), Japanese rice from Korea sold well, but Taiwanese rice did not. The lower marketability of Taiwanese rice revealed limitations to the future prospects of Taiwanese agricultural development. Such problems became more acute as the Japanese government implemented aggressive policies to increase colonial rice production in the early 1920s in order to secure rice self-sufficiency throughout the empire. This led to renewed discussions on introducing japonica rice to Taiwan. The determining event, however, was Iso’s success with japonica seeds in the 1920s. Iso graduated from Hokkaidō Imperial University in 1912 and took a position as 11 12

See Chapter 3 of Fujihara, Ine no daitōa kyōeiken. Kawano Shigetō, Taiwan beikoku keizairon (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1941), 38.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

143

agricultural engineer at the Taichung AES in Taiwan the following year. Iso’s success was revolutionary. For Japanese breeders, developing japonica seeds that would grow and produce high yields in tropical climates was an immense challenge. For Taiwanese farmers, this was their first experience of growing and consuming sticky japonica rice. Soon, as a result of improved hishū facilities and crop engineering, rice cultivation rapidly increased in Taiwan. To celebrate and further promote Taiwan-produced japonica rice, the colonial government created the brand name, Hōrai rice (㬜㨺㊣), in 1926.13 With the advantage of a second growing season and a low price, Hōrai rice penetrated the Japanese market (especially the Kantō region). One Hōrai variety was particularly successful: Taichung 65. It was a new variety developed in 1927 by Iso from some minor variety in Japan called Nakamura, whose seeds had been brought to Taipei from the Kyūshū AES in 1897. Iso had crossbred and purified the seeds to achieve higher yield and higher tolerance to fertilizer. Because its “yields were large, the quality was good, and its resistance to imochi disease was very strong,”14 Taichung 65 was the “star” variety of Hōrai rice, just like Rikuu 132 and Nōrin 1 were in Japan proper. Imochi disease was a common disease that developed when too much fertilizer was applied, but Taichung 65 proved to be highly tolerant to this disease. What was even more significant about Taichung 65 was that it produced uniformly good qualities and quantities in both the first and second seasons of the year, a rare characteristic for rice. This was important, because the possibility of two-season rice cultivation was a critical advantage Taiwan had over other rice regions in the Japanese Empire whose climates only allowed one growing season a year. Despite its newness, Taichung 65 spread rapidly throughout Taiwan.15 As Table 6.1 and Figure 6.1 show, the production of Taichung 65 grew dramatically in the early 1930s, claiming as much as 60 percent of the market and making Iso’s name known internationally (in 1930, Iso became a professor of Taihoku Imperial University while also continuing to work at the regional AES). By 1935, of the acreage that grew Hōrai rice, Taichung 65 occupied 76 percent, and by 1939, 82.8 percent. 13

14

15

In the midst of organizing the results of a survey of the over 1000 varieties of rice traditionally cultivated in Taiwan, Iso presented to Izawa Takio, the Governor-General of Taiwan, three name suggestions for the new rice: Hōrai, Nītaka, and Shintai. As Taiwan had been called “Hōrai Island” from ancient times, it was named Hōrai rice. A naming ceremony was held on May 5, 1926, on the occasion of the Nineteenth Conference on Japanese Rice held at the Taihoku Railroad Hotel. Attendees said, “Three cheers for Hōrai rice!” and “Welcome it with handclaps like hail!” Iso Eikichi, Hōrai mai danwa (Yamaguchi: Yamaguchiken nōgyō shikenjo/Udokukai, 1965), 90. Iso Eikichi, “Suitō naichi shu,” Taiwan nōjihō 222 (1925): 21–2; and Morinaga Toshitarō, Nihon nōgyō hattatsushi (Tokyo: Nōgyō hattatsushi chōsakai, 1956), 213. For further details, also see Suenaga Megumu, Taiwan beisaku dan (Taichung: Taichung shūritsu nōji shikenjō, 1938). These characteristics were welcomed in Okinawa as well. Taichung 65 was introduced to Okinawa from Taiwan in 1929. It quickly became the most popular rice to grow and remained so until the mid-1970s. In 1935, 65–85 percent of the rice fields in Okinawa grew Taichung 65, and this figure was 79 percent in the 1950s. See Miyazato Kiyomatsu, “Mizuine Taichū 65 no seitaiteki narabini keitaiteki tokusei ni tsuite,” Ryūkyū daigaku nōkaseigakubu gakujutsu hōkoku 3: 123–38; and Fujihara, Ine no daitōa kyōeiken, 157. Hōrai rice was introduced to Yonagunijima, an Okinawan island very close to Taiwan, and transformed the island’s communal farming to more individual farming. See Watanabe Tadayo, “Yonagunijima no suiden ritchi to inasaku gijutsu: Hōraimai dōnyū izen no dentō-teki inasaku no taikei wo chūshin ni,” in Nantō no inasaku bunka: Yonagunijima o chūshin ni, ed. Tanaka Kōji (Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku, 1984), 232–62.

144

Engineering Asia

Table 6.1 Changes in area planted with each rice variety in Taiwan (unit: ⭢ = 1 ha). Year

Nakamura

1924

26,472

Kagiban 2 0

Asahi 0

Aikoku 0

Taichung 65 0

1925

84,443

0

0

0

0

1927

111,373

4

0

0

0

1926

79,150

12

2

0

0

1928

61,556

5,726

540

208

0

1929

21,927

25,371

8,551

1,574

21

1930

16,444

41,706

15,441

1,421

15,515

1931

8,081

47,553

15,106

2,509

44,162

1932

4,626

28,051

14,357

9,761

104,353

1933

1,690

10,309

18,579

14,923

164,534

1934

827

8,352

16,496

15,792

205,712

1935

497

5,722

20,638

12,769

244,879

1936

360

4,751

10,686

15,836

246,349

Source: Suenaga Megumu, Taiwan beisakudan (Taichung: Taichung shūritsu nōji shikenjō, 1938), 14.

The taste of Taichung 65 was not as good as popular varieties in Japan proper such as Ginbōzu and Asahi. However, Taiwanese farmers made the most of their climatic advantage by shipping their rice to Japan before and after Japanese or Korean rice appeared on the market. Its popularity and low price threatened Japanese farmers, especially during good harvest years. The significance of Taichung 65 for the empire as a whole should be duly noted here. According to statistics from 1932 of the total acreage for major varieties in the empire, Asahi had the largest acreage at 330,000 chō (1 chō = 1 hectare), Rikuu 132 the second largest at 257,000 chō (122,000 chō in Japan proper and 135,000 chō in the Korean peninsula—1935 figures), and Taichung 65 the third at 250,000 chō. This means that Taichung 65, the third most planted variety in the empire, was almost equal to Rikuu 132. Taichung 65 was only grown in Taiwan, but it occupied a highly important place in the empire’s food supply. Iso’s expertise and legacy were in demand even after the Japanese Empire collapsed. Agricultural development was extremely important to post-independent Taiwan. Taiwan now needed to feed its own population on an island that was damaged by American attacks and Japanese wartime mobilization, embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, and teeming with people fleeing the Communist-occupied mainland. The nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, ordered hundreds of Japanese engineers and specialists to remain in Taiwan to transfer technology and expertise, including agronomists like Iso. He stayed until 1957, much longer than most, which reflects the high value Chiang placed on Iso’s talents. The Taiwanese government gave Iso the Keisei award, Taiwan’s highest decoration, and also a gift of 1,200 kilos of Hōrai

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

Horai rice

145

Local rice

( 10000goku) 600

500

400

300

200

100

0 1900

1905

1910

1915

1920

1925

1930

1935

( Year )

Figure 6.1 Changes in yields for Hōrai rice and local rice in Taiwan. Source: Taiwan beikoku yōran (Taiwan sōtokufu beikokukyoku, 1940), 9–12.

rice each year for the rest of his life as a sign of appreciation.16 Colonial “development” was, in other words, utilized by the postcolonial government and incorporated into its own development projects.

Hōrai rice travels to India and Southeast Asia The Taiwanese postcolonial government was not the only one that appreciated Iso’s skills and expertise. The IRRI also wanted to utilize them. Iso’s rejection of IRRI’s invitation to the Philippines raises an intriguing question of differences in philosophies between the Japanese Empire’s Green Revolution and Cold War America’s Green Revolution. Why did Iso decline the opportunity to conduct research at the world’s leading center for crop breeding? Considering the poor economic and material conditions in Japan and Taiwan at the time, his rejection is indeed puzzling. We do not know the full story of how and what happened, but Iso later told the following to Suzuki Naoki, a plant disease scientist who attended a symposium at IRRI: In fact, I [Iso] too was invited by the IRRI, but because I absolutely could not agree with the IRRI’s direction, I declined. I had my own opinions regarding what 16

This famous anecdote is mentioned in numerous places as proof of Iso’s contributions, such as Recollections of Iso Eikichi. It seems, however, that Iso could not actually receive the rice because the authorities did not allow international shipping of agricultural products like this.

146

Engineering Asia

should be done at present in order to increase Filipino rice production, but the IRRI seemed quite disinclined to listen.17

Iso disagreed with the IRRI’s “crop-centered” approach, favoring what we might call a “local-centered” approach. Iso’s emphasis on local conditions, together with his warm personality, concern for local farmers, and dandified mannerisms, certainly earned him a positive reputation. He was a devoted agronomist and rice breeder. He seems to have sincerely wanted to improve the living standards of Taiwanese farmers. He tirelessly nurtured and distributed Hōrai rice, which would bring precious income to local farmers. In Taiwan, Iso improved rice by collecting almost all local rice varieties available and minutely examining the geographical situations and customs of local farmers in Taiwan. On the other hand, the IRRI was (in)famous for overcoming local differences by making the standardized hybrid crops grow with fertilizers and pesticides regardless of local soil conditions and lifestyles (the ultimate failure of this approach has been well recorded). The IRRI regarded rice improvement as primarily a technological/engineering issue of genetic manipulation, and Iso did not agree with this. To Iso, crop improvement should work with and for specific local conditions. Was Iso’s approach really unique? Iso’s “local-centered” approach was similar to the principle of “groundedness” promoted by the former Japanese colonial engineers analyzed in Aaron S. Moore’s chapter in this volume (Chapter 4). Kubota Yutaka and his fellow civil engineers emphasized their closeness to locals in terms of working together with them and understanding the local geographical and cultural conditions. Moore’s criticism of this belief—that what Japanese engineers claimed to be uniquely Japanese might not have been very different from what Western colonial experts were claiming—is also applicable here. I maintain that the seeming contrast between Iso’s local-centered approach and IRRI’s crop-centered approach, which Iso himself also contributed to, needs to be critically re-examined. Students and followers of Iso have idolized him to the extent that one rarely encounters any criticism of his work; however, we should also pay attention to elements that Iso and the IRRI shared. The fact that the IRRI invited Iso to work for them indicates that it valued his work highly and that Iso’s breeding technique was not necessarily opposed to its overall mission. As we have already noted, seeds developed by Iso were indeed highly valuable since their semi-dwarf DNA tolerated higher doses of fertilizer. Both Iso and the IRRI idealized crop improvement as the best means to solve agricultural poverty and the problem of hunger, both considered chemical fertilizer to be a powerful enabler of such ambitious goals, and both believed in the ability of science to engineer nature for that purpose. Iso spent the rest of his life in Japan as an agricultural engineer. He took up residence in the town of Hōfu in Yamaguchi Prefecture. As a member of a Yamaguchi Prefecture special committee, he led researchers in the prefectural AES. Also, from 1958, he gave intensive lectures on tropical agricultural theory at Yamaguchi University. He died in Okayama on January 21, 1972, at the age of 85. 17

Suzuki Naoji, “Yokohama no koro,” in Iso Eikichi tsuitōroku, ed. Kawaguchi Shirō, Kawaguchi Aiko, and Iso Yuriko (Private Publication, 1974), 247.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

147

The life of Hōrai rice, however, did not end in Taiwan or Japan. The way Hōrai seeds traveled to India, involving a surprising array of people, is revealing. It urges us to go beyond the seeming difference between the local-centered approach and the crop-centered approach and analyze the more fundamentally shared mission of Iso and the IRRI. The man responsible for Hōrai rice’s migration to India is Sugiyama Tatsumaru.18 Tatsumaru was the grandson of Sugiyama Shigemaru, who, together with Tōyama Mitsuru, a famous pan-Asianist of the Genyōsha, exerted considerable power behind the scenes in the political world of the Japanese Empire. In Taiwan, Shigemaru worked closely with Governor-General Kodama and Gotō Shimpei and established the Taika Company with the objective of making Taiwan a central base for Asian agricultural development. His son (Tatsumaru’s father) was Yumeno Kyūsaku (Murayama Naoki), author of Dogura magura, one of Japan’s first science fiction works. Inheriting his grandfather’s dying wish, Tatsumaru established an organization called the International Culture & Welfare Association (Kokusai bunka fukushi kyōkai) in March 1955 and launched a campaign to make the desert in India arable in order to eliminate hunger.19 Tatsumaru met Iso for the first time in November 1955 when Iso was working for the Taiwanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a detained scientist. Tatsumaru was in Taiwan to survey agriculture as part of the government’s request to build fertilizer and agricultural equipment factories there. He was troubled by the gap between the government’s documents and his own survey results and was advised to consult Iso. Because Iso knew his grandfather, Shigemaru, quite well, he generously gave Tatsumaru the English report, Rice and Crops in Its Rotation in Subtropical Zones, with its Japanese translation, and explained that “this is the record of the work by me and my closest friend Suenaga Megumu on Hōrai rice and other crops in Taiwan under Japanese rule.”20 The report had just been put together for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the occasion of the Fourth International Rice Improvement Commission held in Tokyo in 1954.21 Tatsumaru also received hospitable treatment by Taiwanese authorities, because Yu Yu-jien, the head of Taiwan’s Control Office, knew Tatsumaru’s grandfather as well. When Yu joined the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance founded by Sun Yat-sen in Tokyo in 1905 as a young man, Shigemaru became Yu’s patron. Yu was delighted to learn that Tatsumaru was Shigemaru’s grandson and invited him to a party organized by Chen Cheng, Taiwan’s Vice President. 18

19 20

21

His relationship with Iso and Hōrai rice is well explained in a twenty-page essay, “My Thoughts on Dr. Iso Eikichi,” in a special commemorative volume on the first anniversary of Iso’s death. See Kawaguchi Shirō, Kawaguchi Aiko, and Iso Yuriko, ed., Iso Eikichi tsuisōroku (Private Publication, 1974). His son also published a book about him: Sugiyama Mitsumaru, Gurīn fāzā: Indo no sabaku o midori ni kaeta otoko (Tokyo: Hikuma no shuppan, 2001). The son followed the footsteps of his father to India to write this book, with the support of a Japanese TV station that recorded the trip for a special program about Tatsumaru. While the son’s words about his own father should not be taken at face value, his accounts are nevertheless insightful. Sugiyama Tatsumaru, Sabaku ryokka ni idomu (Tokyo: Ashi shobō, 1984). Sugiyama Tatsumaru, “Iso Eikichi hakase o shinobu,” in Iso Eikichi tsuisōroku, ed. Kawaguchi Shirō, (Private Publication, 1974), 58. Tōbata Seiichi praised this booklet in Tōbata, Nōsho ni rekishi ari.

148

Engineering Asia

On the night before Tatsumaru attended Chen’s party, he received an abrupt visit from Iso. In tears, Iso begged Tatsumaru to ask Chen to protect the legacies of Japanese agronomists. Apparently, the Taiwanese were destroying the experiment stations and seeds that the Japanese developed during the colonial era. Not having political power any longer, Iso could do nothing but watch and cry. These destructive actions originated in Taiwanese anti-Japanese sentiment. Yet Iso seemed blind to such sentiment. He could only lament the situation as an engineer who believed in the scientific value and humanitarian intention of his work. He was heartbroken by the destruction of what he had built. This anecdote reveals Iso’s blindness to the oppressive realities of Japanese colonialism for the colonized. Tatsumaru seems to have shared Iso’s naiveté. Influenced also by his grandfather’s pan-Asianism, he too wanted to “save” India through science. Hōrai rice’s path to India, however, was complicated because of Cold War geopolitics. At Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s request, Sugiyama tried to bring high-yield Hōrai rice to India to ameliorate the country’s severe food shortage. Tatsumaru approached the Japanese ambassador in India, Nasu Shiroshi, who was his distant relative. Before 1945, Nasu was a professor of agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University and an energetic advocate of the government’s policy to migrate Japanese farmers en masse to Manchuria. Tatsumaru even brought Mohan Parik, the oldest son of one of Gandhi’s disciples, to Iso’s home in Japan (Sugiyama Tatsumaru was farming in India with Gandhi’s disciples at the time), hoping this might influence the Indian government’s decision positively. However, fearing that receiving rice from Taiwan might jeopardize India’s diplomatic relationship with communist China, Nehru did not take Sugiyama’s proposal seriously. Meanwhile, a famine struck India, causing five million deaths. Sugiyama at this point decided to write a letter to Chiang Kai-shek and ask the Taiwanese government to send Hōrai rice to India: My grandfather, Kodama, Gotō, and Sun, all wanted to solve the pivotal issue facing 1.5 million Asians at that time, that is, the agricultural problem. They all wanted to make Taiwan the center for Asian agricultural development. They worked together with Taiwanese officials and people, and established research centers for this purpose. If the Nationalist Party monopolizes Hōrai rice and soybean seeds, it would mean that you are ignoring their work’s true significance. It would mean that the Nationalist Party is not inheriting Sun Yat-sen’s legacy. Taiwanese agriculture, especially Hōrai rice, should not only be for Taiwan. It should be for all of Asia and the world. Activists for Asian independence cooperated with Sun and gave what little money they had to him because they wanted to liberate Asia. Their efforts and sacrifices for this mission will be completely lost if Taiwan does not share Hōrai seeds with India.22

Whether or not Sugiyama’s point about Asian liberation struck a chord with Chiang is unclear, but the Taiwanese government did send about 20 tons of Hōrai seeds to India

22

Sugiyama, “Iso Eikichi hakase o shinobu,” 68–9.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

149

through the FAO. Sugiyama taught Indian farmers how to grow Hōrai rice, and they reaped a bumper harvest. He showed photos of this success to Iso, who by that point was suffering from an advanced stage of cerebral softening, and they cried together. Iso predicted that Hōrai rice would encounter a variety of problems in a few years because of the different climatic conditions. He was right, and as a result, Hōrai rice was crossbred with native species. Around this time, the Green Revolution’s “miracle rice,” IR-8, started to spread throughout India. Sugiyama was critical of IR-8 because it “requires such sophisticated agricultural techniques, a well-established irrigation system, and a massive amount of fertilizer … [which] are all way beyond the means of Indians.”23 This is why, Sugiyama explained, Indians abandoned IR-8 when it started exhibiting problems after its initial success. On the other hand, Hōrai rice required less fertilizer and less complicated techniques than IR-8. Thus, Sugiyama firmly believed that whereas IR-8 and other IRRI-developed varieties might be profitable for wealthier farmers, Hōrai rice was much easier to grow for the average, poor Indian farmer. Sugiyama’s belief echoed Iso’s criticisms of the IRRI. Taichung 65 did travel well beyond the Japanese Empire in time and space. As a versatile and desirable variety for agricultural development, it was used, tested, and engineered at numerous agricultural centers established throughout Asia and Latin America beginning in the 1950s. Some of these centers were part of Japan’s overseas development aid programs mentioned in Chapter 1. Notable examples were Malinja, Mahsuri, and Bahagia in Malaysia. These were new rice varieties developed by crossbreeding Taichung 65 with local Indian varieties, and they were released in the mid-1960s. Mahsuri was the most successful, a crossbreed of Taichung 65 and Manyan Ebos, a variety developed in India as part of the FAO’s indica–japonica crossbreeding project. After demonstrating its success in Malaysia, Mahsuri was then planted in India, Bangladesh, and Burma.24 Both Sugiyama and Iso believed in the mission and capacity to “save” Asia through Japan’s scientifically developed “super seeds.” They were not necessarily outspoken about Japan’s superiority, but they were clear about the difference between the American/IRRI approach and their own approach. Their colonial experience in Taiwan of formulating a distinctive approach to developing and propagating a rice variety suited to local conditions was closely tied to Japan’s wartime pan-Asianist ideology whereby Japanese rule was proclaimed as rooted in the particular needs

23 24

Sugiyama, “Iso Eikichi hakase o shinobu,” 71–2. According to 1974–5 Indian government records, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, Mahsuri was planted on over 710,000 hectares during the summer season and over 100,000 hectares during the rainy season. It was planted in Bangladesh on over 500,000 hectares in 1976 and in Burma on over 80,000–100,000 hectares in 1976. See Yamakawa Hiroshi, Fujii Hiroshi, Kawakami Jun’ichirō, and Samoto Shirō, “Mareishia ni okeru nikisakuyō suitō hinshu, Malinja, Mahsuri, Bahagia no ikusei ni kansuru kenkyū,” Nettai nōgyō 21, no.  1 (1977): 40–2. Also see Kikuo Wasano, “Usefulness of Japonica Varieties as Breeding Material,” in Japan’s Role in Tropical Rice Research: A Summary Report of A Seminar Jointly Sponsored by The Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Kyushu University, and the International Rice Research Institute held in Kyushu University in 27 September 1980 (Los Baños, Philippines: International Rice Research Institute, 1982): 27–9.

150

Engineering Asia

and conditions of various Asian peoples and societies. Thus, in a way, Sugiyama and Iso were only continuing to implement their earlier pan-Asianist approaches in postcolonial Asia. Upon closer analysis, however, there is evidence that Hōrai rice was actually not as suitable to local conditions as was conventionally thought. For example, Taiwanese farmers did not stop growing traditional varieties even after Hōrai rice became commercially successful. In fact, the production of Taiwanese varieties peaked as Hōrai rice production rose. How do we account for this? The next section examines this key question.

Agricultural development and the chemical industry Despite the spread of Hōrai rice during the colonial–wartime era, Taiwanese farmers did not necessarily stop growing traditional Taiwanese rice. Figure 6.1 shows that the production of traditional rice varieties did not decline by much in Taiwan; in fact, it peaked after the production of Hōrai rice rose. Why did this happen? A survey was taken in 1932 to find out why Taiwanese farmers continued to grow and eat traditional rice (Table 6.2). The questionnaire was sent to 850 farming households in the Taihoku region on November 23, 1932, with a response deadline of January 7 of the following year (the response rate was 65 percent). What is remarkable here is that more than 27  percent answered that the yield was comparatively small in relation to the high cost of production, and another roughly 20 percent of respondents thought that the sales performance was not high enough. It is clear here that the major reason for the persistence of traditional varieties was Hōrai rice’s high production costs. There were also other reasons listed that should not be ignored. For example, Hōrai rice stems were too short to use as straw to feed water buffalo. This meant that rice cultivation’s links to everyday life were cut off by Hōrai rice in exactly the same way that short rice stems became unsuitable for daily use during the Green Revolution, which then accelerated the infusion of plastic commodities into everyday life in Asia.

Table 6.2 Reasons why Taiwanese in Taihoku State did not raise Hōrai rice. Number of cases

Percentage

122

27.29

Sales prices are not high relatively

84

18.79

Because of disease or insect damage

82

18.34

Soil is unsuitable

36

8.05

Infertile soil

12

2.68

Hilly

20

4.47

4

0.89

Reason Yield is comparatively small in relation to high production costs

Dry soil

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

Reason Unsuitable climate

151

Number of cases

Percentage

27

6.04

Unfamiliar cultivation techniques

19

4.25

Did not have the right seed variety for Hōrai rice

19

4.25

Straw not appropriate for water buffalo feed

18

4.03

Household could not consume it

16

3.58

Rent paid with Hōrai rice was disadvantageous

11

2.46

Harvest time too late

10

2.24

Threshing machine necessary

2

0.45

Because it fell down

1

0.22

Source: Torikoshi Katsuji and Ukawa Suteo, “Nōka ga hōraimai o shōhisezaru riyū oyobi hōraimai o Saibai sezaru riyū ni kansuru chōsa,” Taiwan nōjihō 316 (March 1933): 248–9.

The historian Tsutsumi Kazuyuki sums up this point well: We need to pay attention to the fact that, while the production of Hōrai rice did increase, price differences between Hōrai rice and local varieties became less. The production of Hōrai rice required a large amount of fertilizer. Although the yield per acre increased, paying for fertilizers such as soybean husks was still an extremely large burden for the farmers producing it. … Even in the 1930s when Hōrai rice production was on track, for landowners, growing the traditional varieties did not have the risk associated with growing a new crop like Hōrai rice, since local demand for traditional varieties continued to exist and their yields were stable and predictable. This is probably why Taiwanese farmers did not shift to the exclusive production of Hōrai rice.25

The fertilizer problem was indeed significant. Table 6.3 shows the results of a 1924 test in which Japanese and Taiwanese varieties were grown with varying amounts of fertilizer. Existing varieties had better yields than Hōrai rice when little to no fertilizer was applied. Significantly, even when the conventional amount of fertilizer was applied, the local varieties still yielded better. Hōrai rice’s productivity became better only when large amounts of fertilizer were applied. This meant that a wealthy farmer who could apply more fertilizer than normal might be able to invest in the necessary amount of fertilizer to make a profit, but if one could only afford the same amount of fertilizer each year, then local varieties were by far more profitable.

25

Tsutsumi, “1910-nendai Taiwan no beishu kairyō jigyō to Suenaga Megumu,” 12–24.

152

Engineering Asia

Table 6.3 Differences in fertilizer effects between Japanese and Taiwanese varieties (1924).

Japanese types

Nakamura

Conventional types

Five-type average

Yield per tan

Index number

Yield per tan

Index number

Unfertilized

54,000

100

71,900

100

50 percent decrease

59,700

111

79,300

110

Ordinary amount

70,200

130

80,400

108

50 percent increase

83,300

156

77,600

108

100 percent increase

98,100

182

75,900

106

Fertilizer amount

Source: Iso Eikichi, “Suitō naichi shu,” in Taiwan nōjihō, no. 222 (1925): 21–2. 1 tan = 0.09917 hectares.

Table 6.4 Changes in fertilizer use and cost, excluding sugarcane fields. Self-supplied fertilizer

Purchased fertilizer

Index number

Cost percentage from fertilizer

Year

Price (1000 yen)

Index number

Price (1000 yen)

1928

17,896

100

16,987

100

51.30

1929

16,814

94

16,355

96

50.69

1930

14,276

80

15,275

90

48.31

1931

10,368

58

14,821

87

41.16

1932

16,240

91

16,506

97

49.59

1933

22,643

127

16,650

98

57.63

1934

26,014

145

18,309

108

58.69

1935

31,917

178

19,623

116

61.93

1936

37,566

210

21,161

125

63.97

Source: Kawano, Taiwan beikoku keizairon, 83.

Table 6.4 shows the increase in fertilizer use and costs in Taiwan. Use in the fertilizer-intensive sugarcane fields is excluded from these figures. This figure shows that purchased fertilizer as a share of total fertilizer use rose steadily after 1931. Taken together, Tables 6.3 and 6.4 show that if one had made a large and early investment, one could make a high return; however, this was limited to a highly fertilizer-dependent type of rice. What is more, high returns were dependent on purchased fertilizer.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

153

Table 6.5 Rise in shipments of ammonium sulfate and superphosphate of lime to Korea or Taiwan. To Korea Year 1921

Ammonium sulfate

To Taiwan

Superphosphate of lime

Ammonium sulfate

Superphosphate of lime

—

—

4,429

12,733

1922

—

—

6,838

12,983

1923

614

—

8,884

14,716

1924

6,208

—

16,685

27,255

1925

14,945

—

15,576

34,054

1926

29,797

—

9,481

33,776

1927

32,364

—

8,107

39,948

1928

50,129

—

7,792

41,993

1929

78,615

—

14,873

38,965

1930

62,631

—

21,241

35,095

1931

22,538

22,177

18,857

32,115

1932

17,949

39,197

49,491

41,803

1933

21,893

56,743

40,351

50,108

1934

37,132

62,145

50,926

59,414

1935

33,570

93,156

69,719

58,248

1936

67,425

113,232

114,599

55,211

1937

43,509

120,134

137,331

50,120

1938

53,656

142,328

155,903

46,840

1939

29,634

134,154

101,698

57,070

1940

41,447

112,515

72,414

64,403

1941

31,173

68,349

51,980

50,539

Source: Kondō Yasuo, Ryūan (Tokyo: Nihon hyōronsha, 1950), 288.

The chemical industry that propelled the Japanese economy from the 1920s introduced new, synthetic fertilizers that penetrated deeply into Taiwanese and Korean farm villages for markets. Table 6.5 shows the amounts of ammonium sulfate shipped to Korea and Taiwan from Japan. The amounts shipped to Taiwan greatly increased in the mid-1930s, by more than eightfold from 1931 to 1938. Despite the risk and high cost, as farmers began to expect a commercial profit from Hōrai rice, their “fertilizer consciousness” drastically improved, according to Suenaga Megumu, Iso’s work partner. According to Suenaga, in the In’rin area (଑᷇) of Taichung, where the application of about 83 kilograms of bean husks per tan had been the norm, there were many examples reported of those who applied about 220 kilograms of fertilizer, which was much more than necessary, and therefore mistakenly

154

Engineering Asia

Table 6.6 Reasons why Taiwanese in Taihoku do not eat Hōrai rice (1932 survey). Reason

Number of replies

Percentage

Because it is expensive

409

55.12

Custom

139

18.60

Don’t know how to cook it

64

8.63

Doesn’t increase much in the cooking pot

58

7.82

It often seems sticky, doesn’t digest well

51

6.87

No Hōrai rice nearby

22

2.97

Source: Taiwan nōjihō, no. 316 (1933): 248.

induced imochi disease. In years where high rice prices were forecast, numerous farmers used more than 145 yen worth of fertilizer per tan.26 In 1941, agricultural economist Kawano Shigetō reported the following: “The Hōrai rice variety, compared to local varieties, requires considerably higher costs of production, including the cost of fertilizer, extra wages, and other materials. … On the other hand, it is also more profitable, as it gives a considerably higher income” (italics in the original).27 From Table 6.6, which came from the same 1932 survey, it is clear that Hōrai rice was too expensive for ordinary household consumption and was a commodity meant for export, to be exchanged for cash. Moreover, it did not fit into customary food preparation. For example, Hōrai rice was unsuitable for making the popular dish, bīfun. It is clear that while Hōrai rice was the “miracle rice” for the Japanese empire, there was still much resistance to it among farmers. It should also be noted that the staple foods of indigenous Taiwanese were animals they hunted, chestnuts, and sweet potatoes. They also raised the stalks and ears of glutinous rice in dry fields for the purpose of brewing liquor. It is said that there were some indigenous Taiwanese who began to grow rice in paddy fields under Japanese rule. However, the main producers and consumers of indica rice were ethnic Han who had come from the continent. That is to say, the Japanese project of improving rice crop varieties in Taiwan, while aiming at the agricultural development of the entire island, was in fact targeting only Han Chinese. Crop improvement means that, once adopted, the engineered crops reproduce themselves. Unlike other technical interventions such as the use of fertilizer, which requires repeated application each season, seeds reproduce themselves and spread more rapidly. Therefore, once adopted, they would continue to transform the connections that had organically grown gradually and mechanically among particular cultures, traditions, and customs. It was not the scientists of the empire who needed to confront the resulting changes, but the local farmers themselves. Iso was undoubtedly proud of Hōrai rice. He seemed to believe that Hōrai rice benefited Taiwanese farmers. There is a telling story that demonstrates the gap between 26 27

Suenaga, Taiwan beisaku dan, 76–81. Kawano, Taiwan beikoku keizairon, 9.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

155

Iso’s pride and local farmers’ resistance to the new seeds. The story was included in Iso’s 1965 booklet that recalled his experiences in Taiwan: This is the story of a farmer from central Sharoku. The local rice merchant came along and persuaded the husband to grow Hōrai rice. His wife, however, disagreed, and they had a major fight. The husband ignored her and planted Hōrai rice. When harvest time finally came, they had a very nice yield, and the wife was not all that dissatisfied. The rice merchant came back and bought the whole harvest, giving the farmer more than he anticipated. Out of joy, he grabbed the notes and ran into the house, impatiently calling his beloved wife’s name. As the wife emerged, he lovingly slapped her cheeks many times with the bank notes, screaming, “Look at this, look at this!” Even his wife, while being slapped, beamed and looked up at her husband with admiration.28

It is clear that Iso introduced this story as an example of Hōrai rice’s success. However, it also reveals, via the figure of the wife, that there was much resistance among local farmers toward the new rice varieties recommended by the colonial authorities. The story shows just how much courage was required for Taiwanese farmers to take the first step toward adopting a new rice variety. On this point, Kawano Shigetō’s comment on this story is suggestive: “Farmers, who walk a cyclical path, detest all ‘unknown’ things as taboo. The story is suggestive in terms of the process of introducing a new mode of production, the risk associated with things new, and the way farmers react to it.”29 I would say that the wife’s resistance is three-fold: against outsiders telling them which crop to grow; against foreign techniques; and against foreign japonica rice. Iso seems to have believed that commercial profit erased such a feeling of resistance. He probably believed that whatever resistance Taiwanese farmers felt was due to their ignorance, something to be overcome with time and evidence of profit. When the first Hōrai rice raised in 1926 contracted imochi disease, Iso saw the massive damage and felt “as though a 5 shaku nail had hit me in the chest,” he later confessed (1 shaku = 0.303 meters). A farmer in dismay screamed at him, “I will never raise Hōrai rice again for as long as I live, even if the grains promise to be as large as duck eggs!” His recollection concludes, however, with the following anecdote: when Iso went back to the same farmer the following year, he saw the farmer raising Hōrai rice again after all, who said, “When I went to sell it, I made more money than with the traditional kind!”30 Iso suggested this story as a success one, but he did not think about the farmer’s trouble in getting used to the new technology at all. Iso has been remembered as an apolitical scientist, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Reading Iso’s Recollections gives the impression that Iso was simply a folksy researcher and teacher who was quite fond of ribald stories. It is said that Iso’s favorite phrase was “My wish is to die in the rice paddies.”31 Perhaps partly because of this persona,

28 29 30 31

Iso, Hōrai mai danwa, 94. Kawano, Taiwan beikoku keizairon, 69. Iso, Hōrai mai danwa, 97–8. Hokkaidō shinbun (Hokkaidō), August 3, 2007, 38.

156

Engineering Asia

Table 6.7 Comparative yields of older rice and Hōrai rice.

