Science and Technology Studies
Professor HASHIMOTO, TakehikoPursuing History Using Contemporary Sources, Gazing on the Present andFuture of ScienceInterviewer: Takashi Mikuriya, professor

Came to RCAST After Acquiring his Ph.D. (inthe history of aeronautical engineering) in theUnited States

Yes, I lived the student life for almost too long. At the graduate̶̶ Professor Hashimoto, you specialize in the history of̶̶ So it's not surprising that you're at RCAST, the successor toscience and technology, but what made you get into this ﬁeld

Koken (the Aeronautical Research Institute).

school there, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the history ofaeronautical engineering and aerodynamics.

in the ﬁrst place?
Yes, it's almost fate that I came here. In April of 1991, I
In my undergraduate days I was interested in philosophy.

returned to the [the University of Tokyo's] College of Arts andHowever, soon, I developed the desire to study something

Sciences at Komaba, and I came here in May 1996.

more concrete, and went on to graduate school to research
the history of science. After I went to graduate school, I
became ﬁlled with the desire to study abroad, so I got into theResearch on " Time" and "Standards," thenPublication

history of science program at a university in the United States.
̶̶ They're rather vocal about "mission" here (at RCAST), but
When I actually got there, I found that there were many

what was the mission when you ﬁrst came here? (laughing)different kinds of history of science, and there was also afield called the history of technology. In Japan at that time,(laughing) No, they weren't very vocal about mission then. I

the history of technology wasn't really thriving, and there

remember, when I started here, the director of the institutewere no classes on it. In the US, on the other hand, since

told me to do whatever I wanted.

technology plays a significantly large role in its 200-year
history, there were many scholars in the history of technology,

On one hand, I felt that I was invited to RCAST to research

as well as plenty of lectures and classes at universities. I

the social significance of advanced science and technology.

had the impression that American history and the history ofOn the other hand, what I can really write about is the area

technology in the US were well taught, and were very deep inof the history of science and technology. I had a vague idea

talent.

that I would research something where the two overlap. A
little encouraged by the words "do whatever you want," I held

I decided to study at Johns Hopkins University because therea strong desire to discover a research topic that was simply

was a famous professor of the history of physics there, but Iinteresting.

got there just after he had moved somewhere else. Still, there
were other good professors there, and I stayed there from̶̶ You've been here for ten years. What have you worked

1984 to 1991--about six and a half years.

on?

̶̶ So, you lived the student life for quite a while.

In the end, I have published books about "time" and1

"standards" (The Birth of Tardiness: The Formation of Time
Consciousness in Modern Japan; The Philosophy of theStandard: 300 Years of Standard Technology ).

At present, RCAST has been preparing the machine tools
and experimental implements used by the Aeronautical
Research Institute (RCAST's predecessor), as well as troves ofrelated documents, to be displayed inside the campus. TheSince I had once studied in the US, I have written some

Aeronautical Research Institute (Est.1918) was closed by [thepapers about the history of science and technology in the US.

American] GHQ after World War II, but after that it re-opened

How have tscience and technology in the US--which haveas the Institute of Science and Technology (Est.1946), later theextremely strong ties to the military--developed from World

Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (Est.1964). The

War II, through the Cold War, and up to the present? What

present-day RCAST got its start in 1987.

kinds of things have occurred in their relation to the military?
I have written an introductory paper about these questions

̶̶This place has a long history since its days as thewhile reviewing recent research. When I ﬁrst came to RCAST in

Aeronautical Research Institute, and all kinds of things are still

the early 1990s, a lot of academic research was coming out on

here. Professor Hashimoto, since you have been put in charge

the topics such as "Looking back on the history of science andof managing these items--and I think you've worked very hard

technology in the Cold War."at it--can I ask you to talk about that?

Turning his Ofﬁce into a Forum for International
Exchange

When I came here, Professor Takashi Tachibana was a visiting
professor at RCAST, and he created the "RCAST Exporation
Team." At that time there were still old buildings standing on

̶̶ Professor, I think you have had many students come andthis campus. I'm told that each of those buildings had strange

go over the past ten years, but haven't there been a lot ofitems left behind (laughing) --instruments, experimental

students from overseas, for instance, from the US, China, andequipment, and machine tools were introduced to me as

Korea?

"historical relics."

Yes. There have not been so many students, but a lot cameFor example, in the machine factory, there were rolls of

as visiting scholars, and it has been stimulating. Many havemovie film, a projector, all sorts of machine tools, tools

been interested in researching the history of technology

and instruments, and documents left over. We even held aand the sociology of science in Japan--both modern andscreening of a ﬁlm they discovered, and Professor Tachibana

contemporary. I believe I was introduced to and took on overmade a commentary. It was about ten minute long, and theten foreign students.

images weren't very interesting (laughing): a ﬂying boat--thekind of airplane that can land on water--was dropped into theThere were some from Taiwan and Europe as well. Somewater from a certain height. Next it was dropped from a little

even came because they wanted to study Japanese "fuzzy"

bit higher, and it came down with a big splash. It was a ﬁlm

technology. Some are enrolled as "cooperative researchers"--awhere that [experiment] was repeated.

