Sugimoto Masayoshi, Swain, David L. Science and Culture in Traditional Japan: 600-1854

The MIT Press, 1978. — 537 p.Understanding the processes by which science enters and transforms a society has never been a simple task, and it is to the credit of authors Sugimoto and Swain that Science and Culture in Traditional Japan (600-1854) makes this process understandable to general readers as well as specialists. Deliberately eschewing a merely scientific or technological focus, the two authors have undertaken to show the development of premodern science in Japan in the context of that country's social and intellectual milieu. Anyone who wishes to understand the development of Japan's science and technology over the last hundred years will appreciate this history of the centuries that preceded modernization, for it is the story of why and how Japan was ready and, more importantly, able to make the leap from Eastern to Western science. The book shows how Japan's long pattern of assimilation—in advancing and receding waves—of Chinese science (and some Western science) laid the foundation for an appreciation of the need for and value of the "new" Western knowledge.