First period

Second period

Year

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

Older rice

11,957

11,502

12,445

12,482

11,793

12,595

11,980

11,970

Hōrai rice

17,087

15,757

15,909

14,825

10,547

12,277

12,229

12,447

Older rice

9,771

8,094

10,484

10,804

10,919

11,221

10,977

10,912

Hōrai rice

10,000

15,053

11,128

9,909

11,155

12,358

11,681

13,250

Source: Iso Eikichi, “Taiwan sanmai kairyō jigyōshi gaisetsu,” in Dai-25 shūnen kinen ronshū (Tokyo: Dai nihon beikokukai, 1931), 372.

it almost seems taboo to even criticize Iso. In both Japan and Taiwan, there are many who have praised Iso’s achievements, but few who have critically appraised his work. It is true that Iso avoided commenting on politics. He in fact did not mention Japan’s colonial rule even when and where one would expect him to, such as in his lectures, “An Outline of the Project to Increase Colonial Rice Production in Taiwan”32 and “The Development of Hōrai Rice on the Tenth Anniversary of the Nineteenth Great Rice Conference.”33 His memoir, Conversations on Hōrai Rice, neither praises nor criticizes Japanese colonial rule. It simply shows a naive and uncritical attitude toward Japanese colonial rule. Not all agricultural scientists working for the government kept quiet, however. In fact, some voiced quite strong criticism. For example, Takahashi Noboru, an AES engineer in colonial Korea, said: “Among all the technology we brought from Japan to Korea, the only useful one was square.”34 Iso, on the other hand, strongly believed that Japanese science and technology should guide and develop Taiwan. As one newspaper recently stated, “He avoided charged political topics. However, in the prewar years, his research supported Japanese colonial rule; in the postwar years, it supported the front lines of the Cold War.”35 Iso was political in a different way, too. For example, Table 6.7 was included in his “An Outline of the Project to Increase the Colonial Rice Production in Taiwan.” Based on this table, Iso concluded that, “Between the first and second growing periods, the tendency for the yield of Hōrai rice to surpass that of local varieties had already clearly emerged.”36 However, when you carefully examine the table, during the first growing period, the yield of Hōrai rice tended to decline from year to year. Again, during the second growing period, the up and down fluctuations of Hōrai rice were 32

33 34

35 36

Iso Eikichi, “Taiwan sanmai kairyō jigyōshi gaisetsu,” in Dai-25 shūnen kinen ronshū (Tokyo: Dai nihon beikokukai, 1931), 355–77. Taiwan nōjihō 349 (December 1935): 2–15. Ochiai Hideo, “Chōsen sōtokufu nōshi seisen shijōchō ‘Takahashi Noboru,’” in Kyū chōsen ni okeru nihon nōgyō shiken kenkyū no seika, ed. Nōrinshō Nettai Nōrin Kenkyū Sentā (Tokyo: Nōrin tōkei kyōkai, 1976), 801. Hokkaidō shinbun, August 3, 2007, 38. Iso Eikichi, “Taiwan sanmai kairyō jigyōshi gaisetsu,” 372.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

157

extreme. During the first growing period of 1926 and 1927 and during the second growing period of 1925, the traditional varieties had better numbers. From this, one can observe the Hōrai variety’s vulnerability to weather changes and even the greater sense of stability of the traditional varieties; however, Iso completely disregarded this data. A researcher for whom the strict handling of numbers was an absolute condition for his work therefore carried out a somewhat willful interpretation in order to confirm his own claims. Secondly, Iso’s memoir, Conversations on Hōrai Rice, leaves no doubt about his and Hōrai rice’s success. He also believed that others were absolutely and positively guided by his success. For example, he wrote the following about Hōrai rice in Takao: In order to encourage the cultivation of Hōrai rice, I made a round of visits to each of the former states and went to the state government office in Takao. The first thing out of the state governors’ mouths was, “The farmers of this state are used to eating traditional rice varieties. I don’t think they like Hōrai rice. Therefore, I don’t encourage the cultivation of Hōrai rice.” I replied, “With regard to encouraging the cultivation of Hōrai rice, that is something the head of the General Affairs Bureau ㏿उተ䮧ᇈis already supposed to have done; however, if the governor doesn’t think it is appropriate given the local circumstances, I think the reasons should be reported. In my view, because Hōrai rice is profitable, I think it would also be unkind not to make that widely known to farmers. It should be entirely left up to the farmers whether or not to grow it; it should not be unreasonably forced upon them. Also, farmers who do plant it should be given full guidance in the proper techniques in order to prevent mistakes. Again, because the households that eat the Hōrai rice they grow would not make a profit, it would be better for them to eat the traditional varieties they are used to but sell Hōrai rice. Whether this is good or bad is not something we need to decide now; time will likely resolve that.” The governor had no reply. But, after that, this state became quite active in encouraging Hōrai rice cultivation.37

He seemed to think that as long as farmers received cash in hand, they would freely and gladly choose Hōrai rice. It is not that Iso had contempt for the logic of locals. He certainly did care for Taiwanese farmers. At the same time, however, Iso did not hesitate or question Taiwan’s establishment as the colonial food base for the metropole. He had no reservations about making Taiwanese farmers dependent on Japanese capital (i.e. the large chemical fertilizer companies). While organic fertilizer such as soybean chaff and green straw remained important, rice (grown in water) in Imperial Japan increased its responsiveness to fertilizer in line with the expansion of the chemical fertilizer industry. As I explained earlier, the new high-yield varieties did not produce more than the conventional varieties unless one applied fertilizer to a certain degree. As long as and wherever these kinds of “superior varieties” were raised, farmers became the chemical industry’s main customers.

37

Iso, Hōraimai danwa, 94.

158

Engineering Asia

For those who see both exploitation and development in the legacy of Japanese colonial rule, Iso’s name usually comes up as a positive example of Asian development, as if he had been the saving grace in a time of evil. This can be clearly seen in Nishio Toshihiko’s assessment: “[Japan] caused incalculably great troubles to neighboring countries during the war. However, it is also a fact that as a result of the war, Japanese researchers risked their lives to promote agriculture in those lands. … Iso Eikichi’s activities are one example of that.”38 However, Iso’s avoidance of politics should not necessarily be viewed positively or as evidence of his determination to overcome colonial politics. In fact, in an interview with the previously mentioned Lasse and Lisa Berg, an administrator for India, by whose hands the Green Revolution was carried out, stated the following: “We are agricultural experts. We don’t concern ourselves with who is a landowner or a farm worker. We are just trying to increase productivity.”39 Iso would have said the same thing in the context of colonial Taiwan. As an agronomist, Iso was a pragmatist, not a theorist. He sought pragmatic solutions literally on his feet and despised those who only cared about theories. He was critical of the style associated with Tokyo Imperial University, the so-called Komaba-style of agricultural science that Yokoi Tokiyoshi, an advocate of peasantism (shōnō-shugi), also criticized by saying, “When agricultural science flourishes, agriculture is ruined.”40 Iso’s pragmatism was probably a result of his training in Sapporō. Iso’s alma mater, the Sapporo School of Agriculture, and its successor Hokkaidō Imperial University, were known for the pragmatic style. Many graduates went to Taiwan and Manchuria, since the status of Hokkaidō’s own agricultural development as an internal colonial frontier prepared students for colonial settings through its curriculum and alumni network.41 Iso’s pragmatism went hand in hand with his strong belief in the power of science as a problem solver. To him, scientific crop improvement meant the painstaking process of empirical data collection and patient crossbreeding experiments, as well as the methodological application of selection, purification, and stabilization techniques. To him, scientific agriculture meant farmers cultivating scientifically improved crops with efficient and effective skills and tools for the purpose of producing higher yields. Iso firmly believed that Japan provided Taiwan with the most scientific agriculture needed for its development. It would have been extremely difficult for Iso to consider how this could hurt Taiwan.

Conclusion By positioning Hōrai rice and Iso as part of the Green Revolution’s prehistory, I have sought to counter the power of the established narrative that has simply highlighted the good intentions of Iso and his style of agricultural science. In this case, power is distinct from military power, and it does not accompany violence. It is also distinct 38 39 40 41

Nishio Toshihiko, Nōgyō gijutsuoo tsukutta hito tachi 2 (Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 2003), 352−9. Berg and Berg, Indo, 20; Berg and Berg, Face to Face, 28. Komaba is the name of the University of Tokyo campus and once included the School of Agriculture. Yamamoto Naoko, “Taiwan ni watatta hokudai nōgakubu sotsugyōsei tachi,” Hokkaidō daigaku bunshokan nenpō (2011): 15–41.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

159

from the power of speech, as it is not the case that it simply persuades the listener. Iso’s power, rather, is the power of science. As was the case for the Green Revolution, this power is the power to silence and take over the area in question through statistics of increased yields. Along with this, the chemical industry enters into the picture and obtains large profits. It is the economic system established by Imperial Japan’s plant breeding project that most closely resembles that of the postwar Green Revolution. The system has plant engineering and the fertilizer industry mutually benefiting from each other. It puts a great emphasis on plant breeding through successive dwarf strains of DNA; shorter stems are preferred for the purpose of higher yields, as they tend to hold the weight of more grains on one stem. The diffusion of varieties with shorter stems is good for fertilizer retail shops and the chemical fertilizer industry. It is well known that this system, funded and solidified by powerful private foundations and agricultural chemical companies, propelled America’s Green Revolution.42 What is important to note is that this economic structure existed in the early twentieth century in the Japanese Empire. My argument is not that the USA copied the Japanese empire’s agricultural development, for that would be historically untrue. Rather, I suggest that it is more fruitful to think of this as a significant twentieth-century phenomenon of agricultural development that first emerged in the peripheries of the Japanese Empire and then developed further in the peripheries of the US Cold War empire. Alfred W. Crosby’s concept of “ecological imperialism” is useful to highlight this continuing domination over and exploitation of local ecologies, while his seminal work, Ecological Imperialism, covered only up to the nineteenth century.43 Crosby demonstrated that, as Europeans subjugated the native peoples of a “Neo-Europe” (North and South Americas, Australia, and New Zealand), the non-human life-forms such as weeds, disease-causing germs, and domestic animals they brought with them transformed and destroyed the environment of the conquered territories; smallpox, Chinese plantains, and mice lent their power to European conquest in ways that bore no direct relation to the initial intentions of the conquerors. In my view, twentiethcentury crop improvement techniques and genetic science represent the twentiethcentury phase of ecological imperialism. At this new stage of ecological imperialism, it was no longer seeds clinging to explorers’ clothes that changed the landscape. Rather, the colonial state apparatus engineered new seeds with a clear intention and plan to transform the ecologies of the colonies. Only the advancement of genetic science makes it possible to abruptly change local agriculture using the minute differences— “varieties”—within a species. The deliberate and planned transformation of colonial ecology through state-engineered and scientifically improved seeds—a more advanced stage of ecological imperialism—was an outstanding feature of Japanese colonialism. After the Japanese empire collapsed, these seeds were incorporated into Cold War America’s Green Revolution—as opposed to the communist “Red” Revolution and the

42

43

See, for example, Nick Cullather, Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

160

Engineering Asia

populist “White” Revolution—designed to produce more crops, reduce hunger, and win the hearts, minds, and bodies of people in the “underdeveloped” world. The Green Revolution went hand in hand with multinational biotech corporations’ interventions in the ecological world. Even after decolonization, ecological imperialism continued to be carried out by large-scale multinational seed corporations that monopolized genetic resources. Postcolonial Asian and African countries remained subject to not only the profit-making schemes of neo-imperialist corporations, but also the ecological imperialism of the seeds and chemicals that these corporations monopolized. In other words, not only economic resources, but also ecological and natural resources continued to lie outside their control. Instead of blindly trusting the benefit of science that has heroized Iso and legitimized the Japanese empire’s crop improvement program, it is time to critically see this as part of this twentieth-century ecological imperialism that puts not only economic resources, but also ecological and natural resources, outside local inhabitants’ control.

Bibliography Berg, Lasse and Lisa Berg. Face to Face: Fascism and Revolution in India. Berkeley, CA: Ramparts, 1970. Berg, Lasse and Lisa Berg. Indo: “Midori no kakumei” to “akai kakumei.” Translated by Moriya Fumiaki. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1973. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Cullather, Nick. Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Fujihara, Tatsushi. Ine no daitōa kyōeiken: Teikoku Nihon no “midori no kakumei.” Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2012. Gaud, William S. “The Green Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions.” Address to the Society for International Development. Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, March 8, 1968. Accessed November 21, 2016, http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/ topics/borlaug/borlaug-green.html. Iso, Eikichi. Hōrai mai danwa. Yamaguchi: Yamaguchiken nōgyō shikenjo/udokukai, 1965. Iso, Eikichi. “Suitō naichi shu.” Taiwan nōjihō 222 (May 1925): 1–60. Iso, Eikichi. “Taiwan sanmai kairyō jigyōshi gaisetsu.” In Dai-25 shūnen kinen ronshū. Tokyo: dai nihon beikokukai, 1931. Kawano, Shigetō. Taiwan beikoku keizairon. Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1941. Kondō, Yasuo. Ryūan. Tokyo: Nihon hyōronsha, 1950. Li, Haixun. “Kindai Tōhoku Ajia ni okeru kanreichi inasaku to yūryō hinshu no fukyū: Mōhitotsu no ‘midori no kakumei.’” Shakai keizaishi 79, no. 2 (2013): 213–33. Miyazato, Kiyomatsu. “Suitō Taichū 65 no seitaiteki narabini keitaiteki tokusei ni tsuite.” Ryūkyū daigaku nōkaseigakubu gakujutsu hōkoku 3 (1956): 123–38. Morinaga, Toshitarō. Nihon nōgyō hattatsushi. Tokyo: Nōgyō hattatsushi chōsakai, 1956. Nishio, Toshihiko. Nōgyō gijutsu wo tsukutta hito tachi 2. Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 2003. Ochiai, Hideo. “Chōsen sōtokufu nōshi seisen shijōchō ‘Takahashi Noboru.’” In Kyū Chōsen ni okeru Nihon nōgyō shiken kenkyū no seika, edited by Nōrinshō Nettai Nōrin Kenkyū Sentā. Tokyo: Nōrin tōkei kyōkai, 1976.

Hōrai Rice and Agricultural Development

161

Senda, Atsushi. Sekai no shokuryō kiki wo sukutta otoko: Inazuka Gonjirō no shōgai. Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 1996. Suda, Fumiaki. “Furansu ni okeru sakumotsu ikushu kenkyū no tenkai: Seibutsu tayōsei no bunsan-teki kanri no tame ni.” Sōgō seisaku 10, no. 2 (2009): 183–203. Suenaga, Megumu. Taiwan beisaku dan. Taichung: Taichung shūritsu nōji shikenjō, 1938. Sugiyama, Mitsumaru. Gurīn fāzā: Indo no sabaku o midori ni kaeta otoko. Tokyo: Hikuma no shuppan, 2001. Sugiyama, Tatsumaru. “Iso Eikichi hakase o shinobu.” In Iso Eikichi tsuisōroku, edited by Kawaguchi Shirō, Kawaguchi Aiko, and Iso Yuriko. Private Publication, 1974. Sugiyama, Tatsumaru. Sabaku ryokka ni idomu. Tokyo: Ashi shobō, 1984. Suzuki, Naoji. “Yokohama no koro.” In Iso Eikichi tsuitōroku, edited by Kawaguchi Shirō, Kawaguchi Aiko, and Iso Yuriko. Private Publication, 1974. Tōbata, Seiichi. Nōsho ni rekishi ari. Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyōkai, 1973. Torikoshi, Katsuji and Ukawa Suteo. “Nōka ga hōraimai o shōhisezaru riyū oyobi hōraimai o Saibai sezaru riyū ni kansuru chōsa.” Taiwan nōjihō 316 (March 1933): 75–7. Tsutsumi, Kazuyuki. “1910-nendai Taiwan no beishu kairyō jigyō to Suenaga Megumu.” Tōyō shihō 12 (March 2006): 12–24. Ukai, Yasuo. Shokubutsu ikushugaku: Kōzatsu kara idenshi kumikae made. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 2003. Wasano, Kikuo. “Usefulness of Japonica Varieties as Breeding Material.” In Japan’s Role in Tropical Rice Research: A Summary Report of A Seminar Jointly Sponsored by The Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Kyushu University, and the International Rice Research Institute held in Kyushu University in 27 September 1980. Los Baños, Philippines: International Rice Research Institute, 1982. Watanabe, Tadayo. “Yonagunijima no suiden ritchi to inasaku gijutsu: Hōraimai dōnyū izen no dentō-teki inasaku no taikei wo chūshin ni.” In Nantō no inasaku bunka: Yonagunijima wo chūshin ni, edited by Tanaka Kōji, 232–62. Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku, 1984. Yamakawa, Hiroshi, Fujii Hiroshi, Kawakami Jun’ichirō, and Samoto Shirō. “Mareishia ni okeru nikisakuyō suitō hinshu, Malinja, Mahsuri, Bahagia no ikusei ni kansuru kenkyū.” Nettai nōgyō 21, no. 1 (1977): 40–2. Yamamoto, Naoko. “Taiwan ni watatta Hokudai nōgakubu sotsugyōsei tachi.” Hokkaidō Daigaku daigaku bunshokan nenpō no. 6 (2011): 15–41.

Part Three

South Korea Engineering Asia

The three chapters in the last section demonstrate how South Korea (the Republic of Korea), a country formerly colonized by Japan, negotiated postcolonial ambitions, post-liberation domestic politics, and Cold War geopolitics to assert its place in the Cold War order that had started out as the US–Japan–Southeast Asia triangle. These chapters highlight South Korea’s determination to gain control of its own R&D, industrialization, and agricultural modernization for economic independence—an ambition fed by the humiliating experience of Japanese colonization and reinforced through its competition with North Korea—while maneuvering through opportunities created by the Vietnam War. Korean scientists (Chapter 7), agronomists (Chapter 8), and engineer-entrepreneurs (Chapter 9), whose ingenuity and ambitions had been deeply frustrated under Japanese colonial rule, joined the authoritative military regime’s mobilization of Korean and Cold War resources to achieve their scientific nationalism and their nation’s economic independence. As suggested earlier, the reader may choose to read Chapter 7 with Chapter 3, both of which feature pivotal segments of institutional infrastructure and the long-standing ambitions of scientists behind them in Korea and Japan, but with different dynamics relative to each country’s colonial positionality; Chapter 8 with Chapter 6 to discuss the significance of rice breeding in aspiring Asian countries as well as the affinity and differences between Korean and Japanese ambitions shaped by the colonial past as much as the postcolonial present; and Chapter 9 with Chapter 4, which draws an inspiring parallel between the Republic of Korea’s and Japan’s footprints in Southeast Asia and its physical landscape.

7

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia: The Hybrid Origins of a Modern Scientific and Technological System in South Korea Manyong Moon

Kkotp’inŭn p’alto kangsan (Blooming Scenery of Korea) was a very popular television series broadcast by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System), first airing in 1974. The show was essentially a propaganda drama supported by the government.1 Viewer ratings were relatively high, reaching around 40 percent, and audience members could vicariously experience the modern landscape of South Korea through the characters’ daily lives. The protagonist of the show had seven daughters, and his sons-in-law were employees of the very institutions symbolizing recent achievements of the regime, such as the Pohang Iron & Steel Company (POSCO) and the Ulsan industrial complex. The first son-in-law was a scientist at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), which demonstrates the high status and political value of the institute. During the 1970s, KIST represented the advancement of science and technology (S&T) in South Korea, and was a noted location for visits by honored foreign guests, including US Vice President Hubert Humphrey. How did such a well-equipped research institute emerge in a country that had just recently jump-started its economic development, and what was the historical meaning of the institute? The first research institutes in Korea started out as experiment stations during the Japanese colonial period (1910–45). The Governor-General of Korea (GGK) established these stations in the areas of agriculture, fishery, forestry, and industry. However, the main function of the stations was to conduct surveys and to introduce Japanese technology, rather than to actively promote new research, and only a very small number of Korean researchers were employed.2 After liberation from Japanese rule, Korean scientists demanded that the government establish “a proper research 1 2

Hansang Kim, Choguk kŭndaehwa rŭl yuram hagi (Seoul: Han’guk Yŏngsang Charyowŏn, 2008). Geun Bae Kim, Han’guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illyŏk ŭi ch’urhyŏn (Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa, 2005), 500-522.

166

Engineering Asia

institute,” with prominent scientific figures such as Taikyue Ree and Tong Hyuk Ahn (see next section), considering this a crucial component for Korea’s reconstruction. However, they had to wait for over twenty years for their wishes to come to fruition. Although new institutes, such as the Ministry of National Defense Scientific Research Institute and the Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERI), emerged in the 1950s, these bodies did not satisfy their expectations. This chapter traces how these ambitious dreams required additional elements to make the materialization of science a possibility, leading to its hybrid composition. In the mid to late 1960s, the South Korean government’s plans to advance S&T were put into motion. Starting with the establishment of the KIST, the first Government-funded Research Institute (GRI), in 1966, many institutions and systems for the development of S&T were established: the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST, 1967), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST, 1967), and the Science and Technology Promotion Act (1967). This collective activity can be explained as the formation of a modern scientific and technological system. In the 1970s, over a dozen GRIs modeled after KIST were founded. While KIST was a multidisciplinary institute, these newly established GRIs were institutes specializing in specific areas, such as shipbuilding, telecommunication, electronics, and chemical technology, according to the government’s development strategies for heavy and chemical industrialization.3 As quasi-governmental organizations, GRIs are regarded as one of the chief distinguishing features of South Korea’s S&T policy and have assumed a leading role in public research.4 Thus, KIST was arguably the origin as well as the most instrumental tool in the construction of an S&T infrastructure, and also an incentive for the recruitment of human resources. KIST was created as a South Korea–US bilateral project in 1966. Some historians maintain that KIST emerged outside of South Korea’s domestic context, as it was US President Johnson who proposed the idea during the Republic of Korea (ROK)–US summit of May 1965, when President Park Chung-hee visited Washington, DC. On the other hand, the official history of KIST states that the institute was brought into existence as a result of the South Korean president’s request. In my view, these distinct perspectives overemphasize the decisions of the two national leaders, while overlooking the long-standing aspirations and previous efforts of Korean scientists dating back to as early as the 1930s. Following World War II, the discourse that progress in S&T is crucial for national reconstruction was prevalent among emerging postcolonial nations that gained independence. Due to the Cold War, S&T became a major tool to display national ambitions and developing prowess.

3

4

Manyong Moon, “STI in History: The Creation of Government-supported Research Institutes during the Park Chung-hee Era,” STI Policy Review 2, no. 2 (2011): 55–65. See also, Joseph J. Stern, Ji-hong Kim, Dwight H. Perkins, and Jung-ho Yoo, Industrialization and the State: The Korean Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). OECD, Republic of Korea: Reviews of National Science and Technology Policy (Paris: OECD Publishing, 1996), 63–70; Deok Soon Yim and Wang Dong Kim, “The Evolutionary Responses of Korean Government Research Institutes in a Changing National Innovation System,” Science, Technology & Society 10, no. 1 (2005): 31–55.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

167

Moreover, military tension between North and South Korea led to heightened competition for the development of S&T. Generally, South Korea’s rapid growth of S&T has been considered as the materialization of the government’s strong policy since the mid-1960s.5 However, “government-led” does not mean that the government or the president was the sole or an absolute actor in this case. Many researchers at universities and research institutes had demanded the promotion of S&T even before the government designed and implemented its S&T policy. This belief was conceived as the “postcolonial desire” of Korean scientists, which could also be found in similar national contexts, such as India, China, and Taiwan.6 The desires of South Korean scientists during the postcolonial era and the international context such as the Cold War also deserve to be acknowledged as significant contributing elements. Tae-Gyun Park has argued that US policies during the Cold War era were a major determinant of the scientific and technological development of South Korea.7 Although in agreement with Park’s argument, I emphasize the hopes and dreams of scientists as the formative context, which placed the need for “a proper research institute” at its core, and will trace this history of ideas to the colonial period, before returning to its formative material base in the postcolonial period. This chapter argues that KIST was born out of multiple factors, such as South Korea’s aspirations for economic independence from US aid, the strategic interests of the USA in developing South Korean capitalism while eliciting a Korean military contribution to the Vietnam War, and Korean scientists’ desires to have Korea’s own research and development (R&D) system beyond what had been established during Japanese colonization and to become internationally competitive. Although the scientists’ conceptions needed to be adjusted to the changing sociopolitical demands, well-organized research institutes were expected to function as the cornerstone of the development of S&T in Korea after liberation. The establishment of KIST in 1966 was no coincidence, therefore, as it was precisely when the above international and domestic factors aligned, making the founding of the institute possible. This illustrates not only how South Korean scientists and the government seized such opportunities and made strategic decisions, but also how they understood the role of S&T in securing the place of South Korea within a transformed Asia in the post-1945, Cold War era. The Cold War paved the way for the emergence of a proper research institute, and the South Korean government took full advantage of the moment and succeeded in achieving a more comprehensive promotion of S&T.

5

6

7

Joel R. Campbell, The Technology Policy of the Korean State Since 1961 (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). In the case of India, see Jahnavi Phalkey, Atomic State—Big Science in Twentieth Century India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2013). For Taiwan, see J. Meghan Greene and Robert Ash, eds. Taiwan in the 21st Century: Aspects and Limitations of a Developmental Model (New York and London: Routledge, 2007). Tae-Gyun Park, “The Roles of the United States and Japan in the Development of South Korea’s Science and Technology during the Cold War,” Korea Journal 52, no. 1 (2012): 206–31.

168

Engineering Asia

“Give us a laboratory, and we will build our nation!” The origin of Korea’s research institutes goes back to the modest set of experiment stations that were established during the Japanese colonial period. Nevertheless, research institutes were scarce, and few Koreans were trained to be scientific researchers.8 In the field of industry, the only laboratory—the Central Laboratory— limited its activities to surveying natural resources, testing materials, and providing technological training. To the Japanese colonial regime, Korea offered a reservoir of natural resources, whereas Japan was the “brains” of the empire. Promoters of Japanese science emphasized that science should be mobilized for the good of the empire, but Koreans were mostly excluded from research activities. By the 1930s, Yong-gwan Kim, a Korean ceramics engineer and the head of the Society of Invention, attempted to establish an institute of physical and chemical research for Korean inventors, and a naturalist named Byoung-ha Kim had the comparable dream of establishing a Korean natural history museum and research facility.9 Despite their wholehearted aspirations, realizing their dreams under the colonial regime was impossible, due to both a material lack and to an acute lack of trained personnel. After liberation in 1945, Korea was divided along the 38th Parallel. The Soviet Union occupied the northern region, while the USA stationed its troops throughout the southern half of the peninsula. The division was the product of international meetings, including the Yalta Conference (July 1945) at the end of World War II, and Koreans were struck by tragedy as a result of this partition. Eighty-five percent of the heavy industry infrastructure was in the north and seventy-five  percent of light industry factories were in the south due to Japanese planning for war with China starting in the 1920s. This meant that there was low demand for Japanese engineers in South Korea. The Soviet military government in the north ordered Japanese engineers to stay, while trying to persuade Koreans that these Japanese were integral to reconstructing Korea.10 For its part, the US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK, 1945–8) quickly decided to repatriate the Japanese, who left for home. News releases in the initial period of the USAMGIK were replete with data attesting to how many high-level Japanese were being removed from government offices, factories, and educational institutions.11 Following the withdrawal of Japanese scientists and engineers, South Korean researchers took over the experiment stations. For example, Tong Hyuk Ahn, who was the only Korean head of department at the Central Laboratory during the colonial period, became the new director of the Laboratory and worked to rebuild it with his 8

9

10

11

Geun Bae Kim classified science in colonial Korea into three categories: imperial science, colonial science, and national science. National science by Koreans constituted only a minority among them. Geun Bae Kim, “Singminji kwahak kisul ŭl nŏmŏsŏ—kŭndae kwahak kisul ŭi Han’gukchŏk chinhwa,” Han’guk Kŭnhyŏndaesa Yŏn’gu 58 (2011): 252–83. Jung Lee, “Invention without Science: ‘Korean Edisons’ and the Changing Understanding of Technology in Colonial Korea,” Technology and Culture 54, no. 4 (2013): 782–814. Yeon Sik Yi, Chosŏn ŭl ttŏnamyŏ (Seoul: Yŏksa Pip’yŏngsa, 2012), 168–75. Japanese engineers in the north were gradually repatriated by mid-1948. Steven Hugh Lee, “Military Occupation and Empire Building in Cold War Asia: The United States and Korea, 1945–1955,” in The Cold War in East Asia 1945–1991, ed. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 98–121.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

169

Korean colleagues.12 However, it was very hard to concentrate on research due to the political and social turmoil, financial difficulty, and the shortage of human resources. Despite the adverse research environment, many scientists stuck to their beliefs that scientific and technological prowess was crucial to independence and the construction of a new nation. Gyan Prakash shows how science functioned as both a form of culture and a source of power in India, and how Indian scientists tried to propagate a scientific outlook for their nation’s progress.13 Additionally, some Indian scientists wanted to search for precedents for scientific thought in India’s traditional intellectual history and to make a synthetic, hybrid knowledge composed of Western and local ideas. Chinese intellectuals organized the Science Society of China in the early twentieth century and made great efforts to build a new nation under the agenda of “saving China through science.”14 Similarly, the Japanese intelligentsia believed S&T were the most urgent and important assets for the integrity, survival, and progress of the nation during the interwar and war years, with Hiromi Mizuno referring to this as “scientific nationalism.”15 Korean scientists shared this strong belief regarding S&T for nation-building. They believed that Korea had been colonized in the first place because of its lack of a strong S&T foundation, and that liberation had been possible due to the advanced S&T capacities of the USA. However, they maintained that the Korean government should promote S&T for nation-building, and they did not seek scientific superiority or defend the uniqueness of Korean science. Rather, their desire bore a closer likeness to that of Chinese scientific nationalism than that of Indian desire. Although Koreans were proud of the long scientific tradition, they were not able to emphasize the originality of Korean S&T under the overwhelming power of modern S&T. The priority at the time was to accept advanced Western S&T. Several Korean scientists presented various measures of promoting S&T. In general, professors and researchers had great interest in the enhancement of scientific research. For example, Taikyue Ree, the most renowned chemist at the time, presented a plan to establish a “Ministry of Science and Technology” that would oversee research institutes.16 He proposed that the experiment stations built during the colonial period 12

13

14

15

16

Tong Hyuk Ahn graduated from Kyūshū Imperial University in 1929 and had worked as a chemical engineer at the Central Laboratory since 1933. After liberation, Ahn was elected as the president of the Korean Chemical Society, and later appointed as the Minister of Commerce and Industry in 1953. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 201–26. Zuoyue Wang, “Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China,” Osiris 17 (2002): 291–322. Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 181. Likewise, by using the term “techno-nationalism,” Richard Samuels examines the sociopolitical function of technology in Japan, where technology is considered as a fundamental element in promoting national security and economic prosperity. Richard J. Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). Taikyue Ree got his doctorate degree at Kyoto Imperial University in 1931 and worked as an instructor (1931–6), an assistant professor (1935–43), and a professor (1943–5) at Kyoto. For more details, see John DiMoia. “Transnational Scientific Networks and the Research University: The Making of a South Korean Community at the University of Utah, 1948–1970,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 6 (2012): 17–40.

170

Engineering Asia

be enlarged and that new institutes be established under the ministry. Ree also suggested that an umbrella institute called the “Comprehensive Research Institute” be established and function as “a science palace,” like the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) in Japan or the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft in Germany.17 The new director of the Central Laboratory, Tong Hyuk Ahn, proposed the idea of a “General Headquarters of Science and Technology.” The Headquarters would be a governmental organ for the promotion of S&T, overseeing S&T-related administration, and have direct control over diverse professional institutes. It would manage all the laboratories and policies centrally, and thereby promote science and engineering in a more systematic manner.18 The term “general headquarters,” which is borrowed from military terminology, shows that Ahn’s idea was influenced by wartime mobilization. In fact, he had served as a researcher at the Central Laboratory for the colonial government during the total war period (1941–5), studying substitute raw materials and their applications for industry. Though influenced by disparate backgrounds—for example, the policies of prewar Japan and Manchukuo (1932–45) or the socialist economic model of the Soviet Union—these plans suggested by scientists were based on a shared belief that a centralized system of managing S&T policy and research institutes was necessary in order to advance scientific and technological capacity and mobilize it for national reconstruction. In particular, the Institute of Scientific Research of Manchukuo (Mantestsu) caught their attention. It was a government research institute and its director was a minister who took charge of the institute’s administration. Although their idea of centrally managing all the laboratories and S&T policies would not always be in accordance with autonomy in research, scientists emphasized the role of S&T in nation-building. Scientists repeatedly stated through interviews and articles that the government should place greater emphasis on science education, establish a governmental agency that would oversee science and engineering administration, and found “a proper research institute.” Although different individuals proposed different names, there was a common aspiration for an agency that would systematically manage research at a national level and centrally coordinate all research institutes. Many things were required to build a nation, and the scientists, naturally, strongly emphasized the need to promote S&T. They believed that national scientific and technological power could symbolize independence, but it was also apparent that they had the intention to gain influence through the expansion of science institutes. Despite the postcolonial desire, there was no consensus in terms of what to do and how to do it. For one thing, many of the scientists who actively revealed their opinions regarding the future development of S&T were affiliated with universities, hence their discourse tended to be confined to the ivory tower. Everyone seemed to propose a slightly different idea of what the laboratory should be and how to advance S&T. Others believed that investments in science could advance the national economy without detailed research planning. 17

18

Taikyue Ree, “Kŏn’guk sŏlgye ŭi hana ro kwahak kisulbu rŭl sŏlch’i haja,” Hyŏndae Kwahak 1 (1946): 10–15. Tong Hyuk Ahn, Kwahak sinhwa (Seoul: Chosŏn Kongŏp Tosŏ Ch’ulp’ansa, 1947), 19–20.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

171

Simultaneously, another central issue was the lack of scientists and engineers that would replace those that had worked for the Japanese colonial institutes. Considering the insufficient number of scientists and engineers, building new research institutes seemed to be an impractical plan. In fact, the most important objective of the institute, therefore, was not so much research itself as manpower—the cultivation of scientists and engineers. Thus, the government established national universities including Seoul National University (1946) in an effort to increase human resources in S&T rather than research institutes. Scientists including Ree and Ahn seemed to say, “Give us a laboratory, and we will build our nation.” But these grand ideas were accepted by neither USAMGIK, nor the newly launched government of the ROK in mid-1948. Because the government was confronting other urgent issues such as economic downturn, food deficiency, and national security, S&T was not high on the list of priorities. The USA continued to provide large sums of aid to the Korean government, but the lion’s share was in military assistance, and S&T was not part of the aid strategy. Korean scientists thought that the value of their S&T promotion scheme was self-evident, but the bureaucrats did not accede. Although the desires of Korean scientists were not immediately realized, their continued advocacy for the promotion of S&T heightened public awareness of science policy. Popular science magazines and some newspapers relayed the voices of scientists and spread the idea of promoting S&T.19 In demanding the establishment of a proper research institute, scientists gradually realized that the slogan of “Give us a laboratory, and we will build our nation!” was not enough to fulfill their dreams. They felt the necessity for more sophisticated planning of S&T in order to bridge the gap between the visions of the bureaucrats and the aspirations of the scientists, and began to gather individual opinions more systematically. However, as the entire society suffered from immense loss of human life and destruction of property due to the Korean War (1950– 3), their ideas had yet to come to fruition.

The Korean War (1950–3), the Cold War, and research institutes As the Korean War brought incalculable damage to Korean society, postwar recovery became an urgent matter in the mid-1950s, and so it was difficult to expect the government to fund science policy. Nevertheless, the expansion of R&D infrastructure occurred against this backdrop of war. The Ministry of National Defense (MND) founded a Scientific Research Institute for the R&D of arms and ammunition in 1950. There was no immediate need for the Institute because South Korean armed forces depended heavily on US aid, but military officers played a role in its establishment. The institute was more of a small laboratory, but officers who had majored in science and engineering were able to convince the ministry to name it a “research institute.” 19

Following liberation, several popular science magazines were first issued and many newspaper articles and editorials dealt with the development of S&T. For example, “Choguk chaegŏn ŭi kwahak sŏlgyeķPugang Chosŏn ŭn kwahak ŭi wiryŏk ŭro,” Donga-ilbo, January 1, 1947.

