Through investigating the construction of Japan's first wartime reparations project—the Balu Chaung Hydropower Station Number Two in Burma—this article traces the formation of postcolonial power relationships within Japan's postwar technical aid system in Southeast Asia. Kubota Yutaka and his colleagues at Nippon Kōei, the development consultancy that planned and supervised the project, had long careers constructing dams and other infrastructure throughout Japan's former empire in Asia. This article examines how the visions, policies, expertise, and relationships from their colonial experiences were reconfigured in the 1950s through large-scale infrastructure projects into a new, postcolonial technical aid network linking the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia during the Cold War. In addition to analyzing the reconstituted power relations at one particular site, this article also examines Japan's unique position as a major donor and receiver of foreign aid, thereby complicating conventional narratives of an advanced “West” assisting a developing Asia.
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1 September 2014
Research Article|
April 01 2014
Japanese Development Consultancies and Postcolonial Power in Southeast Asia: The Case of Burma's Balu Chaung Hydropower Project
Aaron Stephen Moore
Aaron Stephen Moore
Aaron Stephen Moore is assistant professor of history at Arizona State University. His book. Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan's Wartime Era, 1931–1945, has been published by Stanford University Press (2013). He is currently researching the trans-war and transnational origins of Japan's overseas development assistance programs in Asia.
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East Asian Science, Technology and Society (2014) 8 (3): 297–322.
Article history
Received:
April 28 2013
Accepted:
October 04 2013
Citation
Aaron Stephen Moore; Japanese Development Consultancies and Postcolonial Power in Southeast Asia: The Case of Burma's Balu Chaung Hydropower Project. East Asian Science, Technology and Society 1 September 2014; 8 (3): 297–322. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-2416662
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