Concluding conversation: decentring science diplomacy.

Gordon Barrett (GB): Research Associate, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, UK (special issue co-editor).

Decentring histories of science diplomacy: cases from Asia.

This special issue brings together a diverse set of cases from Asia with the aim of decentring established historical narratives about science diplomacy. With a critical perspective bringing together the bodies of literature in the fields of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) and critical Asian Studies, we argue that these cases foreground a geopolitical history with multiple forms of sovereignty - often contested ones - and a range of political institutions and actors that enables us to revisit science diplomacy as a means for understanding the relationship between science and international affairs. In doing so, the articles in this issue consciously eschew the normative 'centring' of superpowers or Western imperial powers as the primary actors, focusing instead on the agency and subjectivity of actors within Asia, many of whom were prominent in their respective local contexts. Additionally, we argue that the cases presented here, which examine issues from across science, technology, medicine and the environment, collectively demonstrate the further need for the 'science' in 'science diplomacy' to be interpreted more broadly, incorporating as it does many aspects of human engagement with the material world.

Integrating Parasite Eradication with Family Planning: The Colonial Legacy in Post-War Medical Cooperation in East Asia.

This article depicts how anti-parasite and family planning campaigns developed in Japan and Korea independently after the Second World War, as specifically domestic public health initiatives that directly contributed to the post-war reconstruction (Japan) and nation-building (South Korea) exercises, and examines how they were later incorporated into development aid projects from the 1960s. By juxtaposing domestic histories of Japan as a former coloniser, and South Korea as its former colony, the article explores colonial legacies in post-war medical cooperation in East Asia. Furthermore, by clarifying how Japanese and South Korean development aid projects both grew from the links that existed in their respective domestic histories, the article aims to highlight complexities engrained in the history and to shed new light on a historiography that often locates the origins of development aid in colonial history.

Why did the Japanese Government take so long to approve the intrauterine contraceptive device?

While the majority of East Asian countries embraced the modern intrauterine device (IUD) during the 1960s, the sale and distribution of the IUD in Japan was not authorized until 1974. In this paper, I address why the Japanese Government took so long to permit the use of the IUD. Firstly, I examine scientific debates in Japan during the early 1950s on the efficacy of the IUD and associated health risks, to illustrate how the Government's conservative attitude was fostered by a co-constitutive relationship between health officials and leading obstetrician-gynaecologists who believed that the IUD was dangerous and likely to induce abortion. I also trace the Japanese Government's rapidly changing attitude through the 1960s, and analyse the influential interaction between national policy making and the enthusiastic response of a small number of Japanese doctors to the transnational movement to curb population growth in developing countries. I argue that the specific ways in which biomedical discourse was shaped by the sociopolitical position of doctors in relation to the Government's health administration explains the Japanese Government's resistance to use of the IUD. However, I also note that the Government's dramatic change in attitude was influenced directly by transnational reproductive politics. This paper will enhance the history of reproductive politics in post-war Japan, which has tended to focus on the politics surrounding abortion and the contraceptive pill.

Midwife and Public Health Nurse Tatsuyo Amari and a State-Endorsed Birth Control Campaign in 1950s Japan.

Mrs. Tatsuyo Amari, a qualified midwife and nurse, served Japan's state-endorsed birth control campaign as a "birth control field instructor" in rural Minamoto Village of Yamanashi Prefecture just west of Tokyo. Her work sheds light on the role of female health-care workers in health and population governance in 1950s Japan. Amari not only facilitated the "top-down" transfer of the state-sanctioned idea of birth control and contraceptives, as did other birth control field instructors, but also enabled the "bottom-up" flow of knowledge about people's reproductive lives through her participation in the policy-oriented birth control research called the "three model-village study." Contextualizing Amari's engagement with the study elucidates how the state relied on the established role of female health-care workers as intermediaries between the state and the people. Finally, Amari's contribution to the scientific aspect of the campaign may motivate historians to recognize the politics around the participation of female health-care workers in the science of birth control.

Between the West and Asia: "Humanistic" Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War.

This paper studies the formation of Japanese ventures in family planning deployed in various villages in Asia from the 1960s onward in the name of development aid. By critically examining how Asia became the priority area for Japan's international cooperation in family planning and by analyzing how the adjective "humanistic" was used to underscore the originality of Japan's family planning program overseas, the paper shows that visions of Japanese actors were directly informed by Japan's delicate position in Cold War geopolitics, between the imagined West represented by the United States and "underdeveloped" Asia, at a time when Japan was striving to (re-)establish its position in world politics and economics. Additionally, by highlighting subjectivities and intra-Asian networks centered on Japanese actors, the paper also aims to destabilize the current historiography on population control which has hitherto focused either on Western actors in the transnational population control movement or on non-Western "acceptors" subjected to the population control programs.

Specialization and medical mycology in the US, Britain and Japan.

This paper attempts to bring new insights to a long-standing historical debate over medical specialization by analyzing the formation of medical mycology, a somewhat marginal biomedical discipline that emerged in the mid-twentieth century around studies of fungal disease in humans. The study of fungi predates that of bacteria and viruses, but from the 1880s it became eclipsed by bacteriology. However, in the postwar period, there were moves to establish medical mycology as an independent speciality. I trace the processes that led to the launch of professional societies in the United States, Britain and Japan, three major players in medical mycology, and more broadly in biomedicine. The analysis of the three different national contexts illustrates how geographical, medico-technological, epidemiological, political and social conditions gave the specialty a distinctive character in each country; this was further complicated by the different and changing medical fields in which fungal diseases were studied and treated. The three case studies show medical specialization as a process that is not simply cumulative but responds to specific historical events and developments.

Fallout from Bikini: the explosion of Japanese medicine.

On 23 September 1954, Mr Aikichi Kuboyama died, the first Japanese victim of the Bikini incident--an American hydrogen bomb experiment on Bikini Atoll that took place on 1 March under the codename Operation Castle. This tragedy had several important consequences, influencing post-war negotiations between Japan and the United States over nuclear weapons, stimulating Japanese research into the biological effects of radiation and inspiring a commitment to the treatment of radiation sickness.

Medical mycology development and epidemiology in the USA, UK and Japan.

Medical mycology is a relatively young sub-discipline of medicine, institutionalized principally after the Second World War. In this paper, I will trace the process leading to the establishment of medical mycology in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, three of the most important players in the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM) today. Throughout the paper, I will highlight both common features and the unique trajectory found in each country. The latter point resulted from the relative emphasis placed upon certain phenomena in each country. In the US, it was environmental conditions, tradition of soil sciences and particular settings of public health, which all created a stage for medical mycology. In Britain, among many medical specialists involved in building a society for medical mycology, contributions of those in tropical medicine and veterinary science stood out, and after the war, studies of allergy and bronchopulmonary aspergillosis and participation of the MRC were decisive. In Japan, concrete reports on visceral candidiasis and the so-called Bikini Incident were critical determinants. It appears that, although medical mycology emerged almost concomitantly in the three countries, the paths taken were different, thus seemingly the origins and pathways of modern medical mycology in each country ought to be understood in terms of broader historical themes.