172

Engineering Asia

Unfortunately, the institute could not operate due to the Korean War, which broke out ten days following its establishment. Paradoxically, however, the war turned out to become an opportunity to acquire high-quality scientists and engineers. The institute was evacuated from Seoul to Busan, and with it went the top-level scientists and engineers who were hired as non-regular staff members. The intention was to prevent these individuals from being kidnapped or defecting to North Korea. After liberation (1945), about 35–40 percent of graduates in science and engineering who resided in South Korea defected to North Korea, and dozens of scientists and engineers were kidnapped to North Korea during the war. By providing protection to elite scientists who were conscripted into the army as researchers, the institute was able to secure a skilled workforce. Consequently, the MND Scientific Research Institute functioned as a shelter for scientists and a forum for scientific discussion, though it was not well equipped in terms of research facilities.20 Carrying out stable and uninterrupted research projects was challenging, for the institute went through a series of structural reorganizations, and also because it had not been conceived of within a long-range plan. Despite these difficulties, the researchers were determined to prove their value. One of their most notable achievements was the publication of the Kwayŏn hwibo (Journal of the MND Scientific Research Institute), beginning in 1952. This journal was of notable significance to academic circles because most scientific societies of the time could not issue their own independent journals due to the shortage of funds and manpower. The institute was granted a higher legal position in 1954 and became a national institute with expanded experimental facilities. It was obvious that the MND Scientific Research Institute was thus a rare space where various types of research were being conducted, but it was not without its drawbacks. As a military organization, unaffiliated researchers were prohibited from using the experimental equipment and its library. Furthermore, because the institute was founded before the establishment of any form of a national plan for the development of S&T, it lacked political and administrative support. This meant that the status of the institute was precarious, and eventually, following a military coup and the emergence of a new regime in 1961, it was abruptly dissolved under the excuse of public administration. The institute could not become the research institute that scientists had anticipated after liberation. Despite its brief existence, the MND Scientific Research Institute was the representative Korean science research institute of the 1950s, and it functioned as a meaningful space that accommodated a sizable number of scientists and engineers during wartime. It was able to attract young scientists by providing an alternative to military service. Little has been known about the MND Scientific Research Institute until now mainly because its sudden shutdown prevented it from making a bigger impression on people and Korean modern history. However, the value of the MND Scientific Research Institute must be recognized, for it produced a large number of core figures in academia and industry. 20

Kwayŏnhoe, ed., Kukpangbu Kwahak Yŏn’guso (2003). This self-published book by former staff of the MND Scientific Research Institute is the only literature that includes much information on the Institute.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

173

In the late 1950s, a new, fully-fledged research institute emerged in South Korea: the Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERI). Koreans deeply felt the significance of atomic power since their national sovereignty had been restored when Japan surrendered following two nuclear attacks. Therefore, Koreans had a very favorable and positive image of the nuclear bomb and nuclear energy.21 Nuclear weapons and the pursuit of nuclear weapons became the symbols of the “power of science and technology that Korea should actively seek to acquire in order to develop into a strong, modern nation.”22 That is why the South Korean government was very active in developing atomic power following Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” declaration in 1953. While Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea, showed a special interest in nuclear bombs in the context of military tensions with North Korea, some scientists and government officials expected that atomic energy would help to resolve the serious shortage of electric power.23 Around a dozen elite scientists gathered to study atomic energy voluntarily. The aforementioned MND Scientific Research Institute also went into atomic research with the development of the nuclear bomb in mind. After the signing of the US–South Korea Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1956, the US government decided to provide a nuclear reactor and radioactive isotopes to South Korea. For the introduction and operation of a research reactor, the Korean government decided to found a new research institute. The Office of Atomic Energy (OAE) was established as a government agency for administering the national nuclear program, and the AERI was established under the OAE in 1959. The USA promised to provide grants-in-aid of US$350,000 for the purchase of a reactor, while Korea appropriated a matching-fund of the same amount to pay for the site, for the construction of the building, and for other administrative preparations. North Korea also signed a nuclear agreement with the Soviet Union in 1956, and another with the People’s Republic of China in 1959. The similar trajectories of the two Koreas demonstrate that the quest for atomic research proceeded within the context of heated postcolonial competition.24 From 1956 to 1966, the Korean government dispatched 260 young scholars who sought to study nuclear science and engineering to the USA and Europe. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Cooperation Agency (ICA), and other international organizations provided financial support for this studyabroad program, and yet a majority of the funding came from the Korean government. Given that there had been a lack of foreign exchange reserves in Korea at the time, the fact that the “atomic research fellowship program” promoted students to study abroad shows that the Korean government had high expectations for nuclear projects. As 21

22

23

24

Dong-Won Kim, “Imaginary Savior: The Image of the Nuclear Bomb in Korea, 1945–1960,” Historia Scientiarum 19, no.  2 (2009): 105–18; Seong-Jun Kim, “Han’guk wŏnjaryŏk kisul ch’eje hyŏngsŏng kwa pyŏnhwa 1953–1980,” PhD diss., Seoul National University, 2012, 32–34. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, “Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea,” Minerva 47, no. 2 (2009): 130. For the role of Walker Cisler in the process, see John DiMoia, “Atoms for Sale?: Cold War InstitutionBuilding and the South Korean Atomic Energy Project, 1945–1965,” Technology and Culture 51, no. 3 (2010): 589–618. For a discussion of the disguised intention of the “Atoms for Peace” program, see John Krige, “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence,” Osiris 21 (2006): 161–81.

174

Engineering Asia

Korean governmental investments were concentrated in atomic energy research and several staff of the NMD Scientific Research Institute were transferred to AERI, the new institute replaced the NMD Scientific Research Institute as the most significant science research institute in South Korea. Establishing OAE as a minister-level agency strictly for the purpose of atomic development was unusual in the international context, even without a governmental agency for S&T. This shows that the South Korean government’s atomic energy policy was not formulated under an all-around scientific plan for the development of S&T. By then, science administration was just a small part of the larger education policy, and the Technology Education Bureau of the Ministry of Education was in sole charge of science-related policies. However, scientists anticipated AERI would function as a stepping-stone for the future of Korean S&T. They tried to build adequate foundations for fundamental research in all fields of S&T, without limiting it to nuclear science. Furthermore, because atomic energy research was a broad science composed of various fields, AERI encompassed areas ranging from the natural sciences to engineering to medicine. AERI held a comprehensive academic meeting called the “Atomic Energy Academic Conference” annually, covering diverse fields in S&T. At a time when research activities of individual academic societies were minimal, this conference served as a rare opportunity in which Korean scientists and engineers could gather. In 1959, the first year it was held, over 500 scientists and engineers from academia and research institutes and representatives of academic societies from across the country that participated in the first conference submitted a document entitled “Kŏnŭimun” (A Proposal). Through this document, they raised several important issues to the government regarding the promotion of S&T. At the heart of this proposal was the enactment of the Science and Technology Promotion Act, which would encompass, as its main aspects, the improvement of science and engineering education as well as the establishment of a “Science and Technology Center.” As a central academic institution responsible for S&T policy and research, the center was described as an “organization fulfilling an academic yet dynamic and practical function.”25 The guiding idea was that in order to prevent bureaucratization, this center should be established as an independent committee or organ, have a research center per subfield, conduct a variety of studies on the needs of the society, and, in the long term, mature into the nation’s highest S&T council. This proposal expressed the scientists’ persistent goal for national-level S&T promotion and was significant in that it represented the collective voice of scientists. However, this aggregation of scientists’ opinions did not resonate with the government due to the political maelstrom that occurred soon after. In March 1960, Present Rhee’s regime (1948–60) engaged in electoral fraud with rampant corruption, which brought about massive protests. President Rhee was forced to step down a month later and a new government was inaugurated with great anticipation. However, the junta led by Major General Park Chung-hee later seized the government by a military

25

The 1st Atomic Energy Academic Conference, (Che 1-hoe Wŏnjaryŏk Haksul Hoeŭi), Kŏnŭimun (July 1959).

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

175

coup in May 1961.26 With such political instability, AERI did not grow as rapidly as initially anticipated. While AERI wanted to expand manpower and research experience in the field of natural sciences, economic bureaucrats and political appointees were not satisfied with AERI’s academic and long-term research activities.27 US advisors such as W. Wayne Meinke expressed concern that AERI was too academic in its endeavors, and the institute and its research were regarded as far from practical. We were disappointed to see that so few of the projects described in our briefing sessions at the Institute [AERI] were directly connected in any way with the good of Korea. We certainly endorse the belief of certain of your people that good basic research can be done in Korea. However, we found much greater recognition of Korean problems in our visits to the Agricultural College at Suwon and to the Medical School than we did in the rather “ivory-towered” atmosphere of the Institute. Korea cannot afford the luxury of an ivory-tower and, while the Institute should not become merely a routine type of practical laboratory, it can become more vital if there is some recognition of a responsibility to search out and solve Korean problems by some of the staff.28

Accepting Meinke’s advice, the Korean government decided to pay more attention to medical, agricultural, and industrial uses of radioactive energy, and strongly asked AERI to make a practical turn.29 The ultimate goal of the government in supporting the institute was to obtain practical gains such as atomic energy generation. However, scientists at AERI deemed the establishment of a foundation for comprehensive S&T to be important as well. As the South Korean government dispatched young scholars to study abroad without thorough planning, a sizable proportion of them studied basic sciences and did not return to Korea, or opted to pursue other areas of study. This implied that scientists tried to take advantage of the US–Korea atomic energy cooperation to expand manpower and research experiences in other fields of science. Additionally, scientists focused on fundamental research to develop research capacity, for it would require a considerable amount of time to accomplish a task in the new field of nuclear research. Considering Korea’s economic condition at the time, Korean industries had not achieved systemized, in-house R&D. As scientists had little experience in practical R&D, they tended to prefer basic research, with which they were more familiar, in the name of S&T promotion. 26

27

28

29

For the Korean political history in that period, see Young Woo Han, Tasi ch’annŭn uri yŏksa 3 (Seoul: Kyŏngsewŏn, 2004), 211–17. On the tension between scientists and bureaucrats, see Buhm Soon Park, “Technonationalism, Technology Gaps, and the Nuclear Bureaucracy in Korea, 1955–1973,” in Bridging the Technology Gap: Historical Perspectives on Modern Asia, ed. Youngsoo Bae and Buhm Soon Park (Seoul: SNU Press, 2013), 163–97. W. Wayne Meinke, “Report on Visit to Korea,” April 1962, 7–8, Folder “Phoenix. Organizations. ICA,” Box 24, Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, MI, USA. Thanks to Seong-Jun Kim for providing a copy of this document. Seong-Jun Kim, “Han’guk wŏnjaryŏk kisul ch’eje hyŏngsŏng kwa pyŏnhwa 1953–1980,” PhD diss., Seoul National University, 2012, 129–46.

176

Engineering Asia

The NMD Scientific Research Institute and AERI functioned as significant science research institutes during the 1950s to mid-1960, respectively, and both institutes emerged against the backdrop of the Korean War and the Cold War. Korean scientists wanted to promote S&T using the institutes as leverage, but their ideas needed to evolve in order to meet the government’s demand. Nevertheless, Korean scientists still maintained their postcolonial desires for a proper science institute and S&T governmental agency, and this aspiration served as the compass for the national S&T policy that soon followed.

The Vietnam War and the birth of the “proper research institute” After a coup d’état in 1961, the military junta led by Park Chung-hee tried to promote economic growth, but did not have any specific plans about S&T. Scientists criticized the regime for unexpectedly closing down the MND Scientific Research Institute and for downgrading the Technology Education Bureau to a lower-level office. Both were considered as downplaying the importance of S&T. However, following close conversations between scientists, the government gradually began to pay greater attention to science policy. Although AERI was regarded as the best institute by the mid-1960s, it was unable to meet the expectation of scientists. Because the government budget for S&T was rather tight, the research fund for AERI was far from sufficient. AERI, as a national institute, had to obey the regulations regarding civil servants in terms of quotas and payment. Thus, it was hard to attract and provide appropriate remuneration to distinguished researchers as regular staff. Since the organization also had to follow the government’s strict accounting procedures, researchers had many difficulties performing creative research activities. Due to such bureaucratic red tape, scientists at AERI had to wait several months before they could acquire laboratory equipment. Recognizing the problems of the national institute, a considerable number of scientists raised issues regarding the necessity of privatizing the institute in order to allow more independent management. It was then when not just the physical conditions, but also autonomy in operation became important matters for the research institute. Thus, the Korean government tried to transform the national institute into a non-governmental institute, but even these efforts were faced with challenges such as a limited budget and objections from within the institute, further delaying the progress. Then, the Korea– US summit meeting held in spring of 1965 provided the much-needed momentum for the future development of S&T.

Tripartite alliance (USA, Japan, and Korea): An international backdrop During the summit, US president Lyndon B. Johnson offered to send his science advisor to Korea to explore the feasibility of US cooperation in establishing a Korean institute for industrial technology and applied science. According to the joint communiqué:

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

177

The two presidents, recalling their respective earlier careers as school teachers, discussed together the needs, challenges and opportunities of education at all levels in both countries. President Park welcomed President Johnson’s offer to send his science advisor [Donald F. Hornig] to Korea for the purpose of exploring with industrial, scientific and education leaders possibilities for US cooperation in establishing there an institute for industrial technology and applied science. It was President Johnson’s thought that the institute and its laboratories could both provide technical services and research for developing Korean industry and afford advanced Korean specialists trained in the United States opportunities to continue their research.30

President Johnson’s proposal was initially suggested by his Special Advisor on Science and Technology, Donald F. Hornig, to whom President Johnson sought advice on a “gift” for the Korean president.31 Korean President Park Chung-hee, who had been keenly aware of the necessity of a new form of research institute, welcomed the offer. The news stimulated the Korean public’s interest in S&T, and the media began to report on issues concerning the inadequate research environment, the poor treatment of scientists, and the issue of brain drain.32 A significant number of scientists were filled with anticipation that a new institute would bring sensational change to the S&T circles. The US president’s “gift” was, above all, an expression of gratitude to the Korean government for its decision to dispatch combat troops to Vietnam, which was the most important issue at the summit meeting. By the agreement, Korea sent 312,853 troops in total to Vietnam for eight years. This made South Korea the second largest combatant nation after the USA. Dispatching combat troops to Vietnam was not only a military but also a political issue. A relationship of “exchange” was set in motion between the Johnson and Park governments after 1965. Secondly, the proposed institute could serve as a pilot project to help Korea mitigate brain drain. While the USA was the first country to benefit from the phenomenon, Korea had one of the most serious cases of brain drain in the world.33 The US government wanted to make a showcase institute that could hire returnees, thereby displaying the USA’s efforts in aiding South Korea to solve the problem. At the same time, President Johnson’s suggestion was designed to placate Koreans’ opposition to the normalization of Korean–Japanese diplomatic relations, which was in the final stages of negotiations. 30

31

32

33

US Department of State, Joint Communiqué to be issued by President Park of the Republic Korea and President Johnson of the United States (Washington, DC, May 18, 1965). “Donald F. Hornig Oral History Interview I,” December 4, 1968, by David F. McComb, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/ Hornig-D/hornig1.PDF. For example, “Kwahak kisul chinhŭng kwa toyakki kyŏngje palchŏn: kwahak kisul kaebal pangch’aek sian ŭl pogo,” Sŏul sinmun, June 8, 1965; “Migaebal isang chidae: kwahakkye ŭi naeil ŭl wihan sirijŭķ~Ļ,” Chosŏn ilbo July 4, 1965–July 15, 1965, 1965. According to one survey in the 1980s, only 37.4 percent of Koreans who studied in the USA from 1962 to 1976 returned to Korea, and the returning rate was the lowest among 25 surveyed nations. Wei-Chiao Huang, “An Empirical Analysis of Foreign Student Brain Drain to the United States,” Economics of Education Reviews 7, no. 2 (1988): 231–43.

178

Engineering Asia

But this idea was very unpopular among Koreans.34 Most Koreans held bad memories of the colonial period and opposed the policy, worried that the USA would hand the task of economic aid to Korea over to Japan after normalization. During the summit, President Johnson offered a US$150 million loan for economic development and promised that the USA would not stop assistance to Korea. His offer of an institute was a token of ongoing US aid to Korea. In fact, the USA wanted to construct a tripartite alliance between itself, Korea, and Japan in East Asia, and the diplomatic normalization between Korea and Japan was an essential precondition.35 The USA had already tried to improve Korea–Japan relations for the regional integration defense structure in Northeast Asia. “The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea” was one that the three countries strongly wished for, and was signed in 1965. As the instability in South Korea could result in a big threat to the power balance in East Asia, the geopolitical value of Korea was enhanced as the Cold War tension increased in Asia. Emphasizing rapid economic growth to legitimize the military coup, Park’s regime needed Japanese capital, markets, and technology for the growth of light industries. Tokyo did not want to miss an opportunity to make an agreement at the lowest cost given Seoul’s urgent need, and it acutely needed Korea’s untapped market for its own goods. US officials fully understood that their impressive aid package could mitigate the antitreaty movement in Korea. Thus, the joint communiqué stipulated several types of assistance programs, including establishing a new institute, which was palpable evidence of US commitments and would be the final touch for the settlement.36 The USA assured Seoul that it was supportive of the Park Chung-hee administration and the Korean economy and society. The mutually supporting gestures between Seoul and Washington enabled both countries to obtain what they wanted through participation in the Vietnam War and the normalization of Korea–Japan relations. In fact, all three of these issues—Korea’s deployment of troops to Vietnam, the normalization of Korea–Japan relations, and the economic development of postwar Korea—were closely interwoven. Since the USA had practical interests in those matters, it had to actively intervene.37 Supporting the establishment of an institute was more than mere assistance for economic growth; it contributed significantly to creating a positive image for the Korean authoritarian regime to the public. President Park was aware of the possible benefits and accepted the offer without hesitation. Two months after the summit, President Johnson’s science advisor, Hornig, visited Korea for a feasibility study. He conferred with scientists, government officials, and key industrialists and inspected laboratories in universities, industrial plants, and governmental and private research establishments. After returning to the USA, Hornig 34

35

36

37

Henry Lambright, Presidential Management of Science and Technology: The Johnson Presidency (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985), 95. Chaesung Chun, “1965-yŏn Han-Il kukkyo chŏngsanghwa wa Pet’ŭnam p’abyŏng ŭl tullŏssan Miguk ŭi taehan oegyo chŏngch’aek,” Han’guk Chŏngch’i Oegyosa Nonch’ong 26, no. 1 (2004): 63–89. Victor D. Cha, Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 24–34. Seuk-Ryule Hong, “1960-yŏndae Han-Mi kwan’gye wa Pak Chŏng-hŭi kunsa chŏngkwŏn,” Yŏksa wa Hyŏnsil 56 (2005): 269–302.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

179

presented a report in which he maintained that the proposal to set up a new institute was timely given the prospects for rapid growth of Korean industry.38 Interestingly, North Korea made an agreement with the Chinese Academy of Science for S&T cooperation in July 1965. A US official of the Office of Science and Technology believed that the US proposal to South Korea made socialist states nervous, including North Korea. He added that this kind of competition was much welcomed.39 This reveals that the relationship between Korea’s efforts at promoting S&T and the Cold War was similar to that of the case of AERI in the late-1950s. According to the 1965 settlement of Korea–Japan, the Korean government was provided US$300 million in grants and US$200 million in financial loans by the Japanese government for ten years, and spent 55.6 percent of the money on establishing social infrastructures and industries; POSCO received US$119 million and KIST received US$2.68 million. While several issues remained unresolved between Korea and Japan, Japanese infusions of capital and technology were useful measures for Korea’s economic growth. Additionally, US aid to Korea gradually changed into development loans from an earlier series of aid grants, which was common aid practice up until 1961. While that was one of the effects of the tripartite alliance, Korea’s economic dependence on Japan, the possibility of which had been a concern of many Koreans before the normalization, intensified as well. Nevertheless, the new research institute exercised more significant leverage than was expected, which was possible due to the scientists’ constant desires.

“Economic translation” of S&T: A domestic element In 1966, with the aid of the US government, the KIST was established as a non-profit organization. The US government granted US$7.18 million to KIST, and the Korean government endowed US$14.1 million for its establishment and operation during its first five years. Although the establishment of KIST was financed by the Korean and US governments, it was legally an independent corporation. President Park became the founder of KIST in a private capacity. The Korean government and scientists wanted to avoid the inefficiency of the national or public research institute, which was struggling to cope with bureaucratic regulations in recruitment and accounting. Despite its private status, KIST was able to secure stable government support through the “Promotion Act for KIST,” which stipulated payment of endowment funds and the transfer of state-owned property. As a result, a unique form of research organization called a “Government-funded Research Institute,” or GRI, was born. KIST recruited Korean scientists abroad to serve as its core researchers and took on a role as the “reverse brain drain center.” The institute’s goal was to contribute to the development of the Korean economy through industrial research. This meant that 38

39

Donald F. Hornig, “Report to the President: Regarding the Feasibility of Establishing in Korea with US Cooperation an Institute for Industrial Technology and Applied Science,” 1965, KIST Archive. Margolies’ Memorandum to Hornig, “Communist North Korean Reaction to President Johnson’s Offer to President Park,” August 19, 1965, Office of Science and Technology, RG 359-part 2, NARA.

180

Engineering Asia

S&T research began to be closely connected with the economic development plan of the South Korean government. At that time, most Korean industries had to resort to foreign technology and direly needed practical assistance in the process of transferring technology.40 Hence, in its early years, KIST provided expert advice on appropriate technology, licensing companies, and prices for licensing contracts based on its own technology information, rather than carrying out original R&D. After technology transfers from developed countries such as the USA and Japan, KIST conducted research on adapting and improving this technology. KIST’s role in establishing POSCO, Korea’s first integrated steel mill, is an interesting example of technical assistance. Metallurgists and economists at KIST were members of the “Committee for an Integrated Iron and Steel Mill Project” and played a major role in writing a technical and economic feasibility report, which was a main framework for the planning. In its construction stage, POSCO relied heavily on Japanese engineering consulting groups and needed experienced engineers to review the consulting. POSCO wanted to hire retired Japanese engineers, but they declined the offer due to concerns relating to their relationships with Japanese consulting groups. Therefore, KIST took on contracts with POSCO to assist indirectly and recommended the retired Japanese engineers as non-regular researchers, and the engineers accepted KIST’s offer. Eventually, these retired Japanese engineers consulted POSCO on construction, machinery choices, and operation tests of the equipment.41 The institute was advised by Hornig to introduce a contractual research system modeled after Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI); that is why BMI was selected as the sister institute for KIST. BMI was a well-known contractual research institute in the USA. According to the contractual research system, an institute makes contracts and supplies research results and services to those sponsors. Basically, it should earn its budget by winning research contracts. Although the contractual research system was unfamiliar to Koreans, the Korean government adopted it to reform the attitudes of researchers and industrialists on R&D; researchers should do practical research and industrialists should utilize the research results in their businesses. Namely, the Korean government wanted to implant a new R&D culture in Korean soil. Research for practical use was an agenda that had been emphasized at AERI, but was realized through the contractual research system. As a sister institute, BMI played a major role in the course of establishing KIST. The fact that over 44 percent of the US grant to KIST was paid to BMI as a service fee shows the significant role it played. BMI provided management know-how and technical information for KIST, and some KIST staff received training from BMI. However, the materialization process of BMI’s consultation was not a simple transfer of know-how. Since BMI was a purely private institute while KIST was de facto a national institute, BMI’s experiences had to be modified to be adapted to the Korean 40

41

Manyong Moon, “Technology Gap, Research Institutes and the Contract Research System: The Role of Government-funded Research Institutes in Korea,” The Korean Journal for the History of Science 33, no. 2 (2011): 301–16. Sungsoo Song, “The Historical Development of Technological Capabilities in Korean Steel Industry: The Case of POSCO,” in Bridging the Technology Gap: Historical Perspectives on Modern Asia, ed. Youngsoo Bae and Buhm Soon Park (Seoul: SNU Press, 2013), 95–123.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

181

environment. For example, until sufficient contract funding from companies could be secured to sustain it financially, KIST had to rely on government funding. However, Korean industries were not yet developed to a point that they required systemized R&D. Therefore, advisors from BMI and the staff at KIST came up with what they called a “package deal contract research.” This was a bundle of government-funded projects upon which the institute itself made decisions based on the actual substance of the research topics.42 KIST wanted to avoid governmental regulation on funding while maintaining the characteristics of a contractual research institute. Besides government funding, BMI advisors and KIST staff made efforts to reach agreements on many issues in establishing KIST. Foreign technology needed to be digested and modified during its adjustment to a new environment. The same point can be made for a transferred foreign research system. Despite the name “Science and Technology Institute,” the majority of research projects conducted by KIST fell under the rubric of industrial technology. Industry sponsors’ requests for research were highly diverse. The KIST Annual Report described its major role as a center for technology transfer: [In the 1960s,] the level of industrial technology in Korea was behind the times, and there were many issues to be resolved in industries. Technological innovation, which includes drastic introduction of foreign technology, indigenization, improvement of the technology, and development of new production and process based on the indigenized technology, was necessary in order to compete with foreign companies. Thus, Korea was in desperate need of a new institute that functions as technological indigenization and innovation center.43

For example, one businessman brought a flexible straw developed in the USA and had questions about the possibility of domestic production. After signing a contract, KIST’s synthetic resin laboratory team succeeded in developing an identical product and obtaining a patent in Korea. The sponsor also asked the machine shop at KIST to develop a machine for making flexible straws, and it eventually exported the final products to Europe. Similarly, there were many simple items that industries wanted to develop, especially in synthetic chemistry, since Korea did not adopt a product patent system until the mid-1980s. If they developed a new synthetic process for imported medicines and agricultural chemicals, there was a good chance for successful commercialization. In another case, the electronics laboratory developed a desktop calculator by contract, which the sponsor company exported to the USA. The calculator was selected as an excellent product by an American consumer magazine. KIST’s metallurgists succeeded in making copper-covered steel, which led to import substitution and export growth. Scientists’ preferences for academic research was one of the reasons why the scientists’ desires of S&T promotion did not materialize until the early 1960s. After

42

43

“Package deal contract research” is very similar to current “base funding or block grants,” but it is not identical since it is based on contracts. OECD, Public Research Institutions: Mapping Sector Trends (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2011), 105–11. KIST, 1969 Yŏnch’a pogosŏ (Seoul: KIST, 1969).

182

Engineering Asia

AERI was criticized for its less practical research projects, many scientists realized the need for change in order to meet society’s demands. That is why KIST adopted the contractual research system. While some basic research scientists had complaints about the fact that KIST was focusing on industry-related research, the staff at KIST became increasingly conscious of those projects. Geun Bae Kim coined the expression “economic translation of S&T” to describe the changing perceptions scientists had of science research.44 After liberation, many scientists argued that S&T was significant for nation-building, but their ideas tended to lean toward academic research. Due to economic translation, however, industrial research and economic value became high priorities. These trends were in line with the emergence of a new generation of scientists, many of whom had studied in the USA. Since KIST was equipped with upto-date facilities, outstanding researchers, and considerable autonomy, the institute could indeed be the long-awaited proper research institute. However, scientists needed to be very down to earth in terms of their research before their postcolonial desires were realized. When the first director of KIST, Hyung-sup Choi, tried to recruit core researchers, he emphasized that KIST would not conduct research for Nobel Prizes, but for the markets.45 Choi’s slogan reflected the new belief in the role of S&T. After the establishment of KIST, “economic translation of S&T” to contribute to reinforcing the national economy was considered as the new role of S&T in Korea. This belief is still at work, and the Korean government’s S&T policy has given priority to economic development. One of the significant elements of Korea’s rapid development of S&T is focusing on the fields that are closely related to the industries. By investing heavily in R&D under the banner of economic translation, Korea has promoted the specific fields of S&T in the short term.

The other dream of scientists: A governmental agency for S&T Under the aegis of the Korean government, KIST grew rapidly and became a significant scientific research institute, just as AERI had been a few years before. Considering the state of Korea’s economy, which had been in the early stages of its rapid growth, it was a very bold decision for the Korean government to pour US$14.1 million into building and operating a single institute. Park’s regime attempted to legitimize the military coup with rapid economic development and national security, and recognized S&T as essential resources to achieve both goals. In fact, President Park regarded KIST as a national symbol of “Joguk Geundaehwa” (the modernization of the fatherland), which was Park’s key motto. This also prompted him to order for active support for the institute. For example, the remuneration of researchers at KIST was three times higher than that of faculty members at national universities.46 The active and unprecedented 44

45

46

Geun Bae Kim, “An Anatomical Chart of South Korean Science and Technology in the 1960s: Their Relationships with Political Power,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 5, no. 4 (2011): 529–42. Dong-Won Kim and Stuart Leslie, “Winning Markets or Winning Nobel Prizes?: KAIST and the Challenges of Late Industrialization,” Osiris 13 (1998): 154–85. Moon, “Technology Gap, Research Institutes, and the Contract Research System,” 301–16.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

183

support for KIST from the government operated as momentum and stimulus for scientists to strive for extraordinary performance. The emergence of KIST paved the way for the promotion of S&T in Korea. As KIST recruited a considerable number of core researchers from the USA, international exchanges of Korean scientists became active. Furthermore, KIST played a major role in mitigating South Korea’s brain drain. Having acquired a proper research institute, scientists demanded that a governmental agency for S&T governance be established. This was another aspiration that Korean scientists had held for a long time. When the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST) was established in 1966, they maintained that the Korean government should create a ministry for S&T policy and enact the Science and Technology Promotion Act. As the Korean government understood the sociopolitical and economic value of S&T, President Park decided to accommodate the demand. Finally, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), an administrative office for S&T policy, was founded in April 1967, and the long-standing hope that scientists had held for the promotion and political stability of S&T had finally been realized. As a minister-level agency, MOST established a twenty-year plan for S&T development, tried to secure a governmental budget for S&T, and encouraged the founding of institutions for the promotion of S&T. For example, the Association of Science and Technology Supporters was created, and its mission was to improve the welfare of scientists and to popularize S&T. Following KIST’s case, MOST adopted the repatriating policy for overseas Korean scientists. One Korean newspaper termed this “the science and technology boom,” which was not an overstatement.47 It reflects the launching of a systematic approach to national S&T development and shows that KIST was a very effective catalyst in the process. In other words, the establishment of the first GRI, KIST, in 1966 became a starting point for the formation of the modern S&T system in Korea, composed of research institutes, administrative agencies, and other supporting subsystems.

Conclusion After liberation, many Korean scientists and engineers expressed their collective belief that scientific and technological prowess was crucial for true independence and the construction of a new nation. Their desires, however, were not realized due to the limitations of the Korean economy. By the mid-1960s, Korea’s geopolitical situation and strategy were juxtaposed with Korean scientists’ postcolonial desire for the institutionalization of an S&T system. US assistance for establishing a new research institute served as a cornerstone for the promotion of S&T, which was proposed against a background of dispatching combat troops to Vietnam and the normalization of the Korean–Japanese diplomatic relations. A tripartite alliance with the USA and Japan provided opportunities for the South Korean government and scientists to promote S&T. Although US assistance to Korea aimed simply to establish a research institute, 47

“Ŏdi kkaji wanna? ’67 Han’guk ŭi kwahak kisul (1) Kogae tŭn pum,” Chungang ilbo (December 12, 1967).

184

Engineering Asia

the South Korean government seized the opportunity and succeeded in developing a more comprehensive S&T system. To realize the scientists’ unwavering dream of establishing a fully-fledged science research institute and government agency, the favorable international political context ultimately served as an essential factor. Of course, foreign aid does not automatically mean development. It hinges on the efforts of the beneficiaries to transform aid into significant change. I believe, even without US assistance, the promotion of S&T would have been eventually accomplished, but with greater delay. Conversely, the support of the US and Japanese capital alone could not have resulted in the establishment of an S&T system so rapidly without scientists’ desires. Korea’s rapid development of S&T was pursued under a strong government-led policy, and the history of KIST and its early years is a testament to this approach. Yet to say that it was “government-led” does not mean that the government played the main role in the entire process. Discourse on S&T promotion and international cooperation among scientists served as the foundation for S&T policy, even before government-led policies were initiated. Park’s regime put economic growth at the top of its agenda and fully supported KIST, whose goal was to contribute to national industrial development. With the success of KIST and its agenda to support industrial development, economic value became the main priority in S&T policy. Korean scientists’ desires initially showed an academic trend, but this began to change as the Korean government received international cooperation through new research institutes. Additionally, the endeavor of young scientists who had been trained overseas spawned a practical culture of scientific and technological research. Without the context of the Cold War and consequent geopolitics of East Asia, KIST would not have flourished so quickly. However, I would like to emphasize the importance of the dreams of South Korean scientists for the postcolonial era and a proper research institute and a governmental agency to oversee S&T. It is true that their request evolved over the years and that the Korean government did not always completely accept their vision. But when the continuous S&T promotion discourse was caught in the policy web through the economic translation of science, brand new institutions and S&T development in Korea were finally launched. KIST and GRIs are considered to be Korea’s distinctive research system and are a source of national pride, but national history is not enough to describe the story.

Epilogue: Vietnamese desires for S&T and the V-KIST project During the Korea–Vietnam summit meeting in September 2013, a joint establishment plan of V-KIST (Vietnam–Korea Institute of Science and Technology) was publicly announced. This project was initiated by the Vietnamese government’s request for “support for establishing a KIST-like S&T institute” as part of the Korea International Cooperation Agency’s (KOICA) Development Experience Exchange Partnership program. According to the master plan, the Korean government will invest US$35 million to build a research institute with a main building that can house 300 researchers

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

185

and hand over research equipment and know-how by September 2017. The Vietnamese government will invest US$35 million for setting up the infrastructure and provide a 20-hectare plot of land in Hoa Loc Technopark. In the second phase (2018–22), both governments will enlarge the institute, acquiring loans and industry investment.48 In becoming one of the 24 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)–Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries in 2010, South Korea has successfully transformed itself from an aidreceiving country to a donor country. Vietnam has been the largest recipient of Korea’s official development assistance (ODA) and V-KIST is the largest project among Korea’s ODA operations.49 The Vietnamese economy is heavily dependent on light industry, similar to the South Korean economic structure in the 1970s. V-KIST is anticipated to play a major role, as it did in Korea, in nurturing high value-added heavy and chemical industries for economic growth in Vietnam. Since US aid and support for KIST had been given so that KIST could serve as a catalyst for the promotion of S&T in Korea, the V-KIST project has drawn the attention of many developing countries and is raising questions as to whether it would bring similar outcomes for S&T in Vietnam. Although Vietnam has several science research institutes, these have not contributed to the nation’s economy, which is very similar to Korea’s situation before KIST. Vietnam needs an “economic translation of S&T,” which is the rationale for their decision to choose KIST as the model. The news that KIST, established against a backdrop of the Vietnam War, supports an institute in Vietnam reminds us of the irony in history. On the one hand, it confirms Korea’s history of compressed economic development and the privileged status KIST enjoyed as a leading institute. Recently, many developing countries have shown interest in the KIST model; a government establishes a non-profit organization with researchers recruited under reverse brain drain policies, with the institute conducting industrial research for the development of the national economy. Several countries in South America and Central Asia have contracted and consulted with various Korean agencies about building their own science city, including new research institutes. Therefore, it is only natural that whether V-KIST would succeed in Vietnam is of great interest to scientists and decision-makers of other developing countries. In order to achieve the goal of the V-KIST project, the Vietnamese counterparts need to learn the lessons that can be gained from KIST’s experience. According to the conception held by Korean scientists, acquiring facilities and a distinguished staff are basic requirements for a proper institute, but there are other crucial elements that we should never forget: autonomy and modifications. The reason why KIST insisted on functioning as a non-governmental and private institute, despite governmental funding, was to curtail bureaucratic inefficiency and give researchers autonomy 48

49

“‘V-KIST’: S. Korea Passing on its 48 Years of Experience, Knowhow to Vietnam,” Business Korea, March 24, 2014. For South Korea’s foreign aid, see Hisahiro Kondoh, “Korea’s Pathway from Recipient to Donor: How Does Japan Matter,” in The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors, eds. Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 133–54. ODA Korea Office website: http://www.odakorea.go.kr/ez.main.ODAEngMain.do, accessed August 2014.

186

Engineering Asia

in operation. Additionally, Korean advisors and Vietnamese staff will have to make various modifications that adapt it to Vietnamese circumstances, as did BMI advisors and KIST staff. The founding process of V-KIST should not be a naive transplantation of the KIST model. There were several aims and reasons behind the US assistance to Korea in the 1960s. What are the goals of Korean aid to Vietnam after almost half a century since then? Answering this question is beyond the scope of this chapter, but I hope V-KIST will be one of the cures for the wounds of the Vietnam War and a token of the fertile partnership. Perhaps V-KIST will provide an opportunity wherein the relations of the two countries, which had been forged against the backdrop of the tragic war, can be transformed into a constructive relationship.