very good system. This kind of exchange is quite common.
After that, the important machine tools were donated to the̶̶ In that sense, this is a place where people researching

Museum of Industrial Technology at the Nippon Institute of

the history of science and technology come together. WhenTechnology. Then, we also donated one to the museum inyou come here, you will definitely have contact with fellow

Kure (Hiroshima). There was a naval factory at Kure before thescholars, and that's where discussion is born... It has become

war, and it was the same type of machine tool that was useda "discussion corner," in an extremely good sense of the term,

there then.

hasn't it?
Then, there were some relatively small precision machine
That's true I think it's become a very good forum. Kenji Ito,tools, and two of those are left at RCAST. One is a machine

who studied at Harvard, came as a special assistant, and hetool that can move in two dimensions on the X and Y-axes.

chaired RCAST's "colloquium." He circulated article drafts

Another is called a "divider" (bunkatsuki ) or something, andbefore presentations, giving colloquium participants a chance

it's an extremely important piece of equipment for making

to add their comments. All kinds of opinions emerged, and Igears.

think it really helped articles for publication.
As for other big items, there was the wind tunnel itself, as well̶̶ In a place like that, where a certain level of people--likeas the model YS-11 preserved inside. The model YS-11 wasstudents and visiting researchers--are gathered, they caneven introduced on "Project X," and it's a wooden model built

exchange information quickly, without having to explain

on such a large scale that they say it cost 10,000,000 yen (Nowin too much detail, and they can benefit from intellectual

kept in the National Science Museum: Editor's Note). This windstimulation. That's a great point, isn't it?

tunnel is where the YS-11 experiments were conducted.

Yes. As you might expect, in the humanities and social

̶̶The wind tunnel itself is quite a museum, isn't it?

sciences, if they are within a related ﬁeld like a neighborhood
to some extent, the exchange of information and opinions

We also have the "Miscellaneous Records" and the "Indexedproceeds smoothly, and we can all benefit from intellectual

Records" journals in the stacks--both were issued annually instimulation.

the days of the Aeronautical Research Institute. There's also
the "Science and Technology Journal" from the days of the2Institute of Science and Technology. Because it's from thePostscript

immediate postwar it's a poor journal, but it remains in theIn March 2006, Professor Takehiko Hashimoto will end hisbasement stacks of Building 13.

10-year term at RCAST; from April on, he is going to engage
in research and education on the history of science andThere are also interesting newspaper clippings in the stacks.

technology as a Professor of the History of Science andAround 1928-1929, before the "Koken long-range researchTechnology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

plane," designed and built by the Aeronautical ResearchInstitute, there was a plan for a trans-Paciﬁc ﬂight, and there's(January 13, 2006)

a scrapbook of clippings from articles related to it. Because
Lindbergh ﬂew across the Atlantic, a plan to do the same--thistime in the Paciﬁc--was born. Although this research institute

Links

wasn't the main participant [in the project], it appears thatsome of the professors and students were involved.

Department of History and Philosophy of Science
The University of Tokyo

In 2002, I wrote an article pursuing the question of why this

http://hps.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index.html

plan ended in failure, using the clippings as sources. One
important point that separated success from failure was
the question of what to do about the standards--the safety
standards for an airplane that would ﬂy the long distance in asingle hop. There are all kinds of safety standards for ﬂight, likelift, top airspeed, how many meters of runway it would needto take off--and these seem to have been too tight. Because it
was a single-hop long-distance ﬂight aimed at a record, theywanted to load it with as much fuel as possible. But the more
fuel they added, the less it could fly long distances in theirexperiments. So they adapted a little, then that didn't go well.
In the end, it was a no-go.
How to set standards was left as an extremely important
problem to the people engaged in aeronautical technology.
Hidemasa Kimura, who was a graduate student involvedwith the project at the time, and who was also involved indeveloping the YS-11 after the war, wrote a methodological(and even somewhat philosophical) essay about "standards."
It's a short, but extremely interesting report. I quoted a bitof it in my The Philosophy of the Standard . The connection
between my research and the sources from this institutecomes out there as well.

The Discovery of the Historical Film
Moving onto a slightly different topic, about three years ago
some ﬁlm was found in a safe in a room at the wind tunnel.
This was most likely a film used at a lecture by German
aeronautical and aerodynamics scientist Ludwig Prandtl; itshows the way whirlpools are created. The film was about
what kind of whirlpools appear behind an object placed inflowing water, what kind of whirlpools results when theobject rotates, and what happens when the object is in the
shape of a wing. I wrote about what I learned from that in

Gakuto [magazine].
̶̶ "The historical ﬁlm that appeared from a safe," right?
This area overlaps greatly with what I wrote in my doctoral
dissertation about the history of aerodynamics. Prandtl wasalmost the main character in my dissertation. This is research
I haven't ﬁnished yet, and I think I want to research it a little
more broadly.
̶̶ Thank you for today. Even when you leave RCAST, please
continue to help us and do not give up on us (laughing).

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