Learning from the Earthquake Nation: Japanese Science Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century

Beginnings: Seismology and the Making of Japan’s Science Diplomacy

In the standard narrative of modern Japanese history, Japan, in order to avoid colonisation and ‘catch up’ with the technology of the Western powers, readily imported and adopted Western science and technology by hiring foreign experts, the oyatoi. ¹² However, in seismology, the story is slightly different. By the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese seismologists were internationally accepted pioneers in their field, ready to support Japan’s quest to establish itself as an imperial power in East Asia. ¹³

The key to Japan’s leading role in seismology was instrumentation. Before seismographs became the standard for earthquake measurements, European seismology had been mostly ‘observational’, meaning that it relied on observations of damage in buildings and interviews with witnesses. ¹⁴ In Japan, by contrast, British engineering and mining oyatoi John Milne (1850–1913) began pushing for instrumental observation in 1880 when he observed that Japanese buildings and society responded differently to earthquakes than their Western counterparts. ¹⁵ Milne subsequently developed the horizontal pendulum seismograph and introduced it in meteorological observatories everywhere in Japan, beginning in 1883. Consequently, Japan became the first country with nationwide seismograph coverage. When Milne became a fellow of the British Royal Society in 1887, he extended this network to a global scale. Nevertheless, Japan remained the country with the most seismological observatories, which provided nearly constant seismicity. ¹⁶ Thus, Japan became the first ‘laboratory’ for earthquake science, a fact that also gave special authority to Japanese seismologists.

Because of Milne’s groundwork, Japan had a head start when the field of seismology formed into a scientific discipline. Meanwhile, the young Meiji state supported this process because it neatly fit its diplomatic ambitions. The Meiji state saw science as an important vehicle to transform Japan from a semi-colonial state into a political force on par with Western powers. Science would serve as an arena to demonstrate how Japan had become a civilised nation. To compete in the scientific race of the empires, Japanese scientists often employed the strategy to promote locally relevant research topics to carve out their own international niche. ¹⁷ The Japanese state therefore actively promoted seismology as a field pioneered by Japan. When it founded the first university in Japan, the Imperial University of Tokyo, in 1886, it also set up the world’s first chair of seismology. Five years later, the government established the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee (IEIC), a pioneering multidisciplinary research institution to promote basic research into earthquakes and mitigate their effects by developing earthquake-proof construction and earthquake prediction. ¹⁸

By the 1890s, seismology was also used to represent the nation abroad. At Chicago’s 1893 Columbian exhibition, for example, the University of Tokyo was invited to curate an entire section dedicated to Japanese earthquake knowledge. The exhibit not only presented the newest Japanese scientific achievements in seismic instrumentation but also invented a long tradition of Japanese seismology that incorporated Eastern knowledge: ¹⁹ A picture of a Chinese seismometer from 132 AD was ambiguously labelled so it could be (and was) mistaken for Japanese. Likewise, a model of a Five-Storied Pagoda served as proof that Japanese art and craftsmanship was able to withstand earthquakes, although the technology to build them had originally been transferred from Korea in the sixth century. Pictures from an 1891 earthquake suggested that Japanese traditional buildings fared better than newly adopted Western architecture. ²⁰ The exhibit thus presented seismology as a national science and Japan as a modern scientific nation that drew from a unique and long-proven local tradition of earthquake knowledge.

The example of the 1893 Columbian Exposition shows how representations of science began to enter the repertoire of Japan’s cultural diplomacy, forming new entanglements between science and Japanese foreign relations. Meiji-era science diplomacy, however, often also worked through the efforts of individual scientists, who in turn used science diplomacy to advance their own careers. In seismology, the most iconic figure was Omori Fusakichi (1868–1923), who rose to undisputed authority in his lifetime through his transnational activities. After Omori had completed his studies with Milne, he was sent to Europe from 1894 to 1896, where he met up with Milne again and travelled to Italy. There, he published several articles in Italian. ²¹ Back in Japan, Omori was appointed chair of seismology and secretary of the IEIC where he became a leading figurehead. A prolific writer, Omori wrote 230 articles in 25 years, which was more than a third of all articles published in the IEIC’s Japanese periodical. His influence was even more obvious in the IEIC’s English publications, to which he contributed the majority of articles.

Most of Omori’s publications stemmed from fieldwork in Japan, but soon transcended national boundaries, making his ‘local’ science ‘global’ and proving that Japanese science had universal applications. ²² Omori used an international network of stations which provided him with seismological data on long-distance measurements. ²³ He also invented a long-pendulum seismograph himself that was suited for long-distance measurements, which was manufactured by a Strasbourg factory and distributed globally as the ‘Bosch-Omori seismograph’. More important, Omori also developed a method to predict earthquakes based on mapping earthquake zones and past Japanese earthquakes. According to his ‘gap theory’, earthquakes were more likely to occur in earthquake zones that had remained quiet for a longer period of time. He also extended the mapping of earthquake zones to a global scale, and predicted where large earthquakes would strike next, seemingly proven right by the Aleuthian and Valparaiso Earthquakes of 1906. ²⁴

Research missions, meanwhile, often took him abroad. Starting with the Assam Earthquake in 1897, Omori headed research teams that were sent out to study the effects of earthquakes and to teach earthquake-proof construction methods. ²⁵ Other expeditions examined the Kangra Earthquake of 1905 and the Formosa Earthquake in 1906. The San Francisco Earthquake expedition in 1906 became the first research mission to a Western country, followed up by the Messina Earthquake in 1908. Omori used his writings on these missions in his attempts to establish