Bibliography Ahn, Tong Hyuk. Kwahak sinhwa. Seoul: Chosŏn Kongŏp Tosŏ Ch’ulp’ansa, 1947, 19–20. Campbell, Joel R. The Technology Policy of the Korean State since 1961. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009. Cha, Victor D. Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Chun, Chaesung. “1965-yŏn Han-Il kukkyo chŏngsanghwa wa Pet’ŭnam p’abyŏng ŭl tullŏssan Miguk ŭi taehan oegyo chŏngch’aek.” Han’guk Chŏngch’i Oegyosa Nonch’ong 26, no. 1 (2004): 63–89. DiMoia, John. “Atoms for Sale?: Cold War Institution-Building and the South Korean Atomic Energy Project, 1945–1965.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 3 (2010): 589–618. DiMoia, John. “Transnational Scientific Networks and the Research University: The Making of a South Korean Community at the University of Utah, 1948–1970.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 6 (2012): 17–40. Kwayŏnhoe ed. Kukpangbu Kwahak Yŏn’guso, Seoul: Kukpangbu, 2003 Han, Young Woo. Tasi ch’annŭn uri yŏksa, Seoul: Kyŏngsewŏn, 2010 Hong, Seuk-Ryule. “1960-yŏndae Han-Mi kwan’gye wa Pak Chŏng-hŭi kunsa chŏngkwŏn.” Yŏksa wa Hyŏnsil 56 (2005): 269–302. Hornig, Donald F. “Donald F. Hornig Oral History Interview I.” December 4, 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. Accessed July 2015, http://www.discoverlbj.org/item/ oh-hornigd-19681204-1-74-131. Hornig, Donald F. “Report to the President: Regarding the Feasibility of Establishing in Korea with US Cooperation an Institute for Industrial Technology and Applied Science.” August 1965. KIST Archive. Han, Young Woo. Tasi ch’annŭn uri yŏksa, Seoul: Kyŏngsewŏn, 2004. Huang, Wei-Chiao. “An Empirical Analysis of Foreign Student Brain Drain to the United States.” Economics of Education Reviews 7, no. 2 (1988): 231–43. Jasanoff, Sheila and Sang-Hyun Kim. “Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea.” Minerva 47, no. 2 (2009): 119–46. Kim, Dong-Won. “Imaginary Savior: The Image of the Nuclear Bomb in Korea, 1945– 1960.” Historia Scientiarum 19, no. 2 (2009): 105–18.

Postcolonial Desire and the Tripartite Alliance in East Asia

187

Kim, Geun Bae. “An Anatomical Chart of South Korean Science and Technology in the 1960s: Their Relationships with Political Power.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 5, no. 4 (2011): 529–42. Kim, Geun Bae. “Singminji kwahak kisul ŭl nŏmŏsŏ: kŭndae kwahak kisul ŭi Han’gukchŏk chinhwa.” Han’guk Kŭnhyŏndaesa Yŏn’gu 58 (2011): 252–83. Kim, Geun Bae. Han’guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illyŏk ŭi ch’urhyŏn. Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa, 2005. Kim, Hansang. Choguk kŭndaehwa rŭl yuram hagi. Seoul: Han’guk Yŏngsang Charyowŏn, 2008. Kim, Seong-Jun. “Han’guk wŏnjaryŏk kisul ch’eje hyŏngsŏng kwa pyŏnhwa 1953–1980.” PhD dissertation., Seoul National University, 2012, 32–34. KIST. 1969 Yŏnch’a pogosŏ. Seoul: KIST, 1969. Kondoh, Hisahiro. “Korea’s Pathway from Recipient to Donor: How Does Japan Matter.” In The Rise of Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the Evolution of Emerging Donors, edited by Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura. New York: Routledge, 2013. Krieg, John. “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence.” Osiris 21 (2006): 161–81. Kwayŏnhoe, ed. Kukpangbu Kwahak Yŏn’guso (2003). Lambright, Henry. Presidential Management of Science and Technology: The Johnson Presidency. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985. Lee, Jung. “Invention without Science: ‘Korean Edisons’ and the Changing Understanding of Technology in Colonial Korea.” Technology and Culture 54, no. 4 (2013): 782–814. Lee, Steven Hugh. “Military Occupation and Empire Building in Cold War Asia: The United States and Korea, 1945–1955.” In The Cold War in East Asia 1945–1991, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Meinke, Wayne. “Report on Visit to Korea.” April 1962, 7–8. Folder “Phoenix. Organizations. ICA,” Box 24, Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, MI, USA. Mizuno, Hiromi. Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Moon, Manyong. “STI in History: The Creation of Government-supported Research Institutes during the Park Chung-hee Era.” STI Policy Review 2, no. 2 (2011): 55–65. Moon, Manyong. “Technology Gap, Research Institutes, and the Contract Research System: The Role of Government-funded Research Institutes in Korea.” The Korean Journal for the History of Science 33, no. 2 (2011): 301–16. OECD. Public Research Institutions: Mapping Sector Trends. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2011. OECD. Republic of Korea: Reviews of National Science and Technology Policy. Paris: OECD Publishing, 1996. Park, Buhm Soon. “Technonationalism, Technology Gaps, and the Nuclear Bureaucracy in Korea, 1955–1973.” In Bridging the Technology Gap: Historical Perspectives on Modern Asia, edited by Youngsoo Bae and Buhm Soon Park. Seoul: SNU Press, 2013. Park, Tae Gyun. “The Roles of the United States and Japan in the Development of South Korea’s Science and Technology during the Cold War.” Korea Journal 52, no. 1 (2012): 206–31. Phalkey, Jahnavi. Atomic State—Big Science in Twentieth Century India. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2013. Prakash, Gyan. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

188

Engineering Asia

Ree, Taikyue. “Kŏn’guk sŏlgye ŭi hana ro kwahak kisulbu rŭl sŏlch’i haja.” Hyŏndae Kwahak 1 (1946): 10–15. Samuels, Richard J. Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and Technological Transformation of Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Song, Sungsoo, “The Historical Development of Technological Capabilities in Korean Steel Industry: The Case of POSCO.” In Bridging the Technology Gap: Historical Perspectives on Modern Asia, edited by Youngsoo Bae and Buhm Soon Park. Seoul: SNU Press, 2013. United States Department of State. Joint Communiqué Issued by President Park of the Republic Korea and President Johnson of the United States. Washington, DC, May 18, 1965. Yi, Yeon Sik. Chosŏn ŭl ttŏnamyŏ. Seoul: Yŏksa Pip’yŏngsa, 2012. Yim, Deok Soon and Wang Dong Kim. “The Evolutionary Responses of Korean Government Research Institutes in a Changing National Innovation System.” Science, Technology & Society 10, no. 1 (2005): 31–55.

8

Making Miracle Rice: Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea Tae-Ho Kim

At the start of the 1970s, the South Korean government enthusiastically promoted a new rice variety, “Tongil,” a hybrid composed of indica and japonica rice. More productive than existing japonica varieties in South Korea, Tongil (統а) explicitly emphasized the goal of “reunification [of the Korean peninsula]” with its name. In the course of the decade, one that witnessed rural mobilization campaigns such as the Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), the territory occupied by Tongil and its successors expanded rapidly, beginning with its humble origins as a new type of rice and reaching up to three-quarters of the total rice-farming area in South Korea. In 1977, when domestic rice production first exceeded demand, the Park Chung-hee administration declared self-sufficiency in rice “for the first time in the entire history of Korea.” This statement includes not just postcolonial South Korea (1948–) and its bitter competition with North Korea, but also colonial Korea (1910–45) and its integration within a regional distribution network established and overseen by the Japanese Empire. Accordingly, Tongil rice—despite its somewhat unfamiliar appearance and taste, due to its partial indica ancestry—became a powerful symbol of the recent economic affluence of a resurgent South Korea, about to catch up to and outrun her rival to the north. This “Green Revolution in Korea” achieved through rice was praised as the outcome of the adoption of improved seeds and modern breeding techniques, especially in cooperation with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in the Philippines. In a celebration ceremony held in May 1978, IRRI’s senior rice breeder, Henry M. Beachell, received a “Bronze Tower Service Award,” a prestigious decoration from the South Korean government, and also an honorary doctorate from Seoul National University. Marcos R. Vega, the vice president of IRRI, also received an appreciation plaque from the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries on behalf of the institute, further underscoring Korea’s gratitude to its research partner and close collaborator.1 1

Mun-sun Kim, “(Int'ŏbyu) Tongt'ap Sanŏp Hunjang padŭn H. M. Pich'el Paksa: 13-yŏn'gan Han'guk yukchong kisul chido,” Chosun-ilbo, May 11, 1978, 2.

190

Engineering Asia

Devoted to rice research throughout South and Southeast Asia, IRRI offered itself as an ideal site for testing postcolonial ambitions, with international science meeting the environmental conditions of Southeast Asia. In these tropical and subtropical conditions, the rice varieties tested and developed at IRRI belonged mainly to the indica subspecies, which are characterized by a long grain shape and a less glutinous taste, due to a high amylose content. Accordingly, cooperation with South Korea, a temperate country where people had grown japonica varieties exclusively, held a lower priority at the early stages of the Institute’s inception. Nevertheless, IRRI played an instrumental role in the radical transformation of South Korean agriculture in the 1970s. For South Korea, IRRI offered a point of access for new knowledge deriving from international communities of agricultural scientists; a source of instrumental, technical, and financial support; a patron to sponsor technical training of Korean agronomists; and, most importantly, a site for developing semi-dwarf “Green Revolution type(s)” of highyielding rice varieties. Tongil rice—also known as IR667—was developed at IRRI as a candidate for a new high-yielding variety (HYV) suited to the Korean climate in 1966 by Mun Hue Heu (internationally known as M.H. Heu), while conducting his research under Henry Beachell’s mentorship. After noticing this unexpected breakthrough, Beachell and the Institute generously supported Heu’s subsequent efforts. By tracing how the relationship between Heu and Beachell enhanced cooperation between South Korea and IRRI, this chapter will show how science and politics mutually constructed each other in both the domestic and international arenas. Increasing the domestic yield of rice was one of the priorities of South Korea since its birth as a Cold War, anti-communist state, owing to the irreplaceable significance of rice as its major staple crop. When the Park Chung-hee administration (1961–79) launched various programs to transform South Korea from an agrarian society to an industrialized one, to take advantage of new opportunities becoming available in the early 1960s, the stable provision of rice to an increasing urban population therefore became a prominent issue. Agro-science, specifically rice breeding, was able to take advantage of state support due to its enormous sociopolitical significance. Training programs for South Korean agronomists at IRRI, a rare privilege for scientists in any field in South Korea, were outcomes of this dense nexus of intertwined politics and science, bringing together Korean technical ambitions, the Institute, and the broader designs of its international patrons. To expand upon this last point, IRRI was itself the outcome of international politics, bringing together the interlinked themes of Japanese agrarian colonialism, along with the related contexts of South Korean developmentalism and American Cold War techno-scientific ambition. As the USA and its Western bloc allies expected IRRI to be a showcase of a modernist vision of reform and development of Third World partners through the mobilization of science and technology, IRRI welcomed any opportunity to expand the territory of its HYVs, although it initially did not consider South Korea as a candidate for collaboration. For its part, South Korea wanted to borrow IRRI’s authority to justify its domestic Green Revolution, aimed at narrowing the gap between a rapidly growing urban economy and the still stagnant rural economy, with the latter offering an uncomfortable reminder of the Korean War and the colonial past. Again, the

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

191

issue of rice production dates to an earlier period, emphasizing that this transformation represented a goal with links tied to colonial circumstances of deprivation. The interplay of these domestic and international politics in the mid-1960s gave rise to a strong partnership between South Korea and IRRI by the early 1970s, an emerging relationship that could not have been foreseen a decade previously. Through the production of these new types of rice, South Korea gained access to new partnerships, achieved its desired production metrics, and opted to integrate itself into the regional and world economies in new ways. At the same time, this approach held enormously disruptive, far-reaching consequences, especially for the material circumstances of its agricultural sector, now obligated to use larger quantities of chemical fertilizer and to maintain much greater care over a crop vulnerable to disease and weather.

Old memories and new hegemony: Agronomy in South Korea by the mid-1960s Until the late 1960s, agricultural science in South Korea was influenced almost exclusively by the model of Japanese agronomy, which was the only major enterprise for japonica rice research. During the colonial period (1910–45), Japan introduced its rice breeding programs into the Korean Peninsula, especially the southern half of the peninsula. The Japanese Governor-General established an Agricultural Experiment Station in Suwon, an outskirt town of Seoul, in 1906, followed by substations in other towns representing a range of different geographical and climatic areas. This research network survived the colonial regime itself, to be succeeded by the new Korean state after 1945, with minor modifications.2 The Japanese authority during the colonial period also coerced Korean peasants to adopt the allegedly “scientific” and “modern” varieties developed in Japan. By the late 1920s, most of the original Korean rice varieties had disappeared from paddy fields, only to be collected and stored by the Agricultural Experiment Station. New Japanese varieties, developed in Japan in the last decade, replaced the native ones. It is remarkable that both rice varieties and techniques for breeding and cultivation were synchronized. In other words, the Korean Peninsula was integrated as a part of the breeding program of the greater Japanese Empire by the end of the 1920s. From the late 1930s, agronomists in the Korean Peninsula came to possess the capability to manage their own breeding projects. One sign of this shift is that new varieties developed in the peninsula now became endorsed by the Japanese authorities. This experience, as well as the research materials and facilities, remained largely intact after independence—the dominant rice varieties in South Korea in the 1950s and the 1960s were actually the same ones that had been tested since the early 1940s, reflecting the dominant Japanese presence, as well as emerging Korean agency. The Japanese colonial legacy in agriculture was not confined to cultivars or the research system. The first generation of Korean agronomists was trained by the colonial 2

Similar continuity is observed in postcolonial Taiwan as well. See Fujihara Tatsushi, Ine no daitōa kyōeiken: Teikoku Nihon no “midori no kakumei” (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2012).

192

Engineering Asia

system as well. Baik Hyun Cho (1900–94), who is now remembered as “the founding father of the agricultural sciences in Korea,” is a representative example. He studied agrochemistry at Kyushu Imperial University, Japan, from 1920 to 1925. Cho came back to Korea for research and teaching at the Suwon College of Agriculture and Forestry, which was affiliated with the Agricultural Experiment Station. After liberation, the institutions he worked for were reformed into the National Board of Agriculture and the College of Agriculture at Seoul National University. He continued serving those institutions as the director of both. With similar institutional continuities, post-1945 Korean agronomy was heavily influenced by the scientific literature and existing networks built up during the preceding period. This dependence was somewhat inevitable, not just because Korea was a former Japanese colony, but also because Japan was the only country that had a competitive scientific research tradition in japonica rice breeding by the late 1960s. Nevertheless, there were signs of change after the 1950s, as South Korea was gradually incorporated into an American postwar hegemony. There were various international aid programs for rebuilding South Korea from the ruins of the Korean War, many of which focused on improving agricultural performance. In particular, the “Atoms for Peace” project, promoting various applications of nuclear energy, exerted significant influence on agricultural science as well as other fields of science and technology in South Korea.3 Most of the South Korean scientists from the related fields—physics, chemistry, genetics, and plant breeding—followed US initiatives for applications of radioactivity. For agronomists, a major challenge was mutation breeding, a process in which genetic mutations induced by nuclear energy are stabilized in a population. Several agronomists, inspired by the hopeful reports from foreign institutions, undertook their own research to develop new crops—with a hope to create “miracle rice” in particular. The boom of mutation breeding did not render any notable results in South Korea, however. Although some promising reports were written by the late-1960s, none of them was put into practical application. The majority of working agronomists, like most of their foreign colleagues, became skeptical regarding its practical applicability. Many breeders preferred the “old” way of manual crossing and selection, during which they could predict and control the entire process of complicated genetic changes.4 Nonetheless, the fashion of radiation breeding was a notable sign illustrating the emergence of an American influence in rice breeding, which had not existed at all before 1945. The news of the “Green Revolution” was another sign of an American presence in the field of rice breeding. 3

4

On the impact of the “Atoms for Peace” project on the history of science and technology (as well as medicine) in Korea, consult Seong-Jun Kim, “The First Modern Research Institute in South Korea: The Atomic Energy Research Institute (1959–1973),” paper presented at the 12th International Conference of the History of Science in East Asia, Baltimore, MD, July 14–18, 2008. In IRRI, for example, T.T. Chang wrote a report on the applicability of mutation breeding in rice, where he did not reserve strong skepticism. He described the fashion of mutation breeding as being “[v]ery much like the colchicine craze of the 1930’s and 1940’s” and emphasized that “deleterious changes outnumber beneficial changes by a factor of several hundred to one.” Accordingly, he concluded that “hybridization could offer a more direct and efficient solution.” T.T. Chang, “Hybridization versus Mutation in Rice Breeding,” Folder 188, Box 19, Series 242D, Record Group 1.3, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. On skepticism and criticism about applications of radioactivity to agriculture, most of which were led by IAEA, also see Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Let There Be Light … and Bread: The United Nations, the Developing World, and Atomic Energy’s Green Revolution,” History and Technology 25, no. 1 (March 2009): 25–48.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

193

The “Green Revolution” and its extension to rice It is noteworthy that the “Green Revolution” was born as a result of the Cold War. The term itself was first coined in 1968 by William Gaud, then the director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), in his speech to the Society for International Development. Gaud stated, “[the rapid spread of modern wheat and rice varieties throughout Asia] and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it a Green Revolution.”5 The US government considered the Green Revolution to be a useful way to prevent social upheaval in Third World countries, enhancing their agricultural production and forming new networks. In 1943, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mexican government established the Office of Special Studies (OSS), a research unit aiming to enhance cereal production within its Department of Agriculture.6 Norman Borlaug in the OSS developed the high-yielding “dwarf wheat,” which eventually brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.7 By 1951, due to the introduction of new seeds developed at the OSS and the Mexican government’s extensive investment in rural infrastructure, Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production.8 At the same time, the work of developing and testing the new seeds should undercut any notion of a smooth narrative: the USA needed to enroll these new sites into the project in order for it to work. After the success in Mexico, the development and propagation of HYVs was recognized as the most effective solution for the food problem—and eventually the social problems, some believed—in the Third World. This paradigm of the Green Revolution was soon applied to other regions as well as to other crops. In 1963, the OSS was reorganized into the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT), an international non-profit research institute to promote the Green Revolution. The Indian government imported a huge amount of the high-yielding wheat seed from CIMMYT, in collaboration with the Ford Foundation. The Indian government also increased investment in irrigation and financial aid for agrochemicals to support its Green Revolution program. The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation also sponsored research into more high-yielding rice varieties. Those two institutions jointly founded IRRI in Los Baños, the Philippines, in 1961. The high5

6

7

8

William S. Gaud, “The Green Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions,” speech to the meeting of the Society for International Development (Washington, DC, March 8, 1968). John H. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 102–17. It is noteworthy that Borlaug’s Nobel Prize was the one for Peace, not for Physiology or Medicine. Lenard Bickel, Facing Starvation: Norman Borlaug and the Fight against Hunger (New York: Readers Digest Press, 1974) is a biography of Norman Borlaug, published just after his winning of the Nobel Prize. However, some argue that its success was not as pervasive as generally represented. The Rockefeller Foundation’s farmer training program in Mexico was successful only when the participants and the geographical landscape resembled that of the USA. See Deborah Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943–1953,” Social Studies of Science 16 (1986): 457–83.

194

Engineering Asia

yielding rice varieties developed by IRRI were widely adopted in many Southeast Asian countries, as well as by some Latin American and North African countries. USAID also supported various projects aimed at the development of rural infrastructure and the supply of chemical fertilizer in those countries.9 Participating nations often saw a boost in their rice production, but also had to make substantial material changes while being integrated into this new mode of production. In the early 1960s, IRRI’s senior plant breeder, Henry Beachell, led a team to “design” a new rice variety, with a special emphasis on increasing yield by enhancing a specific set of traits that were reportedly linked to high productivity—short and stiff straw, responsiveness to fertilizers, insensitivity to photoperiod, and resistance to major insects and diseases.10 In 1966, IRRI released a new rice variety that fulfilled these requirements. The new variety, “IR8,” was soon referred to as “miracle rice” because of its unusually high yield.11 Although there are contradictory evaluations concerning IR8’s actual contribution, it is generally admitted that its performance made peasants more open to the adoption of modern science and technology. This news was rapidly reported around the world, as well as within South Korea, which had its own rural sector to consider.

South Korean agronomists in IRRI It was in this vein that IRRI in the Philippines was occasionally covered by the South Korean media as the place where the future of rice farming was unfolding, with the timely help of international experts. From the mid-1960s, the Office of Rural Development (ORD) of South Korea began to send its trainees to IRRI. Emphasis was placed mainly on the acquisition of practical knowledge—on farm management, pest control, and the proper usage of fertilizer. The first Korean trainee in IRRI was Gun Sik Chung, who received short-term training on blast nursery tests from February through April 1964. Chung accompanied Sterling D. Wortman’s visit to ORD in 1963 as an ORD researcher, and Wortman suggested that he receive training at IRRI. Later, he went again to IRRI for a more extensive one-year training period from January 1965.12 Chung was followed by several other ORD officers who had training on practical farming techniques in IRRI in the late 1960s. Some of them wanted more academic expertise and entered the graduate courses offered by the University of the Philippines, Los Baños (UPLB) in cooperation with IRRI.

9

10

11

12

About the details of the establishment and the activity of IRRI, see Robert F. Chandler, Jr., An Adventure in Applied Science: A History of the International Rice Research Institute (Los Baños: IRRI, 1992). Beachell was born and educated in Nebraska and served the Department of Agriculture in the Rice Research Station in Texas. He was invited by IRRI in 1962 and joined it after his retirement in 1963. Chandler, An Adventure in Applied Science, 103. One example of the Western observer’s response is an article in Time magazine in 1968. “Rice of the Gods,” Time, June 14, 1968. Kŭn-sik Chŏng, “Han'guk kwa IRRI ŭi ch'ogi hyŏmnyŏk”, in Kukche Mijak Yŏn'guso ŭi tansang (Suwŏn: Nongch'on Chinhŭngch'ŏng, 2001), 12.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

195

An exceptional case was Mun Hue Heu, professor of agronomy at Seoul National University, who stayed in IRRI for two years from July 1964. Heu was presumably the only expert in japonica breeding in IRRI in its earliest years. His visit to IRRI was not directly related to the South Korean government’s official training program. In fact, he was a self-supported researcher collaborating with Henry M. Beachell. Their first encounter was in summer 1959, when Heu visited Beachell at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) rice research station in Beaumont, Texas. Heu was staying at Texas A&M University as part of the US Operations Mission (USOM)—a sponsored one-year trainee in cash crops (especially cotton and sesame)—from January through December 1959. Yet he insisted on going to Beaumont in the summer to see Beachell and learn about rice breeding.13 He later recollected that three months with Beachell “aroused my aspiration to rice breeding.” In October 1963, Beachell retired from USDA and came to IRRI as a senior rice breeder. He sent an invitation to Heu to work together. Heu, then newly hired by the College of Agriculture at Seoul National University, was eager to accept Beachell’s invitation. Despite the university’s refusal to support his research leave, he insisted on visiting IRRI in July 1964.14 As soon as Heu arrived at IRRI, he became actively engaged in setting up the new institute. Although several years had passed since its establishment, IRRI’s test fields were still seen as “unimaginably crude” to Heu, who was used to working in postcolonial institutions with a much longer research tradition. When Beachell had to be hospitalized for hepatitis soon after his arrival, Heu took over most of the task of establishing a field test system. Heu’s major contribution was participation in line purification of IR8-288-3, later released as IR8, the “miracle rice.”15 Soon IRRI staff appreciated his endeavor and trusted his experience and expertise in japonica breeding. Heu even recollected that IRRI suggested him to succeed Beachell as a senior breeder when he returned to Korea in June 1966.16 In September 1965, Heu accompanied Beachell and R.F. Chandler during their visit to Northeast Asia in September 1965. As he was fluent in Japanese and English, not to mention Korean, he was an ideal companion for Beachell and Chandler’s trip to the region.17 When they visited Kamikawa Agricultural Experiment Station in Hokkaido, the northernmost agricultural institution in Japan, director Shimazaki Yoshio gave them seeds of “Yukara,” a new japonica variety recently developed in Hokkaido.18 This cold-resistant and high-yielding japonica catalyzed the project Heu had kept in mind

13 14

15 16

17

18

Mun Hue Heu, interview by the author, December 23, 2008. Mun-hoe Hŏ, “Han'guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich'in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” in Uri nara changmurhak yŏn'gu ŭi hoego: 1960-yŏndae put'ŏ 1980-yŏn kkaji rŭl chungsim ŭro, (Han'guk Changmul Hakhoe, 1997), 64. Hŏ, “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” 65. Hee-Jong Koh interview by the author, January 23, 2008. Koh is a Professor of Agronomy at Seoul National University and Heu’s former student. Heu eventually returned to Korea, otherwise he would not have been able to maintain his professorship in Seoul National University, which had remained more often than not vacant since his appointment in 1964. Mu-sang Im, “Chagŭn yŏngungdŭl: yuksimn-yŏndae yŏnsusaengdŭl”, in Kukche Mijak Yŏn'guso ŭi tansang (Suwŏn: Nongch'on Chinhŭngch'ŏng, 2001), 18. Hŏ, “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” 61–2.

196

Engineering Asia

since he had joined the development of IR8: improving productivity of temperate japonica varieties by transferring IR8’s traits.

Experiments on indica–japonica crossbreeding Heu’s basic scheme was to transfer the semi-dwarfism trait of IRRI-bred indica varieties into japonica by cross-fertilization. In addition, the japonica parent must be resistant to cold weather, to complement the other subtropical parent to be adapted to South Korea’s climate. From November 1965 through March 1966, Heu tried more than five hundred crosses between japonica and indica varieties. For indica parents, he mainly used IR8, “Taichung Native 1 (TN1)”—a semi-dwarf Taiwanese indica selected by T.T. Chang and widely used in IRRI—and “Dawn,” an indica developed in Texas by Beachell himself. As japonica counterparts, Heu chose Yukara, “Fujisaka-5,” and “Senbon Asahi,” all of which were known to be cold resistant and high yielding.19 Heu recollects that it was the skepticism of Japanese researchers in IRRI, however, that he faced when he began his experiments on hybridization of indica and japonica.20 Since Japanese agronomist Katō Shigemoto first classified Oryza sativa L. into subspecies “indica” and “japonica” in the late 1920s, the hybridization of the two subspecies had been believed to be impossible due to the hybrid’s sterility. Japanese agronomists experimented on indica–japonica hybridization in Japan and colonial Taiwan through the 1930s, but failed to develop a practically useful hybrid. The only exception was “Hinomaru,” a hybrid of Japanese and Italian long-grain rice released in 1941.21 The interest in the hybridization of indica and japonica rice was briefly revived in the 1950s, as Japanese agro-scientists sought to make a new breakthrough in japonica rice breeding by introducing new traits from indica strains in order to overcome the tendency that “their gene sources have become narrower.” With predominantly negative results, however, they soon concluded that further experiment on the hybridization of japonica and indica rice was not necessary. One article, published in 1961, concluded as below: We seriously doubt if foreign rice ever has any trait that is truly necessary for Japanese rice, but unavailable from Japanese rice. … Considering various research results about the hybridization of genetically distant varieties, we cannot help raising question on the relevance of the past attempts to introduce genes from foreign varieties.22

Nonetheless, Heu had a reliable supporter in IRRI. Henry Beachell had already conducted many experiments on the hybridization of japonica and indica when he 19 20 21

22

IRRI, Parentage of IRRI Crosses (Manila: IRRI, 1985). Koh, interview with the author, January 23, 2008. The short history of the attempts for indica—japonica hybridization is summarized in Heu’s dissertation (in Korean), which gives an outline of his research activities in IRRI. Itō Hiroshi, Uchiyamada Hiroshi, and Minosima Masao, “Suitō shuryū hinshu no hensen to sono keifuteki kōsatsu,” Ikushugaku zasshi 11, no. 4 (1961): 285–90.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

197

worked for USDA, mainly to develop blast-resistant varieties by mixing the genes of the two subspecies.23 In addition, IRRI itself had undertaken a series of experiments on the hybridization of indica and japonica. One report issued in 1966 shows that several hybrids of indica and tropical japonica had recovered their fertility over generations of backcrosses with indica.24 Beachell and Heu could use this result as a stepping-stone. Heu made full use of the American literature and experience, as well as the abundant indica samples and state-of-the-art facilities in IRRI. In early 1966, Heu collected seeds from crosses of temperate japonica and semidwarf indica varieties. Most of them were far from being practically useful cultivars; they were almost sterile and badly shaped, “like undomesticated wild rice.”25 Nonetheless, he continued cross-pollination of those crosses to IRRI-bred indica strains. Beachell already knew, Heu later interprets, that segregation from crosses of japonica and indica becomes simpler when it is crossed again with indica, but he stood aside to see how Heu tackled this question.26 Heu’s “triangular hybridization” experiment eventually proved successful; by May 1966, he could identify several fertile hybrid strains, with short and stiff straw, heavy ears, and sensitivity to nitrogen fertilizers—all the traits he wanted to transfer from the IRRI indica to japonica. IR667 (IR8//Yukara/TN1) was one of the candidate varieties, but still required years of further selection to get a stable and homogeneous population.

From skepticism to enthusiasm: Adaptation of IR667 in South Korea Heu could not complete the selection process in IRRI because he had to come back to Korea in July 1966, since Seoul National University strongly requested him to return in order to resume his academic post.27 He brought seeds of his hybrid lines to Korea, while leaving half of them in IRRI for further tests. He tried to resume his experiments by borrowing a small portion of the ORD test field, but ORD staff members were not very supportive. Most Korean agronomists did not consider IRRI, an institution devoted to tropical indica rice research, as a possible partner for improving japonica rice in Korea. There was another reason ORD staff members were not friendly to Heu’s experiment. Tai-Hyun Lee the new head of ORD (March 1966–May 1968), had his own blueprint for the “Green Revolution” in Korea with his own seeds. He was appointed because he assured President Park Chung-hee that he could complete localization experiments with “Nahda,” an Egyptian high-yielding japonica variety that had allegedly been 23

24

25

26 27

Claudia Reinhardt and Bill Ganzel, “Henry Beachell, Crop Scientist,” The Wessels Living History Farm, the Story of Agricultural Innovation, accessed September 10, 2008, http://www.livinghistoryfarm. org/farminginthe30s/crops_05.html. Peter R. Jennings, Evaluation of Partial Sterility of Indica × Japonica Rice Hybrids, IRRI Technical Bulletin 5 (Los Baños: IRRI, 1966). Mun-hoe Hŏ, “T'ongilbyŏ p'umjong kaebal,” in Nongjŏng pansegi chŭngŏn (Suwŏn: Han'guk Nongch'on Kyŏngje Yŏn'guwŏn, 1999), 341. Hŏ, “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” 62. For the detailed background of Heu’s decision to come back, see note 16.

198

Engineering Asia

smuggled to Korea by the South Korean secret service.28 The head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) even proudly claimed that he supervised this secret project because he noticed the president’s aspiration for the Green Revolution. Pleased with the promising reports on Nahda, President Park actually “bestowed” the last syllable of his own name to Nahda, to call it “Hee-nong No.  1.”29 However, the adaptation of Hee-nong eventually failed and Lee had to resign in May 1968. Until Lee’s resignation, given the prevalence of japonica rice in Korea, it was difficult for anyone in ORD to openly advocate for indica-oriented hybrids.30 Thus, it was not surprising that the ORD staff members were rather indifferent to Beachell’s successive visits to Korea, considering them as his personal business. Since the establishment of IRRI, Beachell visited ORD every year and showed great interest in Heu’s hybrid lines, possibly hoping his presence could support Heu’s experiment. However, as all resources of ORD at the time were concentrated on the stabilization test of Hee-nong, Beachell was treated as an individual visitor pursuing personal interests, rather than an official delegate from IRRI. During the visit of Beachell and Colin McClung to ORD in 1966, for instance, Heu could borrow only one open pickup truck. After riding on the open truck all day long, Beachell caught a cold and was eventually sent to the US military hospital in Seoul.31 Despite Beachell’s awareness that ORD did not take their experiments very seriously, he continued his support for Heu’s research. Beachell kept up with the selection process in IRRI to stabilize the population and sent the seeds to Heu to conduct comparative experiments in ORD. Through IRRI, Beachell sent 490 lines of hybrid rice seeds in 1967 and 1,300 in 1968; IRRI paid all of the costs for experimentation and transportation. In addition, Beachell persuaded Chandler to donate basic instruments to Korea.32 In ORD, Heu had to rely on his personal network due to the ongoing lack of official support. Gun Sik Chung, another former IRRI trainee, helped Heu with onfarm field tests of the IRRI strains in ORD. Heu also asked his former students working in ORD to take care and keep records of IRRI strains. As experiments went on, some strains drew the attention of field researchers as possible candidates for practical application. However, most of them were eventually eliminated after field trials due to their vulnerability to cold or susceptibility to blast.33 The final survivor was IR667. The hybrid of Japanese (Yukara), Taiwanese (TN1), and IRRI-bred Filipino rice (IR8) inherited the cold resistance of Yukara and the semidwarfism of IR8 and TN1. In addition, it was highly resistant to a specific group of blast pathogens prevalent in South Korea, owing to its indica genes.34 After reviewing the harvest of 1968, field researchers became convinced of IR667’s potential. 28

29 30 31 32 33

34

“(Sillok Pak Chŏng-hŭi sidae 18) singnyang chagŭp,” Chungang ilbo t'ongilbyŏ p'umjong kaebal, 1997, 5. “Nong” means agriculture in Korean, as in Chinese. Hŏ, “T’ongilbyŏ p’umjong kaebal,” 344. Hŏ, “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” 62–3. Hŏ, “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” 63. Sŏng-ho Hong, “T'ongilbyŏ wa changmul sihŏmjang e taehan hoesang,” in Turŏng san'go vol. 1 (Kwangju: Chŏnnam Taehakkyo Ch'ulp'anbu, 1995), 29. However, it is noteworthy that IR667’s blast resistance was limited in Korea; experiments in the IRRI test fields showed that it was highly susceptible to major pathogens in the Philippines.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

199

Meanwhile, in May 1968, In Hwan Kim replaced Tai-hyun Lee as the new chief of ORD after Lee resigned due to the failure of Hee-nong’s field test. With his long experience in plant breeding and rural administration, Kim understood very well why Lee had to resign and what he was supposed to do. Realizing the president’s strong aspiration for “miracle rice,” Kim considered every possibility, even including the adaptation of subtropical indica varieties. He was quite well aware that the Green Revolution had been bringing about significant changes in agriculture in other parts of the world, partly owing to his training at the University of Minnesota.35 Heu and Beachell seized this opportunity to promote their IRRI strains. Beachell visited ORD again in fall 1968 and stayed with Robert D. Lewis, the former director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (1949–68), and then the advisor for US Operations Mission to Korea (USOM/K). Beachell explained what he and Heu had been working on to his old friend, and Heu accompanied them to the test field of IR667 and discussed “how to draw attention of ORD staff.”36 Heu also took his own action. In August 1968, when Kim visited the ORD test fields, Heu suggested to the new director that his hybrid lines could increase yield by up to 30 percent. Kim showed great interest in this information, and ORD eventually “began to treat Beachell with [the] greatest hospitality.” In December 1968, Beachell invited Kim and Lewis to IRRI and Kim signed an agreement of cooperation between ORD and IRRI.37

IR667 endorsed as the “rice for unification” Once he recognized IR667’s potential, Kim energetically took action as a “system builder.” He reported on IR667 to President Park on December 31, 1968, and Park immediately promised his firm support for further research in ORD.38 After a short period of accommodation, IR667 was released with the name “Tongil.” The name “Tongil” emphasizes the political significance of this new rice variety. Tongil, which means “reunification,” had been the foremost political agenda since the Korean Peninsula had been divided into two countries in 1948. Until the late 1980s, reunification was thought to be possible only by surpassing or overcoming communist North Korea, rather than through peaceful negotiation. The provision of rice and other grains in both North and South Korea was often interpreted as the barometer of the competence of the state, a test of legitimacy. When Park was grappling with the 35

36

37

38

The University of Minnesota’s connection to South Korea had a deeper historical root. The University of Minnesota was chosen by the International Cooperation Administration as a partner for rebuilding Seoul National University after the Korean War. From 1954 to 1961, around 200 faculty members of the Seoul National University, mainly in medicine, agricultural sciences, and engineering, were retrained at Minnesota. As for the influence of the Minnesota Project—which is how South Koreans usually refer to the program collectively—on medicine, see Ock Joo Kim and Sang Ik Hwang, “The Minnesota Project,” Korean Journal of Medical History 9 (2000): 112–23. Hŏ, Mun-hoe, “T’ongilbyŏ p’umjong kaebal,” 347. Heu also claims that Lewis advised Kim In Hwan to seriously consider their idea. Heu, “Hanguk sudoyukjonge yeonhyangeul kkichin H. M. Beachell ssi,” 65. In-hwan Kim, Han'guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng: pyŏ sinjongp'um ŭi kaebal kwa pogŭp (Seoul: Nongch’on Chinhŭngch'ŏng, 1978), 26–7. Kim, Han’guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng, 31–3.

