Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan

Together with Express Train Asia, a state-of-the-art luxury train that ran through Manchuria at the impressive speed of 120 kilometers per hour, the Continental Science Institute symbolized technologically progressive Manchuria.25

“I devote my life to technology.... I am going to Manchuria to do some creation” (sōsaku o

Pierre Bourdieu

Express Train Asia (Tokkyū Ajia-gō) opened in November 1934. The express train in Japan proper, Swallow (Tsubame-gō), at the time ran at a speed of sixty-seven kilometers per hour. See Kobayashi, Mantetsu, 14; and Satō, Tokkyū Ajia-gō no aikan, 57–58.

The uneasiness surrounding the topic of science in fact characterizes the modernity of Imperial Japan (1868–1945),

impossible to separate technocrats’ technological patriotism and their status politics.

However, much to the engineers’ frustration, the technocratic movement struggled to grow. The Kōjin Club lost almost four-fifths of its members at the end of the 1920s