Engineering Asian Development: The Cold War and Japan's Post-Colonial Power in Asia

FAIN: FO-252221-17

Aaron S. Moore
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on Japan's rise as a donor of development aid on the Asian continent, covering the time from its pre-World War II empire to 1989.

My project examines the history of Japan's overseas development system in Asia from its origins in Japan's colonial rule over much of Asia before 1945 to its rise into the world's leading aid donor by the Cold War's end in 1989. By analyzing how Japan’s international development system evolved at major project sites in East and Southeast Asia, I examine how Japan projected economic and political power as a US Cold War ally through overseas development based on its earlier colonial legacies and networks in Asia. Challenging a Western-focused narrative of the Cold War, I examine the concrete flows of capital, ideas, people, and technology at specific Japanese infrastructure projects throughout Asia, thereby highlighting how regional dynamics and exchanges within Asia over the trans-war era dynamically shaped the Cold War.

Associated Products

“The Historical Boundaries of Japan’s ODA Projects: 1950s and 1960s 'Comprehensive Development Projects' and their Connection to the Pre-War Era" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: “The Historical Boundaries of Japan’s ODA Projects: 1950s and 1960s 'Comprehensive Development Projects' and their Connection to the Pre-War Era"
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Abstract: This paper introduced the key ideologies and personnel networks from Japan's colonial-wartime era, and showed how they played out at several development projects in Southeast Asia in the post-war.
Date Range: July 26, 2018
Location: Tokyo, Japan

“The Colonial and the Post-Colonial: Histories of Technology in Japan’s Empire and its Aftermath,” (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: “The Colonial and the Post-Colonial: Histories of Technology in Japan’s Empire and its Aftermath,”
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Abstract: Talk to grant foundation on ways in which histories of the Japanese empire can better inform the work of historians working on modern Japanese history.
Date Range: January 2018
Location: Pomona, CA

“Dams as Assemblages of Power: Japanese Engineers and the Post-Colonial, Cold War System of Development in South Korea" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: “Dams as Assemblages of Power: Japanese Engineers and the Post-Colonial, Cold War System of Development in South Korea"
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Abstract: This paper focuses on the Soyanggang Multi-Purpose Dam project (1967-1973), Asia’s largest rock-fill dam and a prominent symbol of President Park Chung-hee’s “miracle of the Han” development policies in South Korea. The project, paid for largely by Japanese government grants, loans, and credits from the 1965 Normalization Treaty that settled all claims from the colonial past, was supervised by Japan’s leading development consultancy, Nippon Koei, a company that was run by former colonial engineers who had built what was equivalent to Japan’s entire domestic power production capacity during the colonial/wartime era in northern Korea. I argue that analyzing the power relations at different scales within transnational flows of ideals, materials, people, and capital around large-scale technical structures such as dams, which emerged out of entangled histories of Japanese colonial rule and the rise of the US Cold War order in East Asia, constitutes a promising direction in Asian environmental humanities.
Date Range: Dec 2017
Location: Durham, NC
Secondary URL: http://https://igs.duke.edu/events/scalar-effects-management-water-power-post-war-east-asia

“From ‘Constructing Greater East Asia to ‘Developing Asia:’ Japanese Engineering and the Discourse of Postcolonial Cold War Development in Cold War Asia,” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “From ‘Constructing Greater East Asia to ‘Developing Asia:’ Japanese Engineering and the Discourse of Postcolonial Cold War Development in Cold War Asia,”
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Abstract: Using the case of Japanese aid to construct Burma's Baluchaung dam project, this paper introduces three important frameworks by which to understand how Japan's imperial-wartime legacies were reconfigured in post-war development aid--ideologies, personnel networks, and knowledge.
Date: 7/28/18
Primary URL: http://http://www.tsuchiya.jinkan.kyoto-u.ac.jp/?author=1
Conference Name: Workshop on the Exchange and Systematization of Science and Technology in Cold War Asia

“Questioning the Historical Boundary of Japanese ODA: Connections between the Wartime-Colonial Era and ‘Comprehensive Development’ Projects in 1950-60s Southeast Asia,” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Questioning the Historical Boundary of Japanese ODA: Connections between the Wartime-Colonial Era and ‘Comprehensive Development’ Projects in 1950-60s Southeast Asia,”
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Abstract: This paper introduces historical perspectives to the field of Development Studies. By being informed about how the colonial-wartime past lives on in Japanese development projects, development practitioners are better able to improve development initiatives.
Date: 6/2/2018
Primary URL Description: https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/ja/news/topics/20180602_01.html
Conference Name: Japan Society for International Development Spring Conference

Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order (Book)
Title: Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order
Author: Aaron S. Moore
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9781350063921
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (9781350063921)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781350063921

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