200

Engineering Asia

“rice crisis” in early 1963, for example, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung suggested to send rice to the south as “humanitarian aid.” Years later, when South Korea became confident about her success in the Green Revolution, Park repaid the humiliation by officially suggesting an offer of Tongil rice to North Korea.39 In the 1970s, the agenda of reunification became even more important, as Park Chung-hee justified his Yushin dictatorship as being an “emergency regime necessitated for imminent reunification.”40 The state emphasized the heavy and chemical industries (shipping, steel, petrochemicals) as the decade began, allowing for both economic and military uses. In this context, it may not be surprising that one of the successors of Tongil rice actually had the name “Yushin.” The name of the new rice reflected the government’s ambition to catch up to its rival in the north and Park’s will to consolidate his personal power. Tongil’s test cultivation began in 1971. The result was both good and bad; the reported yield was around 10 percent higher than the traditional varieties, but Tongil proved itself vulnerable to some plagues, a development that was neither observed nor predicted while it had been tested in IRRI. Above all, Tongil’s taste—the subtlest trait of cereal crops—became the most controversial aspect. Koreans have long been accustomed to glutinous japonica rice. Tongil, an indica–japonica hybrid, was not satisfactory for Koreans due to its lack of a glutinous texture. Some Koreans even described its taste as “fluffy” or “chalky.” Although the government purchased Tongil rice at a relatively higher price after harvest, it was sold at a substantially lower price than existing japonica varieties in the market.41 However, it was the amount of yield that mattered most to the policy-makers. President Park even openly stated, “debating on taste is extravagance for us.” An illustrative example is the tasting event of Tongil rice by cabinet members in February 1971. Facing increasing criticisms about taste, the government arranged a public tasting event by cabinet members, where the attendees were asked to anonymously estimate color, stickiness, and overall taste. On his answering sheet, however, Park deliberately wrote down his name and gave “good” marks for color and overall taste, although even he could not help marking “intermediate” for stickiness.42 After that, nobody dared question Tongil’s taste any more, at least inside the government. Owing to President Park’s strong expectations, ORD began to distribute Tongil nationwide. The results were inconsistent, but Park decided to promote Tongil rice by any means. In 1972, even the president’s confidence could not prevent the unexpected 39

40

41

42

“Pak Taet'ongnyŏng yŏndu hoegyŏn: Pukhan e singnyang wŏnjo yongŭi,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, January 12, 1977. The Yushin (also spelled Yusin, and the same word in Chinese characters as Japanese Ishin [restoration]) Constitution was the official constitution of the South Korean Fourth Republic (1972–9). Right after his third presidency began, Park declared a state of emergency, dissolved the National Assembly, and suspended the Constitution. The new Constitution in effect guaranteed Park’s unlimited presidency. It would be helpful to compare Korean’s preference for “white-polished rice” to the preference for “white wheat bread” in Western Europe, both of which have been historically constructed. See Steve L. Kaplan, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade during the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984)., especially Ch. 2. Kim, Han'guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng, 48–50.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

201

cold weather. Tongil rice crops were severely damaged by cold weather in the fall. Tongil was more sensitive to cold weather than other traditional varieties because of its subtropical origin. Farmers protested, and the opposition party criticized the government’s hasty decision. Even some agricultural scientists cautiously warned against hasty widespread distribution of Tongil. In 1973, however, it proved its potential again. While cultivation sites had been reduced owing to skepticism from the Ministry of Agriculture, Tongil’s average yield proved to be approximately one-third higher than japonica, partly thanks to high temperatures in the summer. President Park reaffirmed his support for Tongil rice.43 Yet it was still difficult to persuade farmers to take the risk of embracing a new variety that they had never seen before and was quite distinctive from existing strains of japonica rice. Both in terms of its appearance and plant physiology, Tongil was very different from japonica varieties familiar to South Korean farmers. The South Korean government often relied on the IRRI’s authority to persuade its people. The name of IRRI was frequently mentioned in the South Korean mass media to guarantee the credibility of the new rice. IRRI was introduced to the South Korean people as the cutting-edge scientific institution based in the Philippines, then perceived as an advanced country by Koreans. The government also underlined the fact that Tongil’s seeds were multiplied in the IRRI field. Generally, it takes eight to ten years for a new rice variety to be put into practical use after full adaptation to environments. The South Korean government wanted to shorten this time by borrowing some portion of IRRI’s fields to multiply Tongil’s seeds. As the subtropical climate of the Philippines made it possible to get multiple harvests in one year, ten years for adaptation could theoretically be halved. The South Korean government advertised this as an example of successful international cooperation, which in turn certified, or so it claimed, Tongil’s reliability. Tongil was advertised not only as a high-yielding rice, but also as a “scientifically proven” and thus reliable rice from the advanced part of the world. In asking Korean farmers to accept this message, the government did not need to mention that the transition would also require substantial structural changes in production.

Mobilization toward the Green Revolution President Park’s firm support triggered nationwide mobilization for the domestic Green Revolution with Tongil rice. In January 1974, “The Headquarters for Crop Increase Operation” was established. The Headquarters mobilized all extension agents and public servants to promote Tongil. Agricultural scientists were given full support in localizing Tongil and developing its derivatives to meet various geographical and climatic needs. They also published a series of manuals for farmers, which provided detailed instructions to successfully cultivate the foreign variety. Farmers were strongly “encouraged” to adopt the new rice in exchange for increased subsidies or to avoid predictable discrimination against non-collaborative farmers. Urban consumers

43

Kim, Han'guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng, 85–106.

202

Engineering Asia

were also taught about Tongil’s nutritional advantages, while questions about its taste were generally silenced. Farmers were ambivalent about the new rice. Some farmers, especially from 1974 to 1977, identified with the state’s developmentalist vision, as well as with expectations of monetary and ideological rewards from the state, including “The Production Kings Prize.”44 However, there were other farmers who expressed reluctance or even skepticism toward this new variety. On the one hand, by cultivating Tongil they could earn both economic and ideological rewards. On the other hand, however, to plant Tongil meant that they had to spend more money on chemical agents and devote extra care to the relatively vulnerable cultivar. Although local tensions between farmers and extension agents were occasionally reported,45 Tongil was propagated rapidly and widely, and the state could see that the dream of the Green Revolution was being realized. Until 1977, the government managed to maintain subsidies high enough to make it profitable for farmers to cultivate Tongil. Gross domestic yield of rice kept increasing, breaking the previous year’s record every year. In 1977, rice production surpassed 6 million metric tons, which eventually exceeded domestic demand. Tongil was praised as the hero of the Green Revolution, with its cultivation area eventually surpassing that of japonica varieties combined.46 The government proudly declared that the Green Revolution had been accomplished and rewarded the major contributors with medals and trophies. Agronomists, agricultural administrators, extension agents, and collaborative farmers won various kinds of medals and honors. IRRI was also invited to this celebration; Henry Beachell and Marcos Vega were invited to receive prestigious prizes. Other breeders in IRRI, however, were not involved as deeply as Beachell. IRRI realized its impact on South Korea only after the South Korean government officially launched its massive promotion of Tongil. In early 1972, for example, Colin McClung, associate director of IRRI, mentioned Tongil as an example of IRRI’s contribution, but he never used the subject “we,” and regarded Heu’s experiments as “his special research project.” His recollection of Tongil sounds objective, or even distant, as below: At present the top rice breeder in Korea [Heu] is a returned IRRI fellow. He spent two years in the Philippines starting about seven years ago … a young member of the Korean research group came to the Philippines for non-degree participate [sic.] in the IRRI breeding programs. He was attracted by the semi-dwarf plant type being developed at IRRI. As his special research project, he decided to see if he could develop similar lines which would thrive under the climatic conditions of Korea and would have the type of grain preferred there. He made crosses between the 44

45

46

The “Production Kings” were selected every year based on their crop production in a given area (usually per 0.1 hectares (10 a)). At the heyday of Tongil, its performance was as high as roughly 900 kg/10 a. The government awarded money and other financial benefits to the winners. Intermittently, it was reported that “too ambitious” extension workers abused “uncooperative” local farmers by, for example, stomping through their paddy fields, which were filled with sprouts of popular japonica varieties. It should be noted, however, that the extension agents were not free from the structural constraint either. As the terminal organs of the developmental state, they were always under pressure from the central government to fulfill the quota of the Tongil cultivation area. Kim, Han’guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng, 170–81.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

203

IRRI lines and traditional Korean varieties, and when he went home he took seeds with him to test under Korean conditions.47

There seems to be a marked disparity between IRRI’s calm memory and the South Korean government’s enthusiasm and pride in its close partnership with IRRI. The main reason for this disparity is the fact that IRRI was in itself “basically a tropical rice research center rather than a temperate zone one,” and thus not as desperate for collaboration as South Korea was.48 The South Korean government needed not only IRRI’s facilities and experience, but also its authority to persuade skeptical farmers and urban consumers to undertake numerous changes to their production and consumption habits. On the other hand, success in South Korea was not a central issue for IRRI. It is true that IRRI also welcomed South Korea’s unexpected appreciation, because they could exhibit another case of success, especially in the place where they did not expect to make such a contribution. Nonetheless, it was little more than a peripheral episode in IRRI’s history. IRRI was established to promote the Green Revolution in South and Southeast Asia, and eventually to catalyze a Rostovian “takeoff ” of agricultural economies of the region. South Korea did not fit into this ideal, not only for its climatic difference, but also for its different “stage of development.” Throughout the 1960s, South Korea was gradually transforming itself from an agrarian to a newly industrialized economy, while most South and Southeast Asian countries had difficulties in realizing the Rostovian ideal due to various sociopolitical reasons. Thus, to prove its raison d’être, IRRI’s priority of collaboration was obviously suited to subtropical countries rather than already industrialized (or industrializing) Northeast Asian economies. For example, even during the heyday of Tongil rice, the number of South Korean agronomists in IRRI was insignificant compared with that of trainees from South and Southeast Asian countries.

After a sudden disgrace Despite its splendid performance, Tongil-brand rice (Tongil and its derivatives) was still poorly regarded in the market and still ecologically unstable. In fact, no Tongilbrand varieties survived more than five years as a dominant variety. The agricultural scientists kept developing Tongil’s successors, but new varieties could not last long either, because they were not given enough time for field testing and adaptation.49 Moreover, japonica breeding was discouraged in the mid-1970s, because nobody— scientists, administrators, or politicians—wanted Tongil to be challenged by japonica contenders. Once it was given the name “Tongil”—the foremost slogan of the Yushin dictatorship—and was represented as a “miracle rice” by the state, its failure was 47

48 49

Colin McClung, “IRRI’s Role in Institutional Cooperation in Asia,” Speech delivered on February 1972, Folder 198, Box 19, Series 242D, Record Group 1.3, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RAC, 24. Emphasis added. McClung, “IRRI’s Role in Institutional Cooperation in Asia,” 25. Nae-gyŏng Park and Mu-sang Im, “Han'guk ŭi pyŏnongsa wa p'umjong ŭi pyŏnch'ŏn” in Pyŏ ŭi yujŏn kwa yukchong, ed. Mun-hoe Hŏ et al. (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1986), 422–3.

204

Engineering Asia

officially unacceptable: it was too important to contemplate failure. Thus, throughout the Yushin period, there was no significant attempt to replace Tongil with another candidate by any researcher, while plenty of articles were written about overcoming Tongil’s vulnerabilities. In 1978, the cultivation area of Tongil-brand rice was expanded to reach up to threequarters of South Korea’s total paddy fields. It was in effect a nationwide monoculture of Tongil, considering that the other quarter consisted of mountainous or cold areas where Tongil could not survive. At this time, a newly mutated blast pathogen landed on the Korean Peninsula and devastated Tongil-brand rice specifically. Although Tongil was introduced to South Korea in the early 1970s as a blast-resistant variety, it had no resistance to this indica-oriented mutant at all.50 The blast epidemic in 1978 gave rise to nationwide farmer protests. They not only asked for economic compensation, but also to abolish the “authoritative agricultural administration” (i.e. the coercive “guidance” of the ORD agents). There was another contextual factor that made the farmers take the risk of openly protesting against the oppressive dictatorship. In the late 1970s, there was a significant change in the government’s agricultural policy. In 1978, right after the declaration of self-sufficiency in rice, the government announced that it would gradually reduce monetary subsidies for Tongil rice and open the doors to foreign agricultural exporters. This was a clear announcement that the government could no longer sustain the rural sector as in the mid-1970s.51 South Korea was changing its relationships with the regional and international economies. Without financial incentives, the state had to rely on coercive measures, and in turn, farmers’ faith in the developmental state was irreversibly broken. The blast epidemic in 1978 was received as an evident sign that the pro-Tongil policy could not be justified any more, either socioeconomically or scientifically. Since 1978, Tongil varieties have never recovered their superior productivity.52 By 1980, domestic yield fell for three consecutive years. President Park was assassinated in 1979 in the middle of the vortex of nationwide protests against dictatorship, with this development deriving especially from a growing labor movement. In fall 1980, facing another bad harvest due to unusually cold weather, the new junta had to take immediate action to mitigate people’s criticism. It imported two million metric tons of rice from the USA and Japan and officially announced that Tongil would not be forcefully promoted any more. In fact, there was no longer a need to promote HYVs any more in the 1980s; as economic growth was accompanied by Westernization of culture, consumption of rice began to gradually decrease. Subsequently, Tongil-brand varieties quickly disappeared from fields by the first half of the 1980s. Kim In Hwan, the evangelist of Tongil rice for thirteen years, resigned as head of ORD and went to the Philippines to serve as a member of the IRRI board of trustees.

50

51

52

P. Crill, Y.S. Ham, and H.M. Beachell, “The Rice Blast Disease in Korea and Its Control with Race Prediction and Gene Rotation,” Korean Journal of Breeding Science 13, no. 2 (1981): 108. Sŏk-kon Cho, “1980-yŏndae chayu chuŭi nongjŏng e taehan p'yŏngka,” Nongch'on Kyŏngje 27, no. 3 (2004): 55–76. Larry Burmeister, Research, Realpolitik, and Development in Korea: The State and the Green Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), 55–60.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

205

After the disgraceful decline of Tongil-brand varieties, even cooperation with IRRI was criticized by politicians. The critics of Tongil argued that cooperation with tropical rice researchers was bound to fail because of climatic differences. Although this criticism was only partly true on scientific grounds it was quite influential, especially when it was combined with Tongil’s “foreign” image, shaped by its unfamiliar appearance and taste. When the new junta stopped the promotion of Tongil in 1980, the junta leader, Chun Doo-Hwan, said, “it is apt to fail to develop new variety in such a warm place like the Philippines.”53 Agricultural scientists, on the other hand, were very much disappointed by the disgrace of Tongil, because they took it as their proud symbol of Korean agronomy. They criticized the politicians for both hastily promoting and later blaming a good variety only because of their political motivations. Tongil could survive longer and be more favored by the farmers, they thought, if it was distributed by the free choice of famers, not by coercion.54 Nevertheless, the decade of Tongil (1968–78) was not fruitless for agricultural scientists. By accomplishing the successful hybridization of indica and japonica, once believed to be impossible by Japanese breeders, Korean agrobiologists won recognition from the international community of agricultural scientists. Even Japanese researchers paid exceptional attention to Tongil and the Green Revolution in South Korea. One report in 1977, for example, highly regarded the development of Tongil rice, stating it to be an “epochal event” initiated from the “extraordinary idea of introducing highyielding and short-stem genes from indica varieties” and materialized due to the “determined inquiries” of Korean researchers.55 In other words, only after Tongil’s success did Japanese agro-scientists began to appreciate the achievements of South Koreans. Thus, Tongil marks an epoch in the history of agricultural science in modern Korea. Korean agricultural scientists also coined and promoted a new term: “Tongil type,” suggesting they had made a new “ecotype” that was different from either japonica or indica types of rice. This nomenclature has gained partial currency, while several Tongil-type varieties have been adopted by various Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, and Bhutan.56 In addition, currently there are considerable numbers of Southeast Asian agronomists who are studying in South Korea. Tongil had an impact on IRRI as well. Apart from the controversies over Tongil’s socioeconomic impact, IRRI recorded another success in its early history, especially in such an unexpected place. IRRI remained supportive of South Korea after Tongil’s decline. Even Tongil’s failures in 1978 and 1980 became good research topics for international joint research projects on plant pathology. ORD and IRRI jointly held conferences on preventing blast or cold damage. As such, cooperation between South 53

54

55

56

“Kwan chudo nongsa chiyangt'orok: Chŏn Taet'ongnyŏng, pyŏ pegi chagŏp sŏ chisi,” Tonga ilbo, 1980, 7. The agronomists do not openly acknowledge this because they are well aware that identities as a breeding scientist and as a rural administrator are easily interchangeable. Ōta Yasuo, “Kankoku ni okeru beikoku jikyū tassei ni hatashita tōitsukei hinshu no yakuwari,” Nōgyō oyobi engei 52, no. 8 (1977): 39–43. “T'oeyŏk t'ongilbyŏ, Chungguk tŭng sŏ ‘hwanggŭm p'umjong’ in'ki,” Sŏul sinmun, May 31, 1992.

206

Engineering Asia

Korea and IRRI went on, just in a less fervent manner. After the mid-1980s, as the South Korean economy maintained a high rate of growth, South Korea paid back IRRI’s generous aid by increasing its donation to IRRI, and has been a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) since 1991 as well.57 In retrospect, South Korea and IRRI now both remember the experience of cooperation as constructive, although perhaps in different ways. IRRI’s current explanation of Tongil, as seen in their official brochure, is as below: In 1968, Korean scientists recognized the potential of IR667, an IR8 derivative, and used it in their indica/japonica hybridization programs. Recommendations to Prof. M.H. Heu and Dr. G.S. Chung by Dr. I.H. Kim and Dr. H.M. Beachell, former plant breeders at IRRI, on crossing and selection of lines contributed to the release in 1971 of the Tongil variety.58

Conclusion: Collaboration in an unexpected place In terms of technological development, IRRI contributed to the “Green Revolution in Korea” in several distinct ways. Most importantly, it functioned as a test bed of ideas. By sending breeders to IRRI, Korean agronomists, most notably Mun Hue Heu, gained experience with the breeding activities at IRRI. For its part, IRRI materially sponsored the early stages of the Green Revolution in Korea. In turn, South Korean agronomists found a stage to advertise their achievements at IRRI, where all news and information on rice breeding in the world were intersecting. By assisting with the development of Tongil, IRRI contributed not only to increasing rice production in South Korea, but also catalyzed the evolution of South Korean agronomy to achieve internationally acknowledged status by infusing heterogeneous elements. Moreover, IRRI’s contribution to South Korean agronomy goes beyond mere technological assistance. IRRI helped South Korea to seek its own formative identity in agronomy. As IRRI was in effect an American organization and its research was focused on tropical indica varieties, it served as “the other,” or alternative center of rice research in contrast to postwar Japan. Heu Mun Hue’s achievement had initially been believed to be impossible by Japanese scholars, but was made possible with the help of Henry Beachell, an American staff member in IRRI. Korean agronomists could follow a different way from the one that the Japanese had paved. In this sense, Tongil was a means of achieving a form of “decolonization” for Korean agronomy. Japanese agronomists were actually quite surprised at what was happening in South Korea in the mid-1970s, and from that time, Japanese agronomists began to take South Korean

57

58

The South Korean government committed US$3,230,184 to IRRI from 1979 to 1997. The International Rice Research Institute, IRRI Brochure Facts about Cooperation: Korea (Manila, Philippines: IRRI, 2005), 1, 10–12. The International Rice Research Institute, IRRI Brochure Facts about Cooperation: Korea, 2.

Tongil and Mobilizing a Domestic “Green Revolution” in South Korea

207

agronomy and agronomists more seriously. In this vein, Tongil rice contributed to the new identity of postcolonial agricultural science in South Korea. At the same time, it carried with it material traces of the past, a palpable reminder that its ambitions were framed through the combined legacy of Japanese colonial networks, new forms of collaboration with American and international partners, and ongoing competition with North Korea. In short, IRRI, an institution designed under the American Cold War strategy to engineer the growth of developing countries, enabled South Korea to pursue its dream of the Green Revolution, and also to establish its own tradition of agricultural science, even while acknowledging its links to the past. The results were complex and deeply ambivalent, as the process of moving away from Japan’s sphere of influence embedded South Korea within newer power structures, exposing Korean farmers to the forces of global capitalism, both positive and negative. If Tongil’s story was frequently mobilized as one of “success,” the story ultimately took place within the framing context of American developmentalism and a reimagined East Asian order.

Bibliography Bickel, Lenard. Facing Starvation: Norman Borlaug and the Fight against Hunger. New York: Readers Digest Press, 1974. Burmeister, Larry. Research, Realpolitik, and Development in Korea: The State and the Green Revolution. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988. Chandler, Jr., Robert F. An Adventure in Applied Science: A History of the International Rice Research Institute. Los Baños: IRRI, 1992. Chang, T. T. “Hybridization versus Mutation in Rice Breeding.” Folder 188, Box 19, Series 242D, Record Group 1.3. Rockefeller Foundation Archives. Cho, Seok Gon. “1980-yŏndae chayu chuŭi nongjŏng e taehan p’yŏngka,” Nongch’on Kyŏngje 27, no. 3 (2004): 55–76. Chŏng, Kŭn-sik. “Han’guk kwa IRRI ŭi ch’ogi hyŏmnyŏk.” In Kukche Mijak Yŏn’guso ŭi tansang, edited by Nongch’on Chinhŭngch’ŏng. Suwŏn: Nongch’on Chinhŭngch’ŏng, 2001. Crill, P., Y.S. Ham, and H.M. Beachell. “The Rice Blast Disease in Korea and Its Control with Race Prediction and Gene Rotation.” In Evolution of the Gene Rotation Concept for Rice Blast Control: A Completion of 10 Research Papers (Los Baños: International Rice Research Institute, 1982): 123–30. Fitzgerald, Deborah. “Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943–1953.” Social Studies of Science 16 (1986): 457–83. Fujihara, Tatsushi. Ine no daitōa kyōeiken: Teikoku Nihon no “midori no kakumei.” Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2012. Gaud, William S. “The Green Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions.” Speech to the meeting of the Society for International Development. Washington, DC, March 8, 1968. “Kwan chudo nongsa chiyangt’orok: Chŏn Taet’ongnyŏng, pyŏ pegi chagŏp sŏ chisi.” Tonga ilbo, 1980, 7. Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. “Let There Be Light … and Bread: The United Nations, the Developing World, and Atomic Energy’s Green Revolution.” History and Technology 25, no. 1 (March 2009): 25–48.

208

Engineering Asia

Hŏ, Mun-hoe. “Han’guk sudo yukchong e yŏnghyang ŭl kkich’in H.M. Beachell-Ssi,” in Uri nara changmurhak yŏn’gu ŭi hoego: 1960-yŏndae put’ŏ 1980-yŏn kkaji rŭl chungsim ŭro. Han’guk Changmul Hakhoe, 1997. Heu, Mun Hue. Interview by the author. December 23, 2008. Hŏ, Mun-hoe. “T’ongilbyŏ p’umjong kaebal.” In Nongjŏng pansegi chŭngŏn,” edited by Han’guk Nongch’on Kyŏngje Yŏn’guwŏn. Suwŏn: Nonglimbu, 1999. Hong, Sŏng-ho. “T’ongilbyŏ wa changmul sihŏmjang e taehan hoesang.” In Turŏng san’go vol. 1, editey by Yŏldurŏng. Kwangju: Chŏnnam Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu, 1995. The International Rice Research Institute. IRRI Brochure Facts about Cooperation: Korea. Los Baños: IRRI, 2005. The International Rice Research Institute. Parentage of IRRI Crosses. Manila: IRRI, 1985. Itō, Hiroshi, Uchiyamada Hiroshi, and Minosima Masao. “Suitō shuryū hinshuno hensen to sono keihuteki kōsatu.” Ikushugaku zasshi 11, no. 4 (1961): 285–90. Jennings, Peter R. Evaluation of Partial Sterility of Indica × Japonica Rice Hybrids. IRRI Technical Bulletin 5 Los Baños: IRRI, 1966. Kaplan, Steve L. Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade during the Eighteenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. Kim, In-hwan. Han’guk ŭi noksaek hyŏngmyŏng: pyŏ sinjongp’um ŭi kaebal kwa pogŭp. Seoul: Nongch’on Chinhŭngch’ŏng, 1978. Kim Mun-sun, “(Int’ŏbyu) Tongt’ap Sanŏp Hunjang padŭn H. M. Pich’el Paksa: 13-yŏn’gan Han’guk yukchong kisul chido.” Chosunilbo, May 11, 1978, 2. Kim, Ock Joo and Sang Ik Hwang. “The Minnesota Project.” Korean Journal of Medical History 9 (2000): 112–23. Kim, Seong-Jun. “The First Modern Research Institute in South Korea: The Atomic Energy Research Institute (1959–1973).” Paper presented at the 12th International Conference of the History of Science in East Asia, Baltimore, MD, July 14–18, 2008. Koh, Hee-Jong. Interview by the author. January 23, 2008. Im, Mu-sang, “Chagŭn yŏngungdŭl: yuksimn-yŏndae yŏnsusaengdŭl.” In Kukche Mijak Yŏn’guso ŭi tansang. Suwŏn: Nongch’on Chinhŭngch’ŏng, 2001. McClung, Colin. “IRRI’s role in institutional cooperation in Asia.” Speech delivered on February 1972, Folder 198, Box 19, Series 242D, Record Group 1.3, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RAC. Ōta, Yasuo. “Kankoku ni okeru beikoku jikyū tassei ni hatasita tōitsukei hinshu no yakuwari.” Nōgyō oyobi engei 52, no. 8 (1977): 39–43. “Park daetongnyeong yeondu hoegyeon: bukane singnyang wonju jongui.” Kyunghyang shinmun. January 12, 1977. Park, Nae-gyŏng and Mu-sang Im, “Han’guk ŭi pyŏnongsa wa p’umjong ŭi pyŏnch’ŏn.” In Pyŏ ŭi yujŏn kwa yukchong, ed. Hŏ Mun-hoe oe et al. Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1986. Perkins, John H. Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Reinhardt, Claudia and Bill Ganzel. “Henry Beachell, Crop Scientist.” The Wessels Living History Farm, the Story of Agricultural Innovation. Accessed September 10, 2008, http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_05.html. “Rice of the Gods.” Time, June 14, 1968. “(Sillok Pak Chŏng-hŭi sidae 18) singnyang chagŭp.” Chungang ilbo t’ongilbyŏ p’umjong kaebal, 1997, 5. “T’oeyŏk t’ongilbyŏ, Chungguk tŭng sŏ `hwanggŭm p’umjong’ in’ki.” Sŏul sinmun, May 31, 1992.

9

In Pursuit of “Peace and Construction”: Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73 John P. DiMoia

South Vietnam as a formative site for South Korean construction and engineering practice A simple stone marker, adorned with script in Korean-language (top) and Vietnamese language versions (bottom), once stood close to Saigon, marking a section of the ring road encircling the city.1 Built by South Korean construction interests during the late 1960s and early 1970s (1965–73), a period when numerous Asian partner nations were mobilized on behalf of the USA and its “Many Flags” campaign, the road memorialized reflects an early history of South Korean overseas efforts at infrastructure.2 Specifically, Hyundai Construction provides the focus for this chapter, although numerous Korean chaebol benefited enormously from the Vietnam setting, among them, Daerim (construction) and Hanjin (shipping), with these firms collectively participating in a lucrative market for procurements, transport, and infrastructure.3 In turn, South Korean labor and technical knowhow formed part of a multinational labor force with Japanese, Thai, and Filipino workers contributing to a “Free World” labor network, primarily Asian in composition, and collectively

1

2

3

War History Compilation Committee, P'awŏl Han’gukkun chŏnsa sajinjip [Pictorial History of ROK Forces to Vietnam, 1964–1970] (Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 1970), 155. There is a companion volume for 1970–4. See Vietnam Veterans Korea, accessed January 10, 2016, http://www. vietvet.co.kr/us/us.htm. The Saigon ring road is still known as the “Đại Hàn” (“Korea”) highway. Chau Huy Ngoc, personal communication. Frank Baldwin, Diane Jones and Michael Jones, America’s Rented Troops, South Koreans in Vietnam (Philadelphia, PA: American Friends Service Committee, 1971). Hyundai Geonseol Jusikhoesa, Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa [Hyundai Construction 35th Anniversary volume] (Seoul: Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl Chusik Hoesa, 1982), 2028–31. See also the Hyundai Construction 50th Anniversary edition published in 1997, and for Daerim, see Taerim Sanŏp 60-yŏnsa (Seoul: Taerim Sanŏp 60-yŏnsa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, 1999).

210

Engineering Asia

mobilized to provide logistical support.4 In brief, the Southeast Asian context hastened the formation of a sub-imperial, racialized labor hierarchy, with funding, skills, and procurements at stake for participant nations.5 Although the story of Korean participation during the Vietnam War is known in broad terms, the literature tends to approach it from one of two vantage points: either in terms of measuring the aggregate economic gains received through military procurements; or alternatively, in terms of treating the construction experience as a means to achieve additional contracts in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) by the following decade.6 In keeping with the major themes of this volume, this chapter locates the Korean construction experience in Southeast Asia, here encompassing Thailand (Pattani–Naratiwat highway, 1965–8) and South Vietnam (Cam Ranh Bay, 1966), within the framework of the kula ring as conceived by Hiromi Mizuno (see Figure 9.1).7 Specifically, this chapter argues that in negotiating a space for themselves, Korean contractors became enmeshed in a racialized labor hierarchy, one where they worked under, and sometimes alongside, American patrons and Japanese construction interests, actors already familiar from the colonial (1910–45), occupation (1945–8), and Korean War contexts (1950–3). At the same time, this position led to frequent tensions with Southeast Asian colleagues, and the terms of labor and the conditions of its practice led to awkward, fractured relations on the ground. These tensions have to be regarded as constituting part of, and placed within the context of, an emerging Cold War system of international development, a story that complicates bilateral accounts of the period. Indeed, there are good business histories of Korean engagement with Vietnam written from the perspective of the chaebol— most prominently, Hyundai, Daerim, and Hanjin, to name but a few—but these histories focus on only one firm, and typically offer a narrative of perceived success at overcoming adverse conditions.8 To return to Mizuno’s terms, this volume uses the kula ring to illustrate how postcolonial, economic nationalism functioned as “a major driving force behind the reconstruction of the network of colonial development into a 4

5

6

7

8

See The Vietnam Builders, the in-house journal for RMK-BRJ (Raymond International, MorrisonKnudsen, Brown & Root, and J.A. Jones), the Texas-based consortium responsible for oversight on the majority of Vietnam-era construction contracts: Vol. 1, no. 4 (August 1966)–Vol. 4, no. 11 (December 1969), United States Military Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PA. For the larger context of “Free World” assistance to Vietnam, see the Robert Komer Papers at the LBJ Library, Austin, TX. See also the journal, The Em-Kayan, the in-house publication for Morrison-Knudsen, particularly “Construction Expands in South Vietnam,” The Em-Kayan (June 1965). Jin-kyung Lee, Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). For a recent corrective to this trend, see Jim Glassman and Young-Jin Choi, “The Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex: Cold War Geopolitical Economy and South Korean Industrialization,” Environment and Planning 5, no.  46 (May 2014): 1160–80. See also Sooyong Kim, “The Korean Construction Industry as an Exporter of Services,” The World Bank Economic Review 2, no. 2 (1988): 225–38. James Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State-Building, 1954–1968 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Richard Ruth, In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2010). Daerim’s claim rests upon being the first Korean firm to reach Vietnam (Rach Gia, Gulf of Thailand, January 1966), while Hyundai was the first to go international with its Thailand project (December 1965). See Daelim, accessed September 1, 2017, https://www.daelim.co.kr/biz/Intro.do.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73 0 0

50 100 km 104 50 100 ml

211

108

CHINA Leo Cai

Fan Si Pan

Hong Gai

HANOI Haiphong 20

20 Gulf of Tonkin

LAOS

Hainan Dao (CHINA)

Gulf of Tonkin

Vinh

g on ek M Hue 16

Da Nang

THAILAND

16

Quy Nhon

CAMBODIA 2

Nha Trang Cam Ranh

Tonle Sap

Mek ong Xuyen Long Dao Phu Can Quoc Tho Gulf of Thailand

Ho Chi Minh City

South China Sea Con Dao

104

108

Figure 9.1 South Korean construction interests aided with infrastructure and logistics, especially at Rach Gia (Gulf of Thailand), at Cam Ranh Bay (east coast of South Vietnam), and in Southern Thailand, close to the Malaysian Border. (Source: Wiki Commons)

212

Engineering Asia

network of international development.”9 The reconfigured tripartite relationship of the USA, Japan, and South Korea, contingent upon normalization of relations between the two Asian partners in 1965, did not automatically mean that Koreans experienced a smooth “take-off ” from this moment forward. Instead, it placed them within a fiercely competitive hierarchy as one among a number of comparable developing countries. Koreans found themselves enmeshed in a complex set of relations in which they experienced new opportunities—whether construction contracts in Vietnam or emerging export markets for light industry, such as textiles—while having to compete for access to these niche markets with their Asian competitors, including Japan, but also with neighboring countries working under similar circumstances. In Vietnam, for example, Vietnamese firms and workers frequently complained about the dominance of third country national (TCN) workers, including contract laborers arriving from a number of Southeast and East Asian nations.10 Off the record, American contractors responsible for project oversight tended to favor those whom they trusted from previous experience, and membership in this much smaller group favored large firms from Japan and South Korea.11 Looking back at the period, David Ekbladh refers to Taiwan and South Korea as the two major recipients of American assistance, employing the language of a fixed developmental trajectory, a scheme from which an aspiring nation might “graduate” upon following the appropriate set of rubrics.12 Ekbladh’s characterization, while it covers the bilateral terms, overlooks the radical contingency of the Southeast Asian experience, the extent to which Korean contractors learned on the job, essentially making it up as they went along, with “it” here referring to a wide range of new tasks performed under pressure. This on-the-ground account of Southeast Asian contract work complicates not only the “miracle” narrative of South Korean developmentalism, but equally the glossy images and publicity materials associated with the projects, especially those deriving from American contractors, nominally in charge.13 Large projects, such as the port facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, detailed later in this chapter, employed thousands of workers from a range of nations. In theory, this opportunity provided numerous chances for Vietnamese workers to learn under close supervision. The in-house magazine, The Em-Kayan, published by the consortium Morrison-Knudsen (MK), offers its readers a site overview, with different groups mingling together and working efficiently.14 In practice, however, the work was conducted under extremely dangerous conditions with tight deadlines, and the competition for contracts was intense.15 Much of what 9

10 11

12

13 14 15

Hiromi Mizuno, “Introduction,” in Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order, ed. Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore, and John DiMoia (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 4. “Vietnam the Construction War,” Construction Equipment and Materials (June 1966), 1. For South Korea contractors, each participating chaebol was paired with an American firm, and typically these American contractors (Vinnell) had prior experience in the Korean context. David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 258. “Vietnam: Building for Battle, Building for Peace,” The Em Kayan (September 1966), 8–11. “Vietnam: Building for Battle, Building for Peace,” 9. Daerim hired security to defend construction work in Rach Gia. The Em-Kayan cites American, Korean, and South Vietnamese forces guarding Cam Ranh Bay.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

213

Korean workers learned in this setting had application to the domestic context, and along with the main story of a racialized hierarchy, this chapter ultimately aims to link the South Korean story at home with the Southeast Asian experience.

