Drawing on the papers presented at CEEJA’s* first international conference addressing the long-neglected field relating to the generation, dissemination and application of technical knowledge in Japan from the Edo to the Meiji periods, this volume provides a valuable selection of new research on the subject, from Hashimoto Takehiko’s detailed examination of Tanaka Hisashige’s ‘Myriad Year Clock’, Regine Mathias’s paper on mining and smelting, and Erich Pauer’s overview of Japanese technical books in the pre-modern era, to Suzuki Jun’s detailed account of boiler-making in late nineteenth-century Japan.

* Centre Européen d’Études Japonaises d’Alsace, 2017