Aid and developmental trajectory Along with labor, there follows aid, and for Japan, Mizuno links this story with construction, a point illustrated in much greater detail in Chapter 4 of this volume. Although South Korea did not begin many of its official aid programs until the early 1980s, many of its activities in Southeast Asia might be characterized as informal aid, certainly within the broader terms set forth here. While the focus rests on private contractors, the Republic of Korea (ROK) military simultaneously provided construction and medical relief through its civil affairs program, overseen by the Pigeon (“Peace Dove”) brigade.16 Newsreels depict Korean forces building schools, refugee centers, and training facilities, with Vietnamese villagers using the facilities upon completion.17 Collectively, these civic actions served to replicate certain aspects of South Korea’s own recent developmental experience, while underscoring the secondary role of the Vietnamese within the Korean imaginary. South Vietnam was a major trade partner with the Koreans from the late 1950s onwards, and this civic aid, if we may characterize it as such, was given with the specific intent of promoting the relationship, diplomatically and economically.18 This last point serves as an additional corrective to the limited bilateral perspective, one from which Korean entry into Vietnam is understood primarily through an Americanist lens. Certainly, Korean firms earned the vast majority of their procurements within a system by which the US Navy’s Officer in Charge of Construction (OICC) dispersed contracts to major conglomerates, who then subcontracted to Asian firms.19 It is also true that Korean firms partnered with American firms, such as the case of Hyundai and Vinnell at Cam Ranh Bay, with the senior partner responsible for additional oversight. Nonetheless, the emergence of a system encouraging Korean entry into Southeast Asia resembles much less a bilateral arrangement and rather a loose approximation of the imperial system prior to 1945; that is, a return to the past. Bruce Cumings makes a similar point in a recent publication, pointing out that despite the conspicuous American presence, the post-1950 Northeast Asian economic system had already begun to resemble an earlier world.20 If North Korea and China were off limits for ideological reasons by 1965, South Korea was able to leverage upon its prior 16

17

18

19 20

Along with a medical team (September 1964), the Peace Dove forces (early 1965) preceded the arrival of ROK combat divisions. See also P’yŏnghwa wa kŏnsŏl [Peace and Construction] (Saigon: Chuwŏl Han’gukkun Saryŏngbu), 1967. Pigeon Unit Construction 1966, accessed September 13, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=k0Nmp31mpTU. Korea and Vietnam (Seoul: Ministry of Public Information, 1966), 102–5. South Vietnam was the third largest export market for the ROK by the early 1960s. “Vietnam the Construction War,” 9–10. Bruce Cumings, “The Korea-Centric Japanese Imperium and the Transformation of the International System from the 1930s to the 1950s,” in The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s, ed. Shigeru Akita and Nicholas J. White (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 103–30.

214

Engineering Asia

relationships with partners in Hong Kong, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand, in many of these cases strengthening partnerships dating to the colonial period and the Pacific War.21 To recall the major themes of the volume, the continuities for pre- and post-1945 Japan are startling, especially as many of the same individuals reinvented their wartime practice in developmental or consultancy work, even returning to many of the same sites. For Korean actors, the story is less clear, although we may speculate that some of the personnel traveling to Southeast Asia had prior experience as part of the Japanese military. The Korean War and its aftermath then repackaged these relationships within an emerging ideological frame. To the American patron, South Korea’s relationship to Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam) might appear entirely “new,” a convenient and readily adaptable narrative to promote shared anti-communist interests. In fact, the relationship was much older, and carried with it previous ties from Japanese Empire, the American occupation, and the Korean War and its project of multilateral relief. This reformulated world of the early 1960s witnessed Koreans building ties from as early as 1954, even while in the period of reconstruction. Once the industrial center of Japan’s empire, Korea had to establish itself within a network of regional allies and potential trade partners. The Korean Jaycees donated medical assistance to their counterparts in Operation Brotherhood, an organization based in the Philippines and dedicated to providing medical relief in Laos and Vietnam.22 Korean technicians also participated in and traveled abroad for technical exchange activities in the mid-1950s, again emphasizing the origins of these ambitions.23 While it is difficult to track firmspecific data, statistics for the late 1950s and early 1960s show trade growing with close partners in the East Asia region (Hong Kong, South Vietnam, Taiwan), as well as with new partnerships (the USA, West Germany) made possible by the Korean War and its consequences. In brief, the desire to reach out regionally reflects a refashioning of an earlier network, and South Korea remained highly active for much of this decade (1954–63), incrementally negotiating a new space for itself.

Refashioning Japan’s empire: South Korea encounters Southeast Asia At its height in 1942, the Japanese empire stretched east to the Aleutian and Solomon island chains, reaching south to Australia, while maintaining control over much of East and Southeast Asia. This vast undertaking allowed Japan to expand as an industrial power, with raw materials derived from the colonies and other holdings, and with export markets provided for the sale of finished goods. If Japan began to refashion its relations after 1952, we may ask the same set of questions of postcolonial South Korea.24 While 21

22

23

24

Philippine Civic Action Group. 1st Philippine Civic Action Group, RVN (1st PHILCAGV). Vietnam, 1967. Miguel A. Bernad, Adventure in Vietnam: The Story of Operation Brotherhood (Manila: Operation Brotherhood International, 1974). For the context of foreign contracts in Thai road-building, see: Thailand—Second Highway Project, accessed August 12, 2016, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/487291468132277718/ Thailand-Second-Highway-Project. Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife (London: Routledge, 2017).

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

215

recognizing that the ROK’s regional relations date to an earlier Sino-centric world, the focus here rests upon the transition from the imperial to the postcolonial, especially corresponding with the arrival of American patronage. Following the Korean War, the south reached out to its neighbors to re-establish diplomatic and economic relations, critical for a country cut off from the industrial base in North Korea and Manchuria.25 If the dominant theme for many of the Japan chapters lies with emphasizing continuities prior to and following 1945, the South Korean situation appears more complicated, even as it shares a great deal with this thematic. When traveling to Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s, Korean doctors and public health experts frequently looked for parasites and related health metrics, in some cases reflecting their prior training in Japanese higher education.26 Still, the emphasis here lies less with pre-1945 continuities and more with pursuing Korean War-era links, when imperial ties had to be reimagined as Cold War relations.27 In this respect, South Korea had the opportunity to remake its ties with the Philippines (1949), South Vietnam (1956), Thailand (1958), and Malaysia (1960), although only the middle two nations figure prominently in this chapter. Although it was never colonized, Thailand experienced internal struggles as it negotiated a careful working relationship between its royalty and the military. This national transformation was marked first by a coup in 1932, and soon thereafter a strong affirmation of its identity in the early 1940s, leaving behind the label “Siam.”28 By the late 1940s, postwar Thailand had more than a decade of following a military style in governing, and quickly shed its alliance with wartime Japan to become a close American ally. The American presence should not suggest a single, unifying network, and the challenge here is to maintain distinct threads of postcolonial historiography for each of the national stories represented here, whether for South Korea or for Southeast Asia. At the same time, ambitious nation-building projects (South Korea, South Vietnam), along with significant investments in internal security—some might even call it “internal colonization”—for Thailand, provided new opportunities for elites within these nations to begin working with each other.29 In this fashion, a Korean elite with prior knowledge of the southeast might be able to make inroads in a refashioned network, now driven by shared anti-communist concerns. These Asian–Asian interactions frequently took place alongside the more conspicuous ties with key bilateral partners. To cite a recent example, Simon Toner has argued that South Vietnam frequently appealed to the examples of Taiwan and South Korea when it sought to define itself, and we know that 25

26

27

28

29

Edwin W. Pauley, Report on Japanese Assets in Manchuria to the President of the United States, July 1946 (Washington, DC: Reparations Mission to Japan, 1946). See also Pauley, Report on Japanese Assets in Soviet-occupied Korea to the President of the United States, June, 1946 (Washington, DC: Reparations Mission to Japan, 1948). Mark Harrison and Sung Vim Ying, “War on Two Fronts: The Fight against Parasites in Korea and Vietnam,” Medical History 61, no. 3 (July 2017): 401–23. Park Seung Woo and Victor T King, eds., The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond (Singapore: ISEAS, 2013). Robert Muscat, The Fifth Tiger: A Study of Thai Development Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). See Chapter 8, “Despotic Paternalism and Purposive Development.” Jessica Elkind, Aid under Fire: Nation-Building and the Vietnam War (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2016). See also United States Operations Mission to Thailand, US Economic and Technical Assistance to Thailand, 1950 to Date (Bangkok: USOM, 1960).

216

Engineering Asia

South Korea–South Vietnam trade became an important dynamic from the second half of the 1950s.30 In diplomatic terms, relations between these three countries were shaped by the Korean War (1950–3), as well as by the Vietnamese conflict with the French (1945– 54). The South Korean–Thai relationship gained strength when Thailand sent troops during the Korean conflict in support of the south, and from this point forward, shared security concerns led to friendly exchanges. For his part, President Syngman Rhee offered Korean support in 1954 for South Vietnam, also in the form of troops, although this gesture had to be declined. The terms of the division along the 17th Parallel set up a two-country system bearing a loose resemblance to that between the two Koreas, and certainly the comparison motivated a closer degree of cooperation.31 By establishing diplomatic relations with the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in 1956, the ROK made Vietnam a trade and diplomatic partner, fitting within the emerging American orbit of postcolonial nations in Southeast Asia.32 These Asian actors could choose their own course, certainly, but they did so aware of enhanced opportunities for financial and military support. As for the agents of Korean intervention, the founding of a series of Korean firms during the occupation provided a means of corporate outreach in the late 1950s and early 1960s.33 Hyundai and Daerim became involved in the task of post-Korean War reconstruction work, with Daerim’s origins dating back to the late colonial period.34 The two firms established a record of consistent performance with the American military, and Hyundai in particular became known for its reliability, serving as one of the largest domestic contractors during the latter part of the Syngman Rhee presidency.35 As the chaebol earned respect for jobs done within Korea, they began to generate trust that would pay off later in international settings. Frequently, these postwar tasks were performed alongside American contractors, with many of these same actors beginning to pop up in Southeast Asia slightly later. This is not to suggest that the working relationship in Thailand and Vietnam was inevitable, but it does emphasize the creation of a path-dependency.

Targeting infrastructure: South Korea and Thailand (1954–60) At first glance, Thailand does not offer any compelling reasons why it might become a desirable site for Korean construction, certainly not in terms of their prior relations, although the Thais did provide support during the Korean War, lending a shared climate 30

31 32 33

34 35

Simon Toner, “The Counter-Revolutionary Path: South Vietnam, the United States, and the Global Allure of Development, 1968–1973,” PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, 2015, 3. See also Douglas C. Dacy, Foreign Aid, War, and Economic Development: South Vietnam, 1955–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and P’yŏngwha wa Kŏnsŏl. “Dispatch of Korean Forces,” Korea and Vietnam, 36–9. American concern with Laos came first, prompting further attention for Thailand and Vietnam. “Appendix B: Chaebol Case Studies,” in Leroy P. Jones and Il Sakong, Government, Business, and Entrepreneurship in Economic Development: The Korean Case (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1980), 343–64. “Appendix B: Chaebol Case Studies.” See also Taerim Sanŏp 60-yŏnsa. “Appendix B: Chaebol Case Studies,” 356–7.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

217

of ideological cooperation.36 Further, these friendly relations reveal similar patterns of post-1945 national renewal, with Thailand becoming an increasingly militarized state under the leadership of Phibun (1948–57), and then Sarit (1957–63), following a coup in 1947. If the Thai military held authority over most matters, whether political or social, its program for development corresponded with a broad mandate embracing military modernization, one that transformed the Thai landscape by relying heavily on new transport infrastructure, especially roads.37 In their initial conception, many of the “new” roads designed for the Thai national highway system began to appear in blueprints in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with ambitious plans to link the capitol, Bangkok, with a number of outlying regions. For Pattani–Naratiwat, where Hyundai would engage (December 1965–February 1968), the highway slated for construction cut across four southern provinces—Songkhla, Yala, Pattani, and Naratiwat—and covered difficult terrain. Moreover, the Thai southeast holds a lengthy history as a borderlands, and in the mid-twentieth century, this past meant a heavily Islamic region bordering on Malaysia.38 With the Thai government interested in consolidating its hold, the roads to be built were not meant strictly for the conveyance of traffic, but also took on a corresponding symbolic and material significance, bearing the added weight of nation-building. If the southeast held certain tensions, with ethnic Malay/Thai nationals making up a majority of its population, the establishment of a national highway system would link the region with Bangkok, creating greater identification with the capital. Moreover, this was not the only part of the Thai landscape posing a problem, as the northeast (Isan) held a similar population concern—in this case, holding a significant number of Lao speakers, especially along the border and in the interior.39 Road-building in these two settings rapidly became nation-building with a heavy militarist slant, reinforcing Bangkok’s tenuous hold and ensuring that linguistic and ethnic diversity remained within carefully defined boundaries of “Thai-ness.” A 1957 famine in Isan, with many fleeing the region for Bangkok, further increased worries about its stability. For Thailand’s neighbors and international partners, the construction of this vast road system, along with accompanying infrastructure, represented a wealth of new opportunities, as many of the projects carried generous funding from the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).40 The American military placed an OICC office in Bangkok as early as 1955 to handle bids for contracts.41 Descriptive 36

37

38

39 40

41

The War Memorial of Korea near Yongsan (Samgakchi) celebrates the nations contributing to the Korean War, with Thailand the second nation to send troops: The War Memorial of Korea, accessed January 10, 2016, https://www.warmemo.or.kr/newwm/eng/main.jsp. Culver S. Ladd, Thailand Transformed, 1950–2012: “Is Thailand the Test Case?” (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2012). Ibnul Islam Rozali, Pattani Report: An Account of Daily Events of Violence in Muslim-dominated Southern Provinces of Thailand (Islamabad: Institute for Research and Studies of Muslim Minorities, 2007). Bryce Beemer, Sogang University East Asia Institute, personal communication. Appraisal of a National Highway Project Thailand, accessed January 10, 2016, http://documents. worldbank.org/curated/en/250291468119326750/pdf/multi-page.pdf. See Maps 1 and 2. Robert Melbourne, “Advance Base Construction by Civilian Contractors in War Zones”. University of Southern California PhD dissertation, 1996, 139.

218

Engineering Asia

accounts from the period, highly idealized, detail a set of modern roads replacing poorly constructed (mainly dirt) routes, facilitating the transport of goods and services. As already hinted here, the political context suggests that the roads held a military function as well, and by the early 1960s, this point became even more explicit, as circumstances in neighboring Laos and Vietnam deteriorated rapidly.42 Certainly for the Thai northeast, the construction of an integrated road network has been interpreted by many scholars as a means of anticipating conflict. Thailand’s partners shared this view, and archival documents from the early 1960s explicitly link the concerns of transport and defense by referencing this new construction under the category “security roads.”43 As already noted, the dominant image of the framing here lies with the implied contrast between the rural and newly imagined, “modern” roads set to replace them. In particular, the new roads were designed for all-weather use and constructed to a uniform depth, providing a hard, smooth surface finish. The French had used a laterite model (packed or gravel surface) for their road-building activity throughout much of their Southeast Asian colonial holdings, and at least in their design, the new roads were intended to offer an upgrade, recognizing the tropical environment and weather, while providing a means of control over such conditions. At key national borders, roads became central to policing and maintaining security concerns.

The Accelerated Rural Development program (1964 to mid-1970s): Militarized construction The Thai government sought an explanatory narrative embracing this construction activity, with the Mobile Development Unit (MDU) program of the late 1950s bringing the presence of the state directly to rural villages.44 MDU targeted mainly the northeast, already mentioned as a sensitive area, and sought to promote self-help in those areas with fewer resources, seeking to cultivate a more positive image for the government. This campaign was followed by Accelerated Rural Development (ARD) in 1964, which brought additional resources—including roads, wells, markets, schools, and health clinics—to villages designated as problem areas.45 In following MDU, ARD brought its own style of packaging, a hybrid blend of development along with a loose approximation of modernization theory. At its most basic form, ARD claimed to bring the world to the village door, providing a vantage point to the external world 42

43

44

45

Roads became a means of linking internal security (Thailand) with new airfields (to be used in Vietnam). Arne Kislenko, “A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand’s Role in Covert Operations, Counter-Insurgency, and the Wars in Indochina,” The Journal of Conflict Studies 24 (Summer 2004), 65–96. Supphachok Lachittrakun. The Evaluation of Operations of a Mobile Development Unit, National Security Command (Bangkok, Military Research and Development Center, 1967). See also Mobile Development (San Francisco, CA: Joint US Military Advisory Group to Thailand, 1964). A Brief History of USOM Support to the Office of Accelerated Rural Development (Bangkok: USOM/ Thailand, 1969). See also Joint Thai–USOM Evaluation of the Accelerated Rural Development Project (Bangkok: USOM/Thailand, 1965), Accelerated Rural Development: Monthly Report of Progress 12 (September 1968) (Washington, DC: Vinnell Corporation, 1968), and Michel Kingery, Vinnell Corporation Contract/AID: 493-37 (USAID: Bangkok, 1970).

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

219

and its opportunities, as well as a direct means of communication with the state. To its domestic constituents, and to new foreign partners, ARD offered opportunities to build infrastructure, especially roads, as part of an ambitious act of Thai national affirmation. In brief, ARD translated to roads in material terms, and was framed in the language of improved communication between the capital and rural areas. The historical tensions the Thai state had experienced with its minority populations in the northeast and southeast took on a new set of valences in the early 1960s. Activities previously labeled as anti-state within the domestic context were now labeled as “communist,” and this category unified what might otherwise seem like a scattered set of metropole–rural issues taking place within a national context. Moreover, the northeast geography was highly specific, encompassing a set of airfields (including Korat, Udorn) later to become the staging base for airstrikes over Vietnam.46 If ARD concentrated its efforts primarily in the northeast, characterized as the greater threat, the southeast witnessed a good deal of separatist activity as well, and held the additional burden of its association with nearby Malaysia and the Malayan Emergency of the previous decade. In exploring the role of ARD within this highly politicized context, scholars have looked at the role of funding patterns in Thai planning prior to and following 1960, with the greatest increase of funds coming early in the succeeding decade. According to Thak Chaloemtiarana in his Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism, a major distinction can be seen in the relative priorities given to certain areas of development.47 The Thai national development plan projected for 1961 placed its focus on social welfare and irrigation, with agriculture also receiving a good deal of attention.48 The comparable IBRD six-year plan offered for the same period, set to take effect in 1962, took quite a different stance, selecting roads, bridges, and communications as its major emphases. The key to this second scheme lies in its ability to allow much greater leeway for self-defense and policing by the Thai state, promoting mobility and integration with domestic centers of power. Chaloemtiarana is careful not to read the IBRD’s plan in terms of its pro-American stance, but he notes that the second plan left considerable room for changes, with this flexibility granting discretion to the Thai state as implementation of the plan proceeded. He adds that with a Thai state increasingly dominated by its military—following Phibun, Thailand had come under the control of Sarit in a coup, strengthening the hold of the military—it should not be surprising that Thailand shifted closer to security concerns, especially in the northeast. Contributions from the IBRD and American aid were among the primary conduits through which the Thai–US relationship took shape in the early 1960s, with the Thai military learning how to respond to the cues of the senior patron when it wanted additional resources. Again, this reading of funding patterns suggests that road-building in Thailand at this time was highly politicized, with the specific aim of linking military and air bases within a national network, 46

47

48

Glassman and Choi, “The Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex.” 1169. The Korat site dates to the Japanese wartime occupation. Thak Chaloetiarana, Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2007). See also Highways in Thailand (Bangkok: Department of Highways), 1971. Chaloetiarana, Thailand, 239.

220

Engineering Asia

thereby providing greater mobility and protection along the precarious border with Laos. In this context, a Korean contractor like Hyundai served as a valued intermediary between Thai locals and the needs of funding agencies, whether Thai or external.49

Hyundai’s formulates overseas ambitions (1963–6) When South Korean chaebol began to market themselves abroad, their strengths fit best in those contexts where they already possessed a history. With a recent legacy of contract work for the American military—both during the occupation and following the Korean War—it made sense to explore jobs where this successful track record might have an impact. As we have just seen, Thailand underwent a lengthy period of road-building during much of the previous decade, and this activity was to intensify further with the turn to ARD in 1964. In neighboring Vietnam, American contractors arrived as early as 1962, with Raymond International and MK undertaking work on two airfields (Pleiku and Bien Hoa), and with this initial foray expanding into additional contract work through 1964.50 Moreover, a number of the American contractors now working in the Southeast Asian context—Raymond (Thailand), Vinnell (Vietnam)—held previous international experience, often in postwar South Korea.51 In other words, the bids submitted by Korean firms fell within a pattern of existing relationships, and this familiarity made things much easier when firms began to secure their first overseas bids. The other factor enhancing this process was the existing hierarchy for contract work, with Japan as the widely acknowledged leader among Asian nations by the early 1960s, having started with its reparations work in the previous decade. Kubota Yutaka, the head of Nippon Koei, as detailed in Chapter 4, appears in many of the preliminary reports for large sites such as Cam Ranh Bay, given his expertise in completing jobs throughout Southeast Asia.52 His work at Da Nhim furnished much of the electric power to the Cam Ranh site. Even before construction could begin, the American military, as advised by contractors, anticipated a significant need for labor, especially at the port sites, where large quantities of goods and materials would arrive. Assuming top-level management of Americans and Japanese and a large pool of Vietnamese manual labor, this left room at the intermediate level for skilled workers and mid-level supervisory/managerial positions.53 This is where Korean and Filipino skilled labor would make significant inroads, leveraging their long-terms relationships with Americans. If Korean firms in particular were able to secure a role for themselves within the hierarchy, and even to expand upon it, this reflects not only their agency, but also their willingness to move aggressively.

49 50 51 52

53

Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours (Seoul: Ministry of Public Information), 1966. “Vietnam: the Construction War,” 1. National Archives of Korea lists Vinnell for projects starting in 1950. William Bredo, Jack E. Van Zandt, and William N. Breswick, Development of the Cam Ranh Bay Region: Phase 1 Study (Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute, 1966). “Vietnam: the Construction War,” 1.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

221

In terms of their competitors, the Koreans viewed the Japanese with the most skepticism, even as they respected their construction skills and relative placement within the labor hierarchy. A portion of the negotiations for ROK–Japan normalization (1965) dealt specifically with the issue of procurements, with the Korean party lobbying strongly for as large a share as possible.54 Given Japan’s peace constitution created after 1945, there was no possibility of Japanese military participation. This gave the Koreans an advantage, as they sought to balance their willingness to commit troops with a corresponding share of the procurements shares. Here we can see the hierarchy forming, with Korean and Japanese firms receiving the dominant share of the anticipated contracts, and with Filipino and Vietnamese labor generally left to the task of providing a large pool of physical labor. And, as already noted, this relationship was not merely a financial one, as South Korea wanted to see Thailand and South Vietnam develop as trade partners, especially as potential markets for Korean exports.55 With Hyundai’s entry into Southeast Asia, there emerged a convergence between the growing need for security and infrastructure at certain sites and the shared concerns of partner nations regarding the question of limiting or containing communism. With Japan well established in the construction market by the late 1950s, South Korean firms began opening overseas offices in the first half of the following decade, with Bangkok (1964) and Saigon among the first of these sites to achieve a corporate presence.56 Although the IBRD bidding process was competitive, Korean firms had placed themselves in a strong position, with a domestic record of success for the timely completion of tasks and possessing leverage for the Vietnam market, even before 1965. It is useful to recall that the first Korean forces arrived in September 1964 (ROK Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, Vung Tau) and March 1965 (Peace Dove, Bien Hoa) before the arrival of combat forces, reinforcing the notion of “aid” and its conspicuous ties to subsequent projects.57

Introduction to the international In Hyundai’s account of the period, there is little attention to this heated political context. Clearly, road-building mattered within the immediate framework of ARD and its project of reshaping a Thai state capable of policing itself, whether internally or while watching for external threats originating from across the Lao border. Although we have briefly addressed the subject, we should mention again that Thai military bases and airfields contributed heavily to the build-up taking place in the early 1960s.58 The location of the majority of these new air bases was also in the northeast, and the road network linked the entire region to Bangkok and to the base sites.59 Thai airfields soon

54

55 56 57 58 59

Karen L Gatz, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXIX, Part 1, Korea (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2000). Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours. Hyundai’s Bangkok office opened in 1964, following its first project bids in 1963. Vietnam Veterans Korea, 149–67. Chaloetiarana, Thailand, 239. Chaloetiarana, Thailand, 239.

222

Engineering Asia

provided the basis for many of the strikes over Vietnam, with a willing partner nation providing a safe haven for US aircraft, especially long-range bombers.60 Within the Hyundai canon, credit for the initial venture into the Thai market is usually given to Chung Se-yung, the younger brother of company CEO Chung Juyung, who had previously spent time studying in the USA. After graduating from Korea University (1953), Se-yung went abroad for graduate study in political science at Miami University (OH), finishing there in 1957.61 Placed in charge of the new Bangkok office early in the following decade (1964), Se-yung was given the task of watching for business opportunities, and therefore was well positioned to take advantage of the booming market in infrastructure/public works (1963), even as the firm lacked international experience. Joining the pool of those bidding for projects, Hyundai found itself facing competitors with much greater resources and a wealth of previous success. At the same time, however, the firm was able to draw on its wealth of relationships, and it understood the language and imagery needed to provide a convincing account. Whether or not we accept the Hyundai framing (the “export of Korean expertise”) for the project is not absolutely critical, as the different views here are not mutually exclusive. Submitting its first bid in 1963, Hyundai successfully secured a contract for the Pattani–Naratiwat section of the road planned for the Thai southeast (September 1965), coming in with a project bid considerably lower than the figures offered by its competitors.62 As we shall soon see, this lower estimate was achieved through a series of extreme cost-cutting projections, and these measures turned out to be problematic in the real-world context of building the road under field conditions. Although Hyundai won this particular bid, it was hardly the only contractor working in the region, and others were based in nearby areas completing Thai highway projects. Japan had a roadtraining center in Songkhla, and IBRD documents name other foreign contractors as well. For now, the key factors were the successful acquisition of the bid and the planning stages for the move to the Thai context, taking place in late 1965. When the departure date arrived in December 1965, the Korean news media treated it as a major event, building upon Hyundai’s framing of the export of personnel and technical expertise. At Kimpo airport, KBS TV covered the departure live, marking it as a celebratory occasion, a national moment of pride, along with a sense of accomplishment.63 Foreign travel, while still a novelty, was not the only motivation here, and it was the mobilization of the firm’s success on behalf of the nation that lent this event its special character. In the accompanying images taken from the press, the captions characterize the assembled group essentially along these lines, explaining that they were bound for Thailand to build a road and designating the team members as “engineers and technicians,” a succinct description, and one soon to be very important. At the same time, little, if anything, was said about the need for an additional supply 60 61

62 63

Chaloetiarana, Thailand, 239. Richard M. Steers, Made in Korea: Chung Ju Young and the Rise of Hyundai (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 63. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsae, 2028. E-History Korea, accessed January 10, 2016, http://ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn =KV&gbn=DH&mediaid=2659&mediadtl=9664&quality=W. For additional coverage, see Dong-A ilbo, December 30, 1965, 8, and Kyunghyang Sinmun, December 30, 1965, 7.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

223

of manual labor, and the broader political Thai context was absent. Hyundai’s overseas experience, in other words, took place within a larger regional story of hierarchical interests developing in Southeast Asia, although at least early on it appears that there was little recognition of this context.

On the ground (I): Hyundai construction in Thailand (1965–8) Hyundai’s arrival in December 1965 formed part of a much larger story for a Korean audience eager for news of successful overseas ventures. If circumstances in Southeast Asia were a bit more complicated, that is to be expected, as the arrival of foreign contractors intersected with a dense nexus of security and diplomatic concerns. And if the “Vietnam War” as such was taking shape, Thailand’s specific role dated to at least several years earlier (late 1950s), set amidst concerns that the conflict in Laos would cross national borders and penetrate the Thai northeast. If Korean engineers and labor were not directly related to the ARD effort, they nonetheless made up part of an increasingly international group of contractors participating in Thai nationbuilding—in this case, specific to the southeast. Similar activity was taking place in nearby Vietnam, with Daerim’s project at Rach Gia (Gulf of Thailand)—assisting with refurbishing port facilities—starting up in January 1966.64 That this Thai venture was not a one-off should be obvious from its overlap with the numerous projects taking place in the Vietnam context. Still, it is useful to emphasize the role of Pattani–Naratiwat within emerging patterns of Thai–Korean economic discourse. In the spring of 1966, President Park made a visit to East and Southeast Asia, traveling to Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan (Republic of China), and Hong Kong.65 For Thailand, specifically, trade was very much on the agenda, with the rhetoric of encouraging “economic co-prosperity with Free Southeast Asia.”66 Following Park’s official meeting with Prime Minister Thanom, the summary circulated mentioned joint projects in textiles, as well as technical cooperation.67 The fourth point of the brief, interestingly, cited “positive participation of Korean construction firms in international tenders for public works,” underscoring the Korean desire to continue expanding its role in Thailand, having gained an initial footing.68 The logistics system designed to steer labor to Thailand (and Vietnam) was still in its provisional stages, in contrast to the neat image provided by the airport departure scene at Kimpo. For the mid-1960s, and well into the late 1980s, labor migration on the ROK end was strictly controlled, as was the remission of accumulated funds, allowing the 64

65 66 67 68

Taerim Sanŏp 60-yŏnsa, 667–9. See also Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, Preliminary Economic and Engineering Study: Development of Harbor Facilities at the Port of Rach Gia: Based upon Field Studies Conducted April through December 1965 for the Government of Viet-Nam and the United States Operations Mission to Viet-Nam (Saigon and Los Angeles: Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, 1966). Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours, 53–72. Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours, 66–7. Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours. Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours. See also Thailand Yearbook (Bangkok: Temple Publicity Services, 1969). Hyundai advertises its work at Pattani–Naratiwat in bidding for the Thai market.

224

Engineering Asia

government to track bodies and the flow of valued foreign currencies. Korea Overseas Development Corporation (KODCO), a state organization, assumed responsibility for identifying potential labor migrants, a process beginning slightly earlier with the first large-scale movement to West Germany.69 With this means of oversight, migration was tied directly to procurements, meaning that a worker was approved for a specified period of time and a corresponding project. As the demand grew by the late 1960s, this meant that individuals sometimes sought to evade the system in pursuit of better pay, and Korean military veterans often found themselves recruited by private contractors upon completion of their service.70 The motive to circumvent control reinforces the arduous reality of daily life in Southeast Asia, a new and unexpected environment. If the physical environment proved challenging, labor relations would be even more problematic, especially once Hyundai reached the site. For this contract, the firm anticipated that it would be able to hire a significant portion of its workers from Thailand, and indeed, this proved to be the case. However, to recall the political context of southern Thailand, the local population consisted largely of ethnic Malays, a group that did not necessarily identify strongly with Bangkok. The Pattani area had long been considered a problem, and even if this was not due to communism, it was not an easy situation to enter. If the vexed politics of area residents did not explicitly create a problem with the arrival of new public works, this was not a group to passively accept directives from Hyundai executives. The company needed to practice diplomacy with Korean workers, and even more so with these unfamiliar “Thai/Malay” workers, who outnumbered their Korean counterparts by a significant number, a ratio of nearly two to one.71

Labor struggles and the Thai southeast (1966–8) This kind of metric applied later in the process, however, and Hyundai’s initial task lay in getting settled in southern Thailand and starting work as efficiently as possible. With the projected budget constraints in mind, the firm planned to use surplus equipment to undertake the task—the allotment included surplus Japanese trucks left over from the 1940s—allowing it to save on costs.72 As work started, however, equipment failures were a common event, with trucks, graders, and construction vehicles proving unreliable through much of the first year (1966–7). From the start, the planning fell behind schedule, and more importantly, new equipment had to be purchased, adding considerably to the budget figures and leaving the financial planning in arrears.73 In the first year, Hyundai spent 70 percent of the budget, while making little progress.74 The material realities of southern Thailand, with its palpable political tensions, dense jungle environment, and humid weather, confronted the Korean group with a formidable 69

70 71 72

73 74

Young-Sun Hong, Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). This was partly due to desired skills, and also to limitations on entry visas. Tonga ilbo, February 5, 1966, 6. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 2028–31. See also Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl 50-yŏnsa, 225–30. Other accounts note surplus American trucks and new Japanese trucks instead. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 2028–31. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 2028–31.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

225

challenge. As one worker characterized his intense discomfort: “Compressors and air hammers are still hard to handle, but it is much easier to carry out the backfill operations. Three months have passed since my arrival here. Everything looks unfamiliar and we are facing challenges every day. My ankle aches and I have a sharp pain in my wrist. It’s really hot.”75 The remarks of this individual prove historically valuable, not just because they emphasize the cultural and environmental adaptations, but also because they underscore the physical nature of the work, specifically its bodily requirements. Hyundai brought only a limited number of Korean workers to the site (mostly managerial), anticipating that it could meet its labor requirements by employing local workers on-site, recruiting from among available populations.76 Given the highly politicized character of the Pattani–Naratiwat region, as detailed, this factor offered the greatest potential for causing problems. Moreover, Hyundai was not prepared for the related issue of familiarizing new workers with a style of work discipline typical of the ROK military. At a site where Thai workers greatly outnumbered the Koreans, such issues had to be approached carefully, and Hyundai rapidly experienced labor difficulties across strained language and cultural lines. Labor issues emerged as a critical factor when Hyundai hired a large number of Thais to complete portions of the job, paying them at a rate slightly more than half of that received by their Korean counterparts.77 As previously mentioned, Hyundai treated the work site as a continuation of its existing corporate culture. Korean males shared the common experience of military conscription, so the expectations of the ROK military remained a baseline for prevailing behavioral norms. The work ethic drew upon the assumptions of a homosocial environment, in which one remained subject to discipline throughout the duration of one’s shift, with little time for breaks or recreation.78 With completion of the contract serving as a major incentive, long hours and extra shifts became the norm, with a typical work day covering from six in the morning until nearly midnight. Thai work groups, contracted to Hyundai on a short-term basis at lower rates of pay, held contrasting assumptions about the conditions under which they were willing to work. For one, they were based at or near their homes and had little interest in maintaining rigorous discipline. More importantly, their primary motivation, like that of most contract workers, lay with receiving a payoff at the end, agreeing to contract for a certain number of hours in exchange for guaranteed pay. Hyundai, which would become famous for motivating its workers with appeals to their loyalty, had little leverage with these Thai workers, other than the possibility of alternatively withholding or increasing their pay according to job performance. 75

76 77

78

Jae-duck Choi, “New Challenges for Korean Contractors,” Korea Focus, The Korea Foundation, August 2012, accessed March 8, 2016, http://koreafocus.or.kr/design2/layout/content_print. asp?group_id=104154. Tonga ilbo, February 5, 1966, 6. Lee Myung-Bak, Uncharted Path: The Autobiography of Lee Myung-bak (Naperville, IL: Sourcebook, 2012), 55. Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

226

Engineering Asia

Adding to the tension, the presence of corporate funds stored on-site attracted unwanted attention, leading to a number of uncomfortable confrontations. Over the course of the project, there was a rapid turnover of Thai workers, as individuals dissatisfied with these work conditions chose to opt out by simply failing to turn up—that is, indicating their choice to vote “with their feet.” Others, adopting a more proactive approach, attempted to make inroads toward the company payroll, thereby confronting Hyundai directly, seeking to gain access through force or to generate a response by going on strike.79 In his account of the venture, Donald Kirk cites Thai workers even brandishing “pistols and knives” to bring pressure regarding the question of pay equity.80 Behind these top-down versions of the labor unrest, it is not difficult to interpret the tropes as reinforcing Hyundai’s lack of familiarity, particularly regarding the mix of Thai nationalism and Islamic activism in this borderlands region. If Thai workers responded to Hyundai’s demands with a variety of contrary positions, this development does not necessarily mean they did not want to work, so much as the fact that the highway project itself was identified with Bangkok and its community-building agenda. In other words, the labor issues Hyundai encountered were only partly about working conditions, and remained linked to the added challenge of working in this politicized context as a sub-imperial agent. Thai nationals in the surrounding area, as already noted, tended not to identify with the national government, were often ethnic Malay, and held a range of positions regarding the unexpected, dramatic surge of new capital and material appearing in their midst. For the remainder of the project, Hyundai compromised and made do by trying to improve its relations with workers. At the same time, the Thai context provided an extremely valuable learning experience for the Korean firm and, in this respect, established a precedent that would carry forward into the next decade, when Hyundai began to undertake a large number of projects in the Middle East. Given its difficulties with Thai workers, Hyundai made the critical decision to try a Korean-only labor force, thereby minimizing the conjoined factors of language, culture, and working style as potential problems.81 This increased the firm’s stake in Korean labor, meaning that it had to identify the best and most loyal workers to rely upon, especially those willing to relocate abroad for lengthy periods. Hyundai believed this to be a worthwhile investment, allowing it much greater control over the work site and its expectations.

Korean labor: Corporate culture in process Hierarchy can be challenging to maintain regardless of the parties, and the difficulties on-site involved a significant proportion of the Korean labor force as well. In its recruiting for the project, Hyundai selected from two distinct groups of engineers and workers: those with experience primarily in the domestic setting (South Korea) and 79 80

81

Lee, The Uncharted Path, 54–7. Donald Kirk, Korean Dynasty (New York and London: Routledge, 2015). See Chapter 6, “Mother Company.” Young-Jin Choi, Seoul National University, personal communication. September 2015.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

227

those possessing overseas education, typically with an engineering background that included at least some prior training in the USA.82 The members of this younger, second group tended to arrive at Hyundai through a formal recruiting process, which had expanded along with the firm’s rapid growth in the early 1960s. In contrast, members of the first group had often spent more time with the firm and rose from within its ranks, often joining through invitation or informal ties. In this respect, members of the senior/first group were much more likely to identify closely with the company and its emerging corporate history. In the field, these different types of training translated into distinct approaches toward the site and its engineering requirements, framing the problems already discussed—equipment, labor relations, environment—especially the initial purchase of surplus Japanese equipment. More importantly, the reliance on Thai labor came not in isolation, but with the simultaneous experience of problems with Korean labor, involving a strike action uniting managerial-level and lower-level employees. According to the brief account provided in Seung-Ho Kwon and Michael O’Donnell’s The Chaebol and Labor in Korea, the 1967 strike of Hyundai workers in Thailand brought together laborers across a range of pay grades, with approximately three hundred employees participating, of whom fifty were at the managerial level.83 If the strike was nominally motivated by the clash between different engineering cultures at Hyundai, the more critical issue lay with the question of pay for overtime and establishing transparency regarding this form of remuneration. At the time, managerial employees were paid at a monthly wage, with regular employees held to an hourly wage. Members of the second group were thus eligible for significant bonuses in Thailand with the availability of extra shifts. However, they soon found that the company accounting for these hours was inconsistent and that management chose to delay or even withhold overtime pay for lengthy periods. The group of managerial-level employees who sympathized with this plight were angered by a fixed monthly package, which required them to work long hours on-site with few incentives or opportunities for additional remuneration. The 1967 strike action ultimately resulted in a series of new developments, some of them expected, with other results surprising. In the short term, Hyundai Construction began to augment its workforce with Thai laborers, even as this strategy, too, might prove problematic. However, the key here is recognizing that greater reliance on Thai labor came only following the experience of similar problems with Korean workers, a point often omitted in accounts of the project. Second, Hyundai Construction had to establish a uniform set of pay grades across its ranks, addressing this issue of overtime pay, along with the related question of an individual’s work context. Construction in Vietnam was going on at this time, with workers there typically receiving a much higher salary than those based in Thailand.84 Only by offering comparable pay could

82

83

84

Seung-Ho Kwon and Michael O’Donnell, The Chaebol and Labor in Korea (London and New York: Routledge, 2001,) 56. See 51–6 regarding Hyundai’s management hierarchy. Kwon and O’Donnell, The Chaebol and Labor in Korea, 55. This account draws on the 1982 Hyundai account. Kwon and O’Donnell, The Chaebol and Labor in Korea, 51.

228

Engineering Asia

Hyundai satisfy its employees, who had the ability to communicate with their peers about differences in pay. Placing this narrative of labor struggle alongside the first account, in which the trouble derived almost exclusively from cultural differences, the resulting fusion offers a more nuanced account. Construction at Pattani–Naratiwat served as an enormous social experiment for both groups, one in which Hyundai negotiated and adapted new policies with respect to many of its internal labor and managerial practices, with longterm implications for the future. To label this effort a “success” ignores the reality of the field experience, eliding the numerous problems faced by workers, as well as the uncomfortable memory of the sections of road that buckled and were washed away by tropical rains, requiring frequent replacement. The US Army Corps of Engineers surveyed Hyundai’s work at intervals, sometimes requiring a section to be repeated. The construction experience at Pattani–Naratiwat ultimately consumed an interval of slightly more than two years (December 1965–February 1968), a commitment that saw Hyundai run up costs exceeding the amount contracted for by several million dollars. Together, equipment, labor, and weather-related delays put the company in arrears, certainly not what the firm had expected upon receiving the bid in 1965 after deliberately offering a low cost estimate. At the same time, Hyundai’s perseverance in the face of these difficult circumstances made a positive impression upon the Thai government, its US patrons, and the South Korean government, thereby earning the firm a reputation for reliability. The completion of construction in early 1968 coincided with the start of construction on the Seoul–Pusan Gyeongbu (경부) Expressway (February 1968), freeing workers to return home, or alternatively, to relocate to other job sites.85 If the focus here rests with Korean workers, it should be clear that Hyundai’s arrival had a major disruptive effect upon the regional economy, including the Thai labor market, through its tenure in Southeast Asia. The firm introduced a significant infusion of capital and resources into an area not traditionally known for a high level of economic activity. If the firm experienced significant labor issues and, in turn, learned a good deal from these encounters, the categories of “race” and “ethnicity” offer a partial window of insight into a more complex set of circumstances, one involving, minimally, the intersection of several related factors: nationality, race/ethnicity, social class, access to higher education, and technical skill level. Hyundai was seeking to work out the logistics of a long-term system of labor relations that would allow it and other large Korean firms to control the movements of Korean (including, in this case, foreign) workers overseas, and to manage their labor and economic activity from departure to return.

On the ground (II): Managing procurements in Vietnam, 1965–73 Hyundai’s expansion into Thailand and Vietnam was simultaneous, coinciding with the build-up for the war effort in 1964–5. Nonetheless, construction in Vietnam tends to 85

Steers, Made in Korea, 67.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

229

receive more scholarly attention because of the conspicuous differences in the quantity of contracts received, along with the scale of the work to be done.86 To reinforce this second point, it is useful to recall that private contractors in Vietnam performed their tasks alongside a conspicuous military presence, and this military intervention had its own construction aims, especially the work of the Peace Dove division, through its civic actions. For our purposes, the critical theme remains the same as that of the preceding section: that is, documenting that the arrival of Korean capital and labor intersected with the growing demands of a racialized labor hierarchy, one structured by the needs of the kula ring. In Vietnam, Korean contractors worked at much larger sites, set amidst a multinational labor force, especially for port sites like Cam Ranh Bay, which reached its peak in 1967.87 On a daily basis, Korean workers interacted with new forms of engineering oversight, learned how to operate unfamiliar types of machinery, and negotiated the boundaries of their labor relations within this vast system, often with tension, and even outbreaks of violence.88 In Thailand, Hyundai experienced resistance over working hours and pay, but these issues were almost expected, part of the price of adjusting to new opportunities. In contrast, Vietnam offered additional complications, especially in terms of taking advantage of the numerous opportunities to learn and acquire new skills. At least nominally, South Vietnam had been promised jobs alongside international contractors, with the suggestion that local workers would experience regular supervision and the chance to advance.89 In reality, the RVN complained frequently after 1965 that its citizens were receiving the least desirable jobs and that TCN workers were the ones learning how to perform skilled tasks. From the American standpoint, Filipino and Korean labor represented a known, reliable quantity, especially given the legacy of a shared history and a growing demand for skills. The rapid pace of Vietnam meant almost constant supervision, and in this context, the skill/labor hierarchies became even more obvious, despite the language of equality and numerous social events planned to ease relations. At its peak, the Cam Ranh site employed more than fifty thousand workers, with the vast majority of these Vietnamese locals, holding a wide range of jobs.90 When workers required housing near the site, Hyundai built the residences for Cam Ranh “new city.”91 The transport of goods and materials also assumed great importance, and here Hanjin—again, with a prior history dating to the Korean War—contracted to operate the port of Quy Nhon.92 In this case, the contractor quickly demonstrated its reliability, resulting in the withdrawal of any 86 87

88 89

90

91 92

Diary of a Contract (NBy 44105) (January 1962–June 1967) (Saigon: RMK-BRJ), i. Diary of a Contract, i. See also Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, Cargo Handling Equipment and Cargo Handling Operations (Los Angeles and Saigon: Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, 1965): “Containerization,” 4. Lessons Learned, Headquarters, US Army Depot Cam Ranh Bay, period ending January 31, 1968. “The Big Month,” a feature in The Vietnam Builders, cites a “peak month” in March 1967. See also “Military Construction Grows in South Vietnam,” The Em-Kayan (March 1966): 3. Diary of a Contract, “Preface.” Filipinos and Koreans were also trusted over Vietnamese for security reasons. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 1982, 2032. “Hanjin Founder Seized Opportunities with Good Sense of Timing,” Accessed September 15, 2017, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/03/488_192261.html.

230

Engineering Asia

intrusive, supervisory role. In these and numerous other examples, Korean firms identified a key role for themselves within the supply chain, often taking a more skilled role than that of their Asian colleagues. This appeal to logistics is useful, in that it explains the function of Korea within the American mindset, if not that of the Koreans themselves, serving as a rear area, safely away from combat. The USA had used occupied Japan in this fashion throughout the Korean War, and now, a number of sites—Thailand (rest and recuperation, air strikes), the Philippines (medical care, supplies), Korea (skilled labor, construction materials), and Okinawa (airfields, jungle training)—provided the US military with the elements of a comprehensive, integrated transport system.93 This system drew upon the structures created earlier by the Japanese Empire without replicating them entirely, and here we again encounter the dynamics of this volume, with echoes from the America occupation and the Korean War. For the Korean participants, whether contractors or military, the material incentives were obvious: better pay and working conditions than those available at home and, more importantly, a chance to challenge the kula hierarchy and its constraints.

“Peace and construction”: In pursuit of procurements According to its accounts, Hyundai contributed significantly to the completion of a number of infrastructure projects in Vietnam, with the most prominent among these being the dredging work along the Mekong River (Cam Ranh) and the supplementary building associated with Bieh Hoa air base, with these two sites in the vicinity of Saigon.94 The firm’s placement required working within a complicated, multinational labor force, with the American consortium RMK-BRJ (Raymond International, MK, Brown & Root, and JA Jones Construction), the collective “Vietnam Builders,” overseeing the majority of projects.95 Hyundai’s role, in other words, was valuable, but nonetheless remained that of a smaller, subsidiary Asian partner, fitting itself within a hierarchy of firms undertaking building tasks. To be clear, there was a significant amount of money to be made here, as the infrastructure needed to support the growing war effort could barely keep pace, meaning that the priority was on rapid completion of tasks. As with Thailand, part of Hyundai’s task consisted of integrating within this larger network of partners, and here, there was far less room for undertaking independent action. The volume of work to be done, along with the corresponding profits to be made, succeeded in attracting workers from around the region, as well as those regional firms with ambitions of becoming partners to the American military. As already noted, Hyundai maintained a good working relationship with the USA, given its record in the domestic context, and agreements made for procurements meant that Korean firms would receive priority. Moreover, the cultural component of the 93

94 95

Richard Tregaskis, Southeast Asia: Building the Bases (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975), 191. Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 2028–31. Donald E. Wolf and Richard Lowitt, Big Dams and Other Dreams: The Six Companies Story (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). See also Diary of a Contract.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

231

labor was probably even more significant than in Thailand, as Vietnam was under closer supervision from the granting authorities. The problem, moreover, rested with persuading the Vietnamese government to grant a sufficient number of entry visas to meet the demand for skilled workers.

Dredging at Cam Ranh Bay (1966–7) Many of the tasks attempted in the Vietnam context were essentially new, although now there were numerous external partners to rely upon. If the US Army Corps of Engineers had sometimes played a supervisory role in Thailand, this body proved much more willing to work alongside its subcontractors in Vietnam. Moreover, the development at Cam Ranh Bay was an immediate priority, as the port, situated on the southeast coast (approximately 200 miles north of Saigon), became the entry point for the majority of the goods needed to fight the war. Beginning in June 1965, the USA started to upgrade the port, enhancing the ability for larger ships to dock, drop off materials, and pick up return loads. The upgrade included nearly every aspect of the site: the roads in the surrounding area, the warehouses and holding spaces, the fuel tanks, and the dock area where ships were meant to unload.96 Cam Ranh Bay was of particular interest because it was one of the few deep water ports along the coast, and thus critical for a war effort in which the Americans planned to transport goods via large ships and by air.97 For Hyundai, this particular job involved a good deal of dredging work along the Saigon River, aiming to increase the depth of the bottom surface and thereby the capability of handling a greater volume of shipping. This kind of work needed to be followed closely, and again, the degree of scrutiny was much higher than it had been in Thailand. Daniel Harbaugh, who participated in hydrographic surveys of the river on behalf of the OICC, recalled that “the dredging was contracted to a Korean dredge owned by Hyundai, now a major automobile company, and was paid by the cubic meter of the material dredged; it was essential to keep the quantities accurate with before and after bottom surveys.”98 Harbaugh’s remarks reflect his relative unfamiliarity with Hyundai, certainly in this context, and more importantly, the immediate, follow-up level of detail as constituting a feedback mechanism.99 The dredge in question, the Hyundai Ho, proved critical for dredging, as well as for providing fill for new airfields.100 In undertaking this task, Hyundai worked closely alongside a set of partners, fitting its work within related tasks undertaken by these firms. For Cam Ranh, the initial partner was the DeLong Corporation, which had devised a prefabricated floating pier, allowing for ease of transportation and subsequent installation. Brought to Vietnam in several sections, the DeLong pier was installed at Cam Ranh Bay and at two other sites (Da Nang, Quy Nhon) along the coast, permitting the pace of construction to 96

Cargo Handling Equipment and Cargo Handling Operations. Adrian G. Traas, Engineers at War: The United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2010), 444. 98 Daniel Harbaugh, Memoirs (self-published, 2013), 54. 99 Diary of a Contract, 228. 100 Diary of a Contract, 228. 97

232

Engineering Asia

increase rapidly. At the same time, Hyundai’s dredging work was not simply about providing greater depth for ships and barges, but also for providing the necessary fill (accumulated soil) to expand the staging area near the dock.101 The material gathered was put to use in land reclamation, and in due time, the port facility was able to handle a total of eight deep draft ships.102 The dense nexus of activity focused at Cam Ranh reflects the fact that this entry point was undergoing not only a material but also a conceptual transformation. If the dredging work was followed closely by patrons, Hyundai was able to improve its skill set, and also to provide space for larger ships to drop off their goods. In the mid-1960s, the newly emerging model of containerization was not yet the dominant form of practice, although this situation was changing rapidly, and the wartime context likely accelerated the need. An idea with its origins dating to pre-1945, the container allowed for a uniform system of shipping across different modes of conveyance: by truck, rail, or ship.103 Associated in particular with the support firm Sea-Land Service, containers brought goods in vast quantities, linking the ports of the North American West Coast (Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco) with those in the Pacific (Vietnam, Yokohama). The infrastructure needed to support this activity (large cranes, upgraded container handling and holding facilities) was expensive, but for those ports willing to take the risk, the transformation was startling: for South Korea, Busan would start to handle containers in 1968. With its growing size and intense development period (late 1965 to early 1968), Cam Ranh Bay became a multinational site with the completion of much of the refurbishment and expansion work, and by 1967, Korean workers found themselves toiling side by side with colleagues from a range of Asian partner nations.104 Working in this setting, issues of concern to Koreans appear similar to those previously mentioned, especially the issue of appropriate compensation for overtime work. The pace required at the site was such that RMK-BRJ allowed overtime to accumulate unchecked for the initial stages of its operation, although eventually this policy would have to stop.105 Although there are no accounts of strike actions specific to this point, Filipino and Korean workers were disappointed at the closure of the unlimited overtime scheme. A number of Korean workers did engage in labor action in 1967 over food (quality of rice) and work conditions, with a November 1967 action resulting in a brief shutdown.106 This second action requires further context, with Korean workers responding negatively to food (rice) and labor conditions in conjunction with the Vinnell Corporation. According to at least one source, the 1967 mini-strike at a cafeteria shut down work for several days, with Korean drivers seizing and controlling a fleet 101

Diary of a Contract, 228. Richard Tregaskis, Southeast Asia: Building the Bases, 73. 103 Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Alexander Klose, The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015). 104 Korean workers even received Korea-specific entertainment and vegetables. 105 “Austerity Cuts VN Overtime,” The Vietnam Builders 3, no. 14, August 1966 (and following) folder, Carlisle Barracks. 106 Kyŏnghyang sinmun, November 28, 1967, 3. 102

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

233

of trucks.107 The action report issued by the base authority mentions the subsequent return to work (late November), but offers scant explanation for what happened to resolve the issue.108 If the precise circumstances remain in dispute, what is clear from this activity, and from similar labor struggles for the same period (1966–7), is that the recruitment of thousands of workers at this sprawling complex exceeded the ability of contractors to manage a growing multinational force. Vietnamese workers, as with Thai workers in the preceding section, often complained about their low pay, which in many cases was still tied to rates dating to the late 1950s.109

Skill and TCNs: Uneasy allies To take a long-term view, military construction activity in Vietnam dated to 1962, and indeed, RMK-BRJ refers to the period 1962–5 as the “lean years” in one of its retrospectives.110 These first years generally saw only local workers and a handful of Americans, with a reduced pace and more time to explain new tasks and skills. By 1965, events had shifted dramatically, with change caused primarily by the turn to rapid wartime mobilization. In this same RMK-BRJ report, the consortium thanks an estimated 100,000 Vietnamese workers, alongside much smaller figures for the Filipino and Korean contingents, with each numbering only a few thousand.111 Ultimately, workers came from 27 different nations, with some so few in number as to not receive a separate listing. Given these figures, it would be easy to assume that the Vietnamese did not experience any discomfort working with their Asian colleagues, but in fact this was the not the case. The Filipino and Korean groups in particular were often placed in a mid-level intermediate role, with contractors favoring their work ethic and perceived level of skill. If the available contracts in Vietnam offered the possibility of technical learning, moreover—how to operate machinery, how to build new types of structures—this factor has to be counted as a major incentive to all participants, along with pay. It therefore explains a good deal of the labor tensions in the Vietnam setting. Specifically, the issue of allowing TNCs emerged frequently between the USA and South Vietnam in their diplomatic relations. The wide range of Asian contractors and laborers mentioned here, with Koreans as the focus, offered a positive picture to external observers, especially Americans. However, the Vietnamese measured this activity in terms of the loss of jobs and, more importantly, a missed opportunity for skill-building and the acquisition of new knowledge. Behind the veneer of “Free World” cooperation, there was fierce competition among partners, challenging the hierarchy.112

107

Shelby Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: US Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1963–1973 (New York: Random House, 1985), 215. 108 Lessons Learned, Headquarters, US Army Depot Cam Ranh Bay, period ending January 31, 1968. 109 Melbourne, Advance Base Construction, 198. 110 Diary of a Contract, “Preface.” 111 Diary of a Contract, “Preface.” 112 The Robert Komer papers contain detailed maps listing all of the “Free World” aid sites in Vietnam. James Lin, UC Berkeley, personal communication.

234

Engineering Asia

This issue underscores the complexity with respect to the Korean build-up of personnel in Vietnam, given both the civilian and the military components. The learning process took place at both levels, and frequently on the same project, for a number of the sites. Moreover, the references to the TCN issue suggest why the ROK explored the possibility of encouraging those recently decommissioned from the military to stay on as civilian contractors. Even at a higher wage, such an individual was worth the investment, particularly when compared to the costs of recruiting a new party, essentially starting over with a beginner’s skill baseline. As a means of control, in turn, Vietnamese authorities handled this issue by restricting entry visas and by tying the terminus of one’s stay to a project, exacerbating the increasing tensions over labor.

Southeast Asia and South Korean development: After the sub-imperial The impact of Hyundai’s participation in Southeast Asia (1965–73) has long been characterized in terms of a one-way relationship rather than a dynamic exchange, in part because much of the attention has been devoted to tracking the financial gains.113 On this point, the recent work of Jim Glassman and Young-Jin Choi is perhaps the most useful corrective, arguing for the centrality of procurements for technical development and not just the Korean economy.114 Building on this critique, this chapter has aimed to capture the embedded labor hierarchy and its tensions, emphasizing the extent to which Southeast Asia offered a social experiment in hierarchy. If the chapter has focused more on the labor hierarchy and less on the history of technology, it should be clear that Hyundai entered Thailand and Vietnam with little international experience and left with a well-developed skill set (civil engineering, road-building, dredging), in part derived from working with external partners. With its newfound confidence, Hyundai turned to two projects representing a continuation of this recent experience. The construction phase of the Gyeongbu Expressway, the highway linking Seoul and Pusan (1968–70), began in early 1968, and the Thai context was specifically mobilized by Hyundai CEO Chung Ju-yung during his discussions with President Park Chung-hee. Even as Hyundai represented one partner among many in this venture, the project allowed Hyundai to return home successfully, engaging in a major undertaking to transform the South Korean transport system.115 Along with this domestic return, Hyundai received a contract to undertake the construction of military housing on Guam (1969), a project described by some commentators as the first (Korean) construction project to take place on “American” soil.116 The Guam contract fits nicely within the pattern established in Southeast Asia,

113

For an exception, see Larry Westphal, Yung W. Rhee and Garry Pursell, Korean Industrial Competence: Where It Came From (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1981). 114 Glassman and Choi, “The Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex.” 115 Chihyung Jeon, “A Road to Modernization and Unification: The Construction of the Gyeongbu Expressway in South Korea,” Technology and Culture 51, no. 1 (2010): 55–79. 116 Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa, 2029.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

235

with a specific project undertaken for a familiar patron and with a highly specific set of criteria for its completion. The effects of the Korean experience in Vietnam began to be felt back home well before the withdrawal of troops (1973), beginning as early as the late 1960s. As a large-scale undertaking, the Gyeongbu Expressway project encountered this sort of effect in distinct ways. As just noted, Hyundai mentioned the Thai project during the bidding stages, using it as leverage based upon its ability to complete difficult jobs. During Gyeongbu construction, moreover, the level of work discipline was high, and Chihyung Jeon has described a managerial strategy involving returning engineers from Vietnam, deployed as a form of field supervisor to provide extra motivation.117 Finally, the engineering and learning from the Southeast Asia context clearly affected the execution of the domestic project, with Korean firms having acquired a great deal of new technical knowledge (1965–8). Beyond these immediate effects, a number of the development projects from the Vietnam and Thai contexts held echoes of similar types of mobilizations taking place almost simultaneously in the domestic setting. For engineering, Chung Ju-yung has observed in a biographical account that the Thai context supplied a model for the Soyang Dam, completed in the early 1970s.118 For public health, the extensive use of preventive medicine translated to caution for Korean forces in Vietnam, exposed to a harsh, jungle environment, along with a range of tropical disease threats such as malaria.119 In turn, this led to a corresponding emphasis at home, especially in relation to the elimination of intestinal parasites, long seen as an indicator of development. Beginning in the late 1960s, Korean schoolchildren were required to submit twiceannual stool samples and received doses of anthelmintics (pills) to address the parasite problem. If Southeast Asia held the form of an experimental space in late 1964, in turn, it began to change South Korea profoundly in its approach to labor practices, and by the late 1960s, the ROK was transforming the social and medical campaigns directed at rural villagers.120 As a source for experimentation and as a model of practice, Southeast Asia provided Korean workers and firms with a space in which to engage, to explore, and to learn, holding numerous lessons for the home context.121 Ultimately, South Korea had to confront the constraints of its support role as a sub-imperial actor, and this remark hints at a future beyond the scope of this chapter. To remind the reader of the volume’s major themes, the Southeast Asian experience was not new, but part of 117

Jeon, “A Road to Modernization and Unification,” 65. Pŏm-sŏng Chŏn, Chŏng Chu-yŏng-Hyŏndae ch'angŏp pihwa: sillok kirok sosŏl (Seoul: Sŏmundang, 1984). See Chapter 6 for the Thailand context. Japanese construction firms also played a significant role in this and similar “Korean” projects. 119 Harrison and Sung Vim Ying, “War on Two Fronts: The Fight against Parasites in Korea and Vietnam.” 120 Korean Preventive Medicine Teams (KOPREM), accessed September 28, 2016, http://pdf.usaid. gov/pdf_docs/PDAAF588.pdf. Korea Preventive Medicine (KOPREM) funded medical teams in Vietnam through USAID to track malaria, and these Korean doctors later worked on malaria in the ROK. 121 For the most recent literature in Korean, see Pak T'ae-gyun, Pet’ŭnam chŏnjaeng (Seoul: Han’gyŏrye, 2015). See also Yun Chung-ro, Pet’ŭnam chŏnjaeng ŭi Han’guk sahoesa: ich’in chŏnjaeng hyŏnjae (Seoul: P'urŭn Yŏksa, 2015). 118

236

Engineering Asia

a longer process whereby Koreans built upon previous relationships. If they sought a better position for themselves within the hierarchy of the kula ring—or perhaps even outside of it—that would come later.

Bibliography “Austerity Cuts VN Overtime.” The Vietnam Builders 3, no. 14 (August 1966). Baldwin, Frank, Diane Jones and Michael Jones. America’s Rented Troops, South Koreans in Vietnam. Philadelphia, PA: American Friends Service Committee, 1971. Beemer, Bryce. Sogang University East Asia Institute. Personal communication. Bernad, Miguel A. Adventure in Vietnam: The Story of Operation Brotherhood. Manila: Operation Brotherhood International, 1974. “The Big Month.” The Vietnam Builders (March 1967). Bredo, William, Jack E. Van Zandt, and William N. Breswick. Development of the Cam Ranh Bay Region: Phase 1 Study. Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Research Institute, 1966. Carter, James. Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State-Building, 1954–1968. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Chaloetiarana, Thak. Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2007. Choi, Jae-duck. “New Challenges for Korean Contractors.” Korea Focus, The Korea Foundation, August 2012. New Challenges for Korea Contractors. Accessed March 8, 2016, http://koreafocus.or.kr/design2/layout/content_print.asp?group_id=104154. Choi, Young-Jin. Seoul National University, September 2015. Personal communication. Chŏn, Pŏm-sŏng. Chŏng Chu-yŏng-Hyŏndae ch'angŏp pihwa: sillok kirok sosŏl. Seoul: Sŏmundang, 1984. Conover-Mast Publications, Inc. “Vietnam: The Construction War.” Construction Equipment and Materials (June 1966): 1. “Construction Expands in South Vietnam.” The Em-Kayan (June 1965). Cumings, Bruce. “The Korea-Centric Japanese Imperium and the Transformation of the International System from the 1930s to the 1950s.” In The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s, edited by Shigeru Akita and Nicholas J White. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Dacy, Douglas C. Foreign Aid, War, and Economic Development: South Vietnam, 1955– 1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Daelim. Accessed September 1, 2017, https://www.daelim.co.kr/biz/Intro.do. Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall. Cargo Handling Equipment and Cargo Handling Operations. Saigon and Los Angeles: Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, 1965. Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall. Preliminary Economic and Engineering Study: Development of Harbor Facilities at the Port of Rach Gia: Based upon Field Studies Conducted April through December 1965 for the Government of Viet-Nam and the United States Operations Mission to Viet-Nam. Saigon and Los Angeles: Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, 1966. Dheeragool, Sukree. Highways in Thailand. Bangkok: Department of Highways, 1971. Ekbladh, David. The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Elkind, Jessica. Aid under Fire: Nation-Building and the Vietnam War. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2016.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

237

The Em-Kayan: Magazine of “M-K.” Boise, ID: Morrison-Knudsen Company, 1962. Gatz, Karen L. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 29, Part 1, Korea. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2000. Glassman, Jim and Young-Jin Choi. “The Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex: Cold War Geopolitical Economy and South Korean Industrialization.” Environment and Planning 5, no. 46 (May 2014): 1160–80. Harbaugh, Daniel. Memoirs. Self-published, 2013. Harrison, Mark and Sung Vim Ying, “War on Two Fronts: The Fight against Parasites in Korea and Vietnam.” Medical History 61, no. 3 (July 2017): 401–23. Headquarters, US Army Depot. Lessons Learned. Headquarters, US Army Depot, Cam Ranh Bay, Period Ending 31 January 1968. Hong, Young-Sun. Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl Chusik Hoesa, Hyŏndae kŏnsŏl samsimnyŏnsa [Hyundai Construction 35th Anniversary volume]. Seoul: Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl Chusik Hoesa, 1982. Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl Chusik Hoesa, Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl 50-yŏnsa [Hyundai Construction 50th Anniversary Volume) Seoul: Hyŏndae Kŏnsŏl Chusik Hoesa, 1997. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank. Appraisal of a National Highway Project. Accessed January 10, 2016, http://documents.worldbank. org/curated/en/250291468119326750/pdf/multi-page.pdf. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank. Thailand Second Highway Project. Accessed on August 12, 2016, http://documents.worldbank.org/ curated/en/487291468132277718/Thailand-Second-Highway-Project. Jeon, Chihyung. “A Road to Modernization and Unification: The Construction of the Gyeongbu Expressway in South Korea.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 1 (2010): 55–79. Kim, Jae-wŏn. “Hanjin Founder Seized Opportunities with Good Sense of Timing.” Accessed September 15, 2017, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/ biz/2016/03/488_192261.html. Joint US Military Advisory Group to Thailand. Mobile Development. San Francisco, CA: Joint US Military Advisory Group to Thailand, 1964. Jones, Leroy P. and Il Sakong. “Appendix B: Chaebol Case Studies.” In Government, Business, and Entrepreneurship in Economic Development: The Korean Case, edited by Leroy P. Jones and Il Sakong. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1980. Kim, Sooyong. “The Korean Construction Industry as an Exporter of Services.” The World Bank Economic Review 2, no. 2 (1988): 225–38. Kingery, Michael. Vinnell Corporation Contract/AID: 493-37. Bangkok: USAID, 1970. Kirk, Donald. Korean Dynasty. New York and London: Routledge, 2015. Kislenko, Arne. “A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand’s Role in Covert Operations, CounterInsurgency, and the Wars in Indochina.” The Journal of Conflict Studies 24 (Summer 2004): 65–96. Klose, Alexander. The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Korea Ministry of Culture and Information. “Dispatch of Korean Forces.” Korea and Vietnam, (1967): 36–39.. Korea and Vietnam. Seoul: Ministry of Public Information, 1966. Korea (South) Ministry of Public Information. Strong Ties among Free World Neighbours. Seoul: Ministry of Public Information, 1966.

238

Engineering Asia

Kushner, Barak, and Sherzod Muminov. The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife. London: Routledge, 2017. Kwon, Seung-ho, and Michael O’Donnell. The Chaebol and Labor in Korea. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Kyŏnghyang Sinmun. December 30, 1965, 7. Lachittrakun, Suppachok. The Evaluation of Operations of a Mobile Development Unit. National Security Command. Bangkok: Military Research and Development Center, 1967. Ladd, Culver S. Thailand Transformed, 1950–2012: “Is Thailand the Test Case?” Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2012. Lahlum, A.H. Diary of a Contract (NBy 44105) (January 1962–June 1967). Saigon: RMKBRJ, 1967). Lee, Jin-kyung. Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Lee, Myung-Bak. Uncharted Path: the Autobiography of Lee Myung-bak. Naperville, IL: Sourcebook, 2012. Levinson, Marc. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Lin, James. Personal communication, 2015. Melbourne, Robert. “Advance Base Construction by Civilian Contractors in War Zones.” University of Southern California, PhD dissertation, 1996. “Military Construction Grows in South Vietnam.” The Em-Kayan (March 1966): 3. Mizuno, Hiromi. “Introduction.” In Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore, and John DiMoia, Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order (forthcoming, London: Bloomsbury, 2018). Moon, Seungsook. Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Muscat, Robert. The Fifth Tiger: A Study of Thai Development Policy. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Ngoc, Chau Huy. Personal communication, 2015. Park, SeungWoo and Victor T. King, eds. The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond. Singapore: ISEAS, 2013. Pak, T’ae-gyun Pet’ŭnam chŏnjaeng. Seoul: Han’gyŏrye, 2015. Pauley, Edwin W. Report on Japanese Assets in Manchuria to the President of the United States, July 1946. Washington, DC: Reparations Mission to Japan, 1946. Pauley, Edwin W. Report on Japanese Assets in Soviet-occupied Korea to the President of the United States, June 1946. Washington, DC: Reparations Mission to Japan, 1948. Philippine Civic Action Group. 1st Philippine Civic Action Group, RVN (1st PHILCAGV). Vietnam, 1967. Pigeon Unit Construction. Accessed September 10, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=k0Nmp31mpTU. P’yŏnghwa wa kŏnsŏl [Peace and Construction]. Saigon: Chuwŏl Han’gukkun Saryŏngbu, 1967 RMK-BRJ. The Vietnam Builders. Saigon: Press Information & Public Affairs Department, RMK-BRJ. Robert Komer Papers, Lydon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX, 1961–8. Rozali, Ibnul Islam. Pattani Report: An Account of Daily Events of Violence in Muslimdominated Southern Provinces of Thailand. Islamabad: Institute for Research and Studies of Muslim Minorities, 2007.

Hyundai Construction and Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, 1965–73

239

Ruth, Richard. In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2010. Stanton, Shelby. The Rise and Fall of an American Army: US Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1963–1973. New York: Random House, 1985. Steers, Richard M. Made in Korea: Chung Ju Young and the Rise of Hyundai. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Taerim Sanŏp Chusik Hoesa, Taerim Sanŏp Chusik Hoesa 60-yŏnsa (Seoul: Taerim Sanŏp 60-yŏnsa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, 1999). Tonga ilbo. Thailand Yearbook. Bangkok: Temple Publicity Services, 1969. Toner, Simon. The Counter-Revolutionary Path: South Vietnam, the United States, and the Global Allure of Development, 1968–1973. PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, 2015. Traas, Adrian G. Engineers at War: The United States Army in Vietnam. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2010. Tregaskis, Richard. Southeast Asia: Building the Bases. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975. United States Operations Mission to Thailand. US Economic and Technical Assistance to Thailand, 1950 to Date. Bangkok: USOM, 1960. United States Operations Mission to Thailand, Office of Field Operations. A Brief History of USOM Support to the Office of Accelerated Rural Development. Bangkok: USOM/ Thailand, 1969. “Vietnam: Building for Battle, Building for Peace.” The Em-Kayan (September 1966): 8–11. Vietnam Veterans Korea. Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.vietvet.co.kr/us/us.htm. War History Compilation Committee. P’awŏl Han’gukkun chŏnsa sajinjip [Pictorial History of ROK Forces to Vietnam, 1964–1970]. Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 1970. War History Compilation Committee P’awŏl Han’gukkun chŏnsa sajinjip [Pictorial History of ROK Forces to Vietnam, 1970–1974]. Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 1974. The War Memorial of Korea. Accessed January 10, 2016, https://www.warmemo.or.kr/ newwm/eng/main.jsp. United States Operations Mission to Thailand. Joint Thai–USOM Evaluation of the Accelerated Rural Development Project. Bangkok: USOM/Thailand, 1965. USAID. Korean Preventive Medicine Teams (KOPREM). Accessed September 28, 2016, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDAAF588.pdf. Vinnell Corporation, Thailand Office of Accelerated Rural Development, United States Agency for International Development. Accelerated Rural Development: Monthly Report of Progress 12 (September 1968). Washington, DC: Vinnell Corporation, 1968. Westphal, Larry, Yung W. Rhee and Garry Pursell. Korean Industrial Competence: Where It Came From. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1981. Wolf, Donald E. and Richard Lowitt. Big Dams and Other Dreams: The Six Companies Story. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Yongsa Yoksakwan. E-history Korea. Accessed January 10, 2016, http://ehistory.go.kr/ page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&gbn=DH&mediaid=2659&mediadtl=9664&qu ality=W. Yun, Chung-ro. Pet'ŭnam chŏnjaeng ŭi Han'guk sahoesa: ich'in chŏnjaeng, oraedoen hyŏnjae. Seoul: P’urŭn Yŏksa, 2015.

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University Selected Titles (Complete list at: http://weai.columbia.edu/publications/studies-weai/) Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan, by Yulia Frumer. University of Chicago Press, 2018. Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives, by Chad Diehl. Cornell University Press, 2018. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926–1945, by Hikari Hori. Cornell University Press, 2018. The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies, by Alexander Zahlten. Duke University Press, 2017. The Chinese Typewriter: A History, by Thomas S. Mullaney. The MIT Press, 2017. Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China, by Diana Fu. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine, by Hilary A. Smith. Stanford University Press, 2017. Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet, by Geoffrey Barstow. Columbia University Press, 2017. Aesthetic Life: Beauty and Art in Modern Japan, by Miya Mizuta Lippit. Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. Youth for Nation: Culture and Protest in Cold War South Korea, by Charles R. Kim. University of Hawaii Press, 2017. Socialist Cosmopolitanism: The Chinese Literary Universe, 1945–1965, by Nicolai Volland. Columbia University Press, 2017. Yokohama and the Silk Trade: How Eastern Japan Became the Primary Economic Region of Japan, 1843–1893, by Yasuhiro Makimura. Lexington Books, 2017. The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China, by Dorothy Ko. University of Washington Press, 2017. Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan, by G. Clinton Godart. University of Hawaii Press, 2017. Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence, by Sheena Chestnut Greitens. Cambridge University Press, 2016. The Cultural Revolution on Trial: Mao and the Gang of Four, by Alexander C. Cook. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire, by Yukiko Koga. University of Chicago Press, 2016. Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers, by Yoshikuni Igarashi. Columbia University Press, 2016. Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan, by D. Colin Jaundrill. Cornell University Press, 2016.

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

241

The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China, by Guobin Yang. Columbia University Press, 2016. Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea, by Celeste L. Arrington. Cornell University Press, 2016. Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia, by Kathlene Baldanza. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang: Unrest in China’s West, coedited by Ben Hillman and Gray Tuttle. Columbia University Press, 2016. One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan, by Adam Bronson. University of Hawaii Press, 2016. Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620–1720, by Xing Hang. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics, by Li Chen. Columbia University Press, 2016. Imperial Genus: The Formation and Limits of the Human in Modern Korea and Japan, by Travis Workman. University of California Press, 2015. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar, by Akiko Takenaka. University of Hawaii Press, 2015. The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China, by Christopher Rea. University of California Press, 2015. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, by Federico Marcon. University of Chicago Press, 2015. The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, by Reto Hofmann. Cornell University Press, 2015. The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933–1964, by Jessamyn R. Abel. University of Hawaii Press, 2015. Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860–1920, by Shellen Xiao Wu. Stanford University Press, 2015.

Index Locators in bold refer to tables; those in italic to figures academic knowledge 74–6. See also knowledge infrastructure Accelerated Rural Development (ARD) program 218–21 AERI. See Atomic Energy Research Institute AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) 100, 101 Agent Orange 35 agribusiness 139, 140. See also fertilizer industry agronomy, identity through 206–7. See also rice engineering projects Ahmad Subardjo 124 Ahn, Tong Hyuk 168–9, 170, 171 aid. See technology aid, Japan Ajiken (Institute of Asian Economic Affairs) 10, 32, 59–63, 67, 76–81 Akamatsu Kaname 9, 24–5, 26, 62, 68 Aki Kōichi 115–16, 123 Alfonso Soe Myint 99 Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) 100, 101 AOTS. See Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship Appadurai, Arjun 28 Arase, David 54 ARD (Accelerated Rural Development) program 218–21 Asahan River, Indonesia 87, 124 Asao Shinsuke 69 Asia–Africa group 99 Asia Association 10, 51, 52, 60, 71–6 Asia, Cold War 1–2, 4, 7, 30, 31, 35, 70. See also individual countries economic cooperation 45 foreign aid 7 intra-Asia relations 4 postcolonial development system 85, 92 Asia, colonial 1–2, 5

Asia Development Agency 26 Asia- Pacific War (1931–45) 85 Asian Affairs Magazine (Ajia Mondai) 69, 71, 74 Asian Affairs Research Group 60, 66–71, 72, 80 Asian Issues Research Group 9, 10 Asian studies knowledge complex 69, 74 Association for Asian Political and Economic Studies. See Japanese Association for Asian Studies Association for Overseas Construction Technology 19 Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship (AOTS) 52, 52, 53 Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERI), South Korea 166, 173, 174, 175, 176, 182 Atoms for Peace project 173, 192 Australia 5 Ayukawa Yoshisuke 123 Balu Chaung Power Station, Burma 4, 15, 83, 86, 91 comprehensive development 87–90 groundedness 94–100 pan-Asianism 90–4 socio-political effects 100–8 Bandung Conference (1955) 13, 73, 92, 122 Bangkok 22, 217, 221, 222, 224, 226 Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI), South Korea 180, 181 Beachell, Henry M. 189, 194–9, 202, 206–7 Berg, Lasse and Lisa 140, 158 BIA (Burmese Independence Army) 100 Blooming Scenery of Korea television series 165

Index BMI (Battelle Memorial Institute), South Korea 180, 181 Borlaug, Norman 138, 193 Bourdieu, Pierre 28 BPM (Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij) 118, 121, 125 brain drain, South Korea 177, 179, 183, 185 Brantas River Basin development project, Indonesia 86 Brazinsky, Gregg 32 Breton Woods system 1, 3, 122 British government, war reparations 19–20 Burma, war reparations 6, 15–16, 72–3. See also Balu Chaung Power Station Burmese Independence Army (BIA) 100 business community, Japan. See domestic infrastructure Byoung-ha Kim 168 Cam Ranh Bay dredging project 211, 212, 220, 229, 230–3 Central Laboratory, Korea 168 Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT) 193 Cepu oil refinery 120–1 The Chaebol and Labor in Korea (SeungHo Kwon and O’ Donnell) 227 Chaloemtiarana, Thak 219 Chandler, R.F. 195 chemical fertilizer industry. See fertilizer industry Chiang Kai-shek 13, 100, 144, 148 China 8–11, 24, 29, 116, 122 Japanese aid structures 63–7, 69, 77, 80 Japanese engineering 89, 93, 94, 103 miracle rice 138, 148, 205, 213 science and technology 168, 169, 173 China Studies association 63–6 Cho Baik Hyun 192 Choi, Chungmoo 34 Chosen-Manchukuo Yalu River Hydropower 85, 86, 93 Chun Doo-Hwan 205 Chung Ju-yung 234 CIMMYT (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo) 193 Colombo Plan 5–6, 51, 53, 73 Colonial Development Act (1929) 8

243

colonial legacy, Japan 7–10, 85–7, 191–2, 214, 215 comfort women 33–4 communist regime 5, 13, 23, 30–1, 45, 63, 64 anti-communist agenda, Japan 71 postcolonial development system 92–3 comprehensive development 87–90, 104 Comprehensive Research Institute, South Korea 170 comprehensive technology 87 co-prosperity sphere 12, 28, 61, 114, 116, 117, 123 corporate culture 48–50, 226–8 Crop Increase Operation HQ, South Korea 201 Cullather, Nick 109 Cumings, Bruce 27, 213 Da Nhim dam, South Vietnam 6, 15, 86, 108, 220 Daerim (construction) 209, 210, 216, 223 depoliticization 14, 22–4, 45, 51 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) 56 Development Complex, Japan 59–61, 76–80, 81 Development Experience Exchange Partnership program 184–6 DGWG (Dee-Geo-Woo-Gen) rice 139, 141, 142 Dodge Line 12 dollar reserve, lack 14, 75 domestic infrastructure, Japan 35, 43–4, 55–7 economic cooperation 44, 45–7, 50, 56 multiple stakeholders/corporate culture 48–50 public and private capital flow 43, 55 quasi-governmental incorporations 43–7, 50–5, 52 domino theory, oil extraction in Indonesia 133 Dutch East Indies 13, 87, 113–19, 120, 124. See also Indonesia ECAFE (Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East) 77 ecological imperialism 137, 138, 141, 159–60

244 economic cooperation 85 depoliticization 51 Japanese knowledge infrastructure 81 Japanese oil imports 114, 115 oil extraction in Indonesia 124, 125, 133 private sector resources 45, 46, 47, 50–1, 55 public and private capital flows 55 quasi-governmental corporations 50, 51, 54, 56 transition from war reparations 44, 45–7 economic translation 28, 179–82 Ekbladh, David 212 Electric Power Development 52 Elpidio Quirino 72–3 engineering, Japanese 2, 35 comprehensive development 87–90, 104 groundedness 87, 94–100 imperial origins of developmental discourse 85–7 limits of Japanese development in Asia 108–9 pan-Asianism 87, 90–4, 101, 108 socio-political effects of the Balu Chaung project 100–8 engineering, Korean 32, 35, 163, 221–3. See also science and technology, Korean Accelerated Rural Development program 218–20 aid and developmental trajectory 213–14 Cam Ranh Bay project 211, 212, 220, 229, 230–3 corporate culture 226–8 Hyundai Construction 220–31 international context 221–3 labor problems 224–6, 226–8 procurements 230–1 in Southeast Asia 214–16, 234–6 in South Vietnam 209–13, 211, 228–31 Thailand 211, 215, 216–18, 223–8 third country national workers 212, 229, 233–4 Etō Shinkichi 65

Index Federation of Economic Organizations 50 fertilizer industry 29, 30, 137, 139–41, 143, 146, 150–8 differences in effects between rice varieties 152 shipments to Korea/Taiwan 153 Filipino skilled labor, South Korean engineering 209, 220 flying geese theory 9, 24–9, 31, 35 Ford Foundation 79, 139, 193 foreign currency shortages 14, 75 fossil fuels. See oil extraction, Indonesia Four Cuts Campaign 106 French Indochina 13 Fujisaki Nobuyuki 66–9, 71, 74, 76–80 Fujiyama Aiichirō 46, 51, 73, 75 Gaud, William S. 139, 193 General Headquarters of Science and Technology, South Korea 170 genetic engineering. See rice engineering projects gift exchange network 4, 27, 28. See also kula ring Goa, India 46 Gotō Kenichi 119 Gotō Shimpei 147, 148 Government Research Institute (GRI), South Korea 166, 184 Governor-General of Korea (GGK) 165 Great Depression 11 Green Revolution. See also rice engineering projects South Korea 189–94, 201–3 Taiwan 137–41, 149, 150, 158–60 Griffin, Keith 7 gross domestic product (GDP) charts 1, 44 groundedness, Japanese engineers 87, 94–100 ritchisei [local potential] 94 Guam military housing project 234–5 guided democracy, oil extraction in Indonesia 125, 126 Gyan Prakash 31, 169 Gyeongbu Expressway project 228, 234, 235 Hainan Island 86 Haixun Li, 138 Han River, South Korea 1, 30, 34

Index Hanabusa Nagamichi 64–5 Hanjin (shipping) 209, 210 Hara Kakuten 78 Hara Yasusaburō 51, 77 Hatano Sumio 92 Hatoyama, Prime Minister 9, 72, 73 Hatta Yoichi 142 Hatta Yoshiaki, 9–10, 16 Hayashi Shintarō 77 hee-nong rice 198 Heu Mun Hue. See Hue Hirakawa Hitoshi 23 hishu rice 142, 143 Hodge, Joseph 7 Hon’inden Yoshio 72 Hōrai rice 137–8, 141–5, 145. See also rice engineering projects, Japanese fertilizer needs 150–8, 152 India and Southeast Asia 145–50 unacceptability to farmers 150–1, 150–1, 154, 154, 155 yields 145, 150, 155, 156, 156–7 Hornig, D.F. 177, 178–9, 180 hub-and-spoke model of aid 4 Hue, M.H. 190, 195–7, 202, 206 hybrid rice. See rice engineering projects hydrocarbon ring 116, 125, 129, 130–3. See also oil extraction, Indonesia Hyundai company 28, 32–3, 209, 210, 216, 220–31 Cam Ranh Bay project 211, 212, 220, 229, 230–3 Southeast Asia 214–16, 234–6 Hyung-sup Choi 182 Ibnu Sutowo 126–9, 131, 132–3 IBRD (International Bank of Reconstruction and Development) 217, 219, 221 Ichimada Hisato 50 Ikeda Hayato 92 Immerwahr, Daniel 4 imochi disease, rice 143, 154, 155 imperialism, ecological 137, 138, 141, 159–60 Inagaki Heitarō 75 Inazuka Gonjirō 139 India. See also rice engineering projects rice engineering projects 145–50 war reparations 19–20

245

indica rice 139, 142, 189–90, 199, 201, 204–5 hybrids 196–7, 200, 205 Indonesia 17, 19, 57. See also oil extraction Indonesian Communist Party (KPI) 122–3 Indonesian Oil Workers Union 119 Infrastructure Development Institute 52 Institute of Asian Economic Affairs. See Ajiken Integrated Research Group (Sōgō Kenkyūkai) 61 intellectuals, Japan. See knowledge infrastructure International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 217, 219, 221 International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) 194–7 role in South Korea 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 202–7 role in Taiwan 138, 139, 140, 142, 145–6, 149 IR667 rice 197–201. See also Tongil rice IR-8 rice 137, 138, 139, 149 iron ore development project, Goa, India 46 iron triangle, Asia Association 71–4 IRRI. See International Rice Research Institute irrigation projects, Green Revolution 140, 142 Isa, Dr. Mohamad 120 Ishii Yasushi 68, 70, 71 Iso Eikichi 137–8, 142–50, 153–9 Itagaki Yoichi 10, 59, 80–1. See also Trio Ajiken 78, 79–80 Asia Association 73, 74, 75 Asian Affairs Research Group 60, 66–71, 69, 71, 72, 80 economic cooperation 81 Japanese Association for Asian Studies 60, 63–6, 80 Manchuria Network 66, 68, 69 national research institute for Asian studies 61–3, 63, 66 Itō Hiroichi 95, 99, 100, 101 JAAS. See Japanese Association for Asian Studies Jakarta student demonstrations 113, 132

246

Index

Japan 1, 2, 3. See also knowledge infrastructure; rice engineering projects; technology aid; war reparations administration 43–4 (see also domestic infrastructure) colonial legacy 7–10, 85–7, 191–2, 214, 215 development complex 59–61, 76–80, 81 empire 11, 12, 64, 214–16, 230 friendship with China 66 production sharing 125–30(see also oil extraction) tripartite alliance 176–9, 212 Japan Association for International Construction Technology 17 Japan Association of Latin America and the Caribbean 52 Japan Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) Association 77 Japan Educational Exchanges and Services 52 Japan Heavy Machinery Technical Service Association 52 Japan– Indonesia Petroleum Company 131 Japan Overseas Construction Association 7 Japan Petroleum Trading Company 127 Japan-Thailand Road Center 19, 21 Japanese Association for Asian Studies (JAAS) 60, 63–6, 80 Japanese Imperial Army 21, 100 japonica rice 142–3, 155, 189–92, 195, 200, 201, 203. See also rice engineering projects hybrids/crossbreeding experiments 196–7, 205 Jawaharlal Nehru 73 Johnson, Chalmers 2 Johnson, President Lyndon B. 124, 166, 176–7, 178 Jose Laurel 72–3 Journal of the MND Scientific Research Institute 172 Jusuf Muda Dalam 127 Kada Tetsuji 9, 60, 62, 68, 69 Kajima Construction 96–7

Karen National Union (KNU) 100, 101 Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) 101 Karenni people 35, 96, 97, 99–102, 104–7 Katō Kōzō 55 Kawano Shigetō 60, 62, 65, 69, 70, 154, 155. See also Trio Kennan, George 13 Kennedy, President John F. 124 Khafji oilfield 128 Kim Il Sung 200 Kim In Hwan 199 Kishi Kōichi 79, 81 Kishi Nobusuke 9, 17, 62, 63, 66–7, 70–3 development complex 77, 78 oil extraction in Indonesia 123, 125 Kishi Reisuke. See Fujisaki Nobuyuki KIST. See Korea Institute of Science and Technology knowledge infrastructure, Japan 2, 35, 59–61, 80–1 Ajiken 10, 32, 59–63, 67, 76–81 Asia Association 10, 51, 52, 60, 71–6 Asian Affairs Research Group 60, 66–71, 72, 80 development complex 59–61, 76–80, 81 Japanese Association for Asian Studies 60, 63–6, 80 Manchuria Network 63, 66–71, 81 national research institute for Asian studies 61–3, 64 practical vs. academic knowledge 74–6 Kobayashi Ataru 46, 78, 128 Kobayashi group 128 Kobayashi, Hideo, 2 Kodama Gentarō 141, 142, 147, 148 KODCO (Korea Overseas Development Corporation) 224 KOFST (Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies) 183 KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) 184–6 Koizumi Shinzō 68 Kojima Kiyoshi 25 Konagaya Yutaka 102 Konoe Fumimaro 60, 61, 63

Index Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) 31, 32, 165–6, 179, 180–6. See also South Korea Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) 184–6 Korea Nitrogenous Fertilizer Company 85 Korea Overseas Development Corporation (KODCO) 224 Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST) 183 Korean War (1950–3) 13, 171–6, 216, 229, 230 Koto Panjang dam project 35 Kubota Yutaka 7, 15, 17, 29, 33, 55, 72, 108–9, 131 Balu Chaung Power Station project 85–90, 103–4 oil extraction in Indonesia 123, 124 South Korean engineering 220 kula ring metaphor 4, 83 domestic infrastructure, Japan 44 Japanese oil imports 116 oil extraction in Indonesia 122, 126 South Korean engineering 210 technology aid 4, 27, 28, 30, 32–5 Kurosawa Aiko 17 Kyoto University 79 labor hierarchies, Korea 201, 213, 228, 229 labor problems, Korea 224–6, 226–8 Lee Tai-Hyun 197, 199 Lewis, Robert D. 199 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 48, 63 Malari Affair (1974) 57, 132, 133 Malayan Emergency 23 Malinowski, Bronislaw 27 Manchuria 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 24, 29, 62, 63, 66, 68, 77, 78, 81, 86, 116, 123, 127, 141, 148, 158, 215. See also South Manchurian Railway Manchuria Development slogan 8 Manchuria Network 10, 63, 66–71, 81 Manchuria Taro (Yamashita “Arabia” Taro) 127–8 Mandalay, Burma 90, 105 Many Flags campaign, USA 209 Marikina development project, Philippines 14–15 Marshall Plan 3

247

Matsukata Kojirō 116 Matsumoto Saburō 65 Matsunaga Yasuzaemon 72, 123 Maxfield, Silvia 26 McMichael, Philip 7 Meinke, W. Wayne 175 Mekong River Comprehensive Development Project 19, 86 Mexico, Office of Special Studies (OSS) 193 Minas oilfield, Indonesia 132 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) 47, 48, 49, 52, 53 Asia Association 73, 75, 76 development complex 77 Japanese knowledge infrastructure 64, 65, 69, 71, 80, 81 Ministry of Greater East Asia 26 Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 57 Ajiken 59 Asia Association 75, 76 development complex 61, 76–80, 79 Japanese knowledge infrastructure 72, 80, 81 Ministry of National Defense (MND), Scientific Research Institute, South Korea 166, 171–2, 173, 176 Ministry of Prosperity, Indonesia 121 Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), South Korea 183 miracle narrative 1, 5. See also rice engineering projects flying geese theory 25, 27, 28 Green Revolution 137, 138, 139 Indonesia 113 Japan 43, 44, 57 South Korea 30, 32, 212 violence inherent in the system 33–6 West Germany 12 misrecognition, Japan’s technology aid 28, 33 MITI. See Ministry of International Trade and Industry Mitsubishi company 80 Mitsui company 80 Miwa Jusō 9, 70 Miyamoto Takenosuke 94 Miyata Ichibei 97 Mizuno, Hiromi 169, 210, 213

248 MND. See Ministry of National Defense Mobil Oil 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 127, 129, 130 Mobye Reservoir, Burma 103, 104, 105 MOFA. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Hatta 17, 61, 73, 122 Monoi Tatsuo 95, 98 Monsanto Corporation 139, 141 Morrison-Knudsen (MK) 212 MOST. See Ministry of Science and Technology Muda Dalam, Jusuf 127 Nagano Mamoru 26, 46, 72 Nakayama Ichirō 61–2 Nam Ngum Dam in Laos 86 Nasu Shiroshi 148 Nasution, Abdul Haris 126 national research institute for Asian studies 61–2 National Security Council 13 nationalism, scientific 169 nation-building projects, South Korea 168–71, 215 nation-state developmentalism 5 natural resources, Indonesia 115. See also oil extraction Ne Win regime 102–3, 106, 107 neo-colonialism 30, 31, 34, 45, 56 Netherlands, foreign aid 8 New Order Movement, Indonesia 60, 115, 116, 127, 130–3 Nippon Kayaku (Japan Explosives) 51 Nippon Kōei company 15, 33, 55, 85–7, 89, 94–8, 103–4 oil extraction in Indonesia 123 pan-Asianism 90–4 Song of Southern Development 108 Nishijima Shigetada 119, 124, 128 Nishio Toshihiko 158 Nisseki Oil 117, 118 Nolt, James H. 26 North Sumatran Oil Development Company (Nosodeco) 125, 128, 129, 130, 131 North Sumatran Petroleum Operations, Inc 121 Northern China Development Company 8, 10

Index Nosodeco. See North Sumatran Oil Development Company Nozawa Noboru 96 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) 56, 123, 185 OEEC (Organisation for European Economic Cooperation) 45 Office of Atomic Energy (OAE), South Korea 173, 174 Office of Rural Development (ORD), South Korea 194–6, 198–201, 204 Office of Special Studies (OSS), Mexico 193 official development assistance (ODA) Development Assistance Committee 56 development complex 59 Japan 2, 3, 5, 16, 19, 28, 35, 44, 56 South Korea 185 Ogata Taketora 9, 69–70 oil corps units (sekiyu butai), Japanese 114, 117 oil extraction, Indonesia 5, 35, 83, 113–16 Japanese–Indonesian production sharing 125–30 New Order Movement 60, 115, 116, 130–3 post-WWII to 1950s 121–4 wartime occupation 116–21 Oil Workers Party (Partai Boeroeh Minjak) 120 Oil Workers Union 120 Okano Kanki 46 Ōkita Saburō 25–6, 115–16, 123 ORD. See Office of Rural Development Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 56, 123, 185 Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) 45 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 129, 131, 133 Orr, Robert 54 OSS (Office of Special Studies), Mexico 193 overseas aid. See technology aid, Japan

Index Overseas Construction Association of Japan 52 Overseas Economic Cooperation Council 48, 50 Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) 50, 128 overseas study. See studying abroad programs Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA) 50, 75, 76 overseas technical training, Korea 222, 227 Overseas Technical Training Agency 18 Pacific Association 66 Pakistan, war reparations 19–20 Palembang refineries, Indonesia 120 pan-Asianism 87, 90–4, 101, 108 Pancasila (Five State Principles), Indonesia 114 Panglong Agreement (1947) 101 Papua New Guinea, gift exchange network 4 Park Chung-hee, President (South Korea) 30–2, 166, 174–8, 182–4 miracle rice strains 189, 198–201 South Korean engineering 223 Park, Tae-Gyun 167 Pattani–Naratiwat highway, Thailand 33, 210, 217, 222–5, 228 Peace Dove division 213, 221, 229 Pearl Harbor (1941) 117 peasantism 158 Pekka Korhonen 25 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 64 Permina oil wells, North Sumatra 114, 126, 128, 129 Permiri Company 120 Pertamina Company 114, 115, 125, 127, 130–3 petrochemicals. See oil extraction, Indonesia Phibun (Plaek Phibunsongkhram) 217 Philippines 6, 14–15, 47 Pohang Iron & Steel Company (POSCO) 31, 34, 165, 179, 180 policy-makers, Japan. See domestic infrastructure postcolonial desire 17, 30, 31, 167, 170, 176, 182, 183 private sector, Japan 43. See also quasigovernmental organizations

249

production sharing, Japanese–Indonesian 125–30. See also oil extraction, Indonesia Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform 49 Pujŏn River dam 29 Pyidawtha Plan, Burma 15 quasi-governmental organizations (tokushu hōjin), Japan 43–7, 50–5, 52. See also domestic infrastructure, Japan quasi-reparations treaties 46 Rach Gia (Gulf of Thailand) 211 racialized labor hierarchies, Korea 201, 213, 228, 229 Rangoon, Burma 90, 105 Rantau oilfield, Pangkalan Brandan 128 recognition/misrecognition, Japan’s technology aid 28, 33 Ree, Taikyue 166, 169, 171 Reparation Issue Study Group 6 Reparations and Economic Cooperation Agreement 34 reparations in kind 6, 7, 10–24, 26, 56. See also war reparations Republic of Korea (ROK) 163, 213, 215, 216, 221. See also South Korea Republic of Korea–US summit (May 1965) 166 Republic of Vietnam (RVN) 216, 229 Research Department, South Manchuria Railway 62, 63, 66, 77, 78 Rhee, Syngman 173, 174, 216 rice engineering projects, Japanese 35, 83, 137–8, 158–60. See also fertilizer industry; Hōrai rice areas planted 144 development in India and Southeast Asia 145–50 ecological imperialism 137, 138, 141, 159–60 Green Revolution 137–41, 149, 150, 158–60 rice engineering projects, South Korean 31, 35, 141, 142, 144, 153, 153, 189–91, 206–7 agronomy in South Korea, mid-1960s 191–2

250 Green Revolution 189–94, 201–3 indica–japonica crossbreeding experiments 196–7 International Rice Research Institute 194–6 IR667 strain 197–201. See also Tongil rice Rix, Alan 54 road-building 210, 217–21, 226. See also Gyeongbu Expressway; Pattani– Naratiwat highway; Toungoo Road project Japan-Thailand road center 20–4, 28 Rockefeller Foundation 139, 193 ROK. See Republic of Korea Royal Dutch-Shell oil company 115, 117–21, 125, 127 Saigon, Vietnam 209, 221 San Francisco Peace Treaty 6, 15, 19, 64, 122 Sao Wunna 102 Sarit Thanarat 217 Satō Tokihiko 98 science and technology, Korean 28, 35, 41, 163, 165–7, 183–4. See also engineers, Korean economic translation 179–82 governmental agency 182–3 international contexts 176–9 Korean War, impact on research institutes 171–6 nation-building through science 168–71, 215 Vietnam War, impact on research institutes 176 V-KIST 184–6 Science and Technology Promotion Act, South Korea 183 Science Society of China 169 scientific nationalism 169 Scientific Research Institute, South Korea 171–2 Seekins, Donald 100 Seoul-Pusan Gyeongbu Expressway. See Gyeongbu Expressway project September 30 Movement, Indonesia 115 Se-yung, Chung 222 Shibusawa Shōichi 78 Shima Sanshirō, 90–2, 93

Index Slamet Bratanata 127 Social Democratic Party (SDP), Japan 63 Social Life of Things (Arjun Appadurai) 28 Songkhla 20–3, 217, 222 South Korea 1, 3. See also engineering; rice engineering projects; science and technology civil war 13 identity through agronomy 206–7 nation-building projects 68–71, 215 postcolonial desire 167, 170, 176, 182, 183 postcolonial development 2 technology aid 29–33 tripartite alliance 176–9, 212 South Manchurian Railway 8, 62, 63, 66, 77, 78 South Vietnam Da Nhim dam 6, 15, 86, 108, 220 nation-building projects 215 South Korean engineering 209–13, 211, 228–31 Soyang dam 34 Special Committee on Overseas Economic Assistance 50 spirit of commodity 28 stakeholders, domestic infrastructure, Japan 48–50 Standard Vacuum (Stanvac) (Mobil) 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 127, 129, 130 student demonstration, Thailand 57 studying abroad programs 17–18, 19 Indonesia 119–20, 124 Japan 44, 53 postcolonial, Cold War development system 92 South Korea 173, 191–2, 194–6 Suenaga Megumu 141, 144, 147, 153 Sugiyama Shigemaru 147, 149, 150 Sugiyama Tatsumaru 147, 148, 149 Suharto, President H. Muhammad 35, 98 (fn 61), 114 (fn 2), 115–16, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129–33. See also New Order Movement Sujono Humardani 131, 132 Sukarno government, Indonesia 17, 115, 117, 121–2, 124–6, 128–31 Sumatra, oil extraction 114, 117–21, 124, 125, 126, 128

Index Sun Yat-sen 147, 148 Sup’ung Dam 86, 88–9, 93, 95 Surat Thani 20, 21, 23 Suzuki Naoki 145 symbolic capital 28 symbolic violence 5, 33, 35, 44 Tahija, Julius 127 Taichung rice 138, 139, 141, 143–4, 144, 149. See also rice engineering projects Taika Company 147 Taiwan 36 fertilizer industry 29 rice engineering projects 137–9, 141–4, 144, 146–8, 150–8, 150–1, 153 Taiwan Public Cooperative Irrigation Regulation 141–2 Takahashi Noboru 156 Takasaki Tatsunosuke 123 Tamamitsu Hiroaki 20–1, 23 Tanaka Kakuei 132 TCN. See third country national workers technical aid, Japan 17–18, 52–3, 73, 124 technical training. See studying abroad programs technology aid, Japan 1–5 capital goods 14–16 Colombo Plan 5–6 continuation from colonial development 7–10, 214, 215 depoliticization 22–4 flying geese theory 9, 24–9, 31, 35 industrial infrastructure 26, 30, 33 Korea 29–33 kula ring metaphor 4, 27, 28, 30, 32–5 recognition/misrecognition 28, 33 services and goods 6, 7, 10–24, 26, 56 violence inherent in the system 33–6, 44 war reparations 6–7, 14, 16–22, 26–9, 31, 33, 34 technology, Korean. See science and technology Teikoku Oil Company 118–19, 123, 128 Terauchi Hisaichi 118 Thailand Accelerated Rural Development program 218–20

251

Korean War (1950–3) 216 Muslim minority conflicts 22–3, 33 road-building 210, 217–21, 226 Japanese technology aid/road center 20–4, 28 South Korean engineering 211, 215, 216–18, 223–8 student demonstration (1972) 57 tin mining development 47 war reparations 19–23, 28 Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Chaloemtiarana) 219 third country national (TCN) workers, South Korean engineering 212, 229, 233–4 3CT (Third-Country Training) 115–16 Thirty Comrades 100 tied aid 46 timber logging, Philippines 47 tin mining development, Thailand 47 Tōbata Seiichi 60, 78, 138, 139 Tōjō Hideki 123 tokushu hōjin. See quasi-governmental organizations Toner, Simon 215 Tong Hyuk Ahn 166 Tongil rice 31, 163, 189–91, 206–7. See also rice engineering projects, South Korean IR667 strain 197–201 problems with the strain 203–6 yields 190, 193, 200, 201, 204 Toungoo Road project, Nippon Kōei 95–6 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea 178 Trio 60–3, 66, 68, 69. See also Itagaki Yoichi; Shigeto Kawan; Yamamoto Noboru Asia Association 73, 75 development complex 76–80, 77–8 tripartite alliance 176–9, 212. See also Japan; South Korea; USA Triumph of the Expert (Hodge) 7 Truman, President Harry S. 12, 26 Tsutsumi Kazuyuki 151 U Nu regime 102, 107 U Ohn 103

252

Index

U San Cha 99 U Tun Thoung 87 Ueda Toshio 64–5, 65 Ulsan industrial complex, South Korea 165 United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) 13 United Nations Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA) 13 US Agency for International Development (USAID) 139, 193, 194 US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) 168, 171 USA aid 4, 26–7, 29–30, 32, 92, 124, 128–31, 133 economic cooperation with Japan 45–7 Many Flags campaign 209 Strategic Bombing Survey 10, 12 tripartite alliance 176–9, 212 wartime oil embargo 117 wealth 3, 14, 75 USSR-China friendship 64 Vega, Marcos R. 189 Vernon, Raymond 25 Vietnam Builders collective 230 Vietnam War 32–5, 176, 210. See also South Vietnam violence, symbolic 5, 33, 35, 44 V-KIST (Vietnam–Korea Institute of Science and Technology) 184–6 Vow in the Desert film 93

war reparations, Japan 2, 6–7, 14–24, 28, 33, 34, 44–7, 72, 76 Asia Association 72–3, 75 domestic infrastructure 44 economic cooperation 44, 45 engineers 107 oil extraction in Indonesia 124, 125 quasi-reparations treaties 46 services and goods 6, 7, 10–24, 26, 56 technology aid 28–9, 31, 33, 34 transition to economic cooperation 45, 46, 47 West Germany 1, 11–12, 30, 31 Wheat Nōrin 10, 139, 141 White, John 48 Wijoyo Nitisastro 131 wool industry, Nagoya 24 Wushantou Dam, Taiwan 7, 142 Yahata Steel Mill, Japan 31 Yalu River, Sup’ung Dam 29, 86, 88–9, 93, 95 Yamamoto Noboru 60, 62, 75. See also Trio Yamashita “Arabia” Taro (Manchuria Taro) 127–8 Yamataka Shigeru 21 Yanagisawa Yonekichi 17–18 Yi Tong-won 32 Yokoi Katsuhiko 18 Yokoi Tokiyoshi 158 Yong-gwan Kim, 168 Yoshida Cabinet 16, 64, 70–1, 86 Yoshida Shigeru, Prime minister 9, 68–9, 92 Yushin constitution 203 Yutaka. See Kubota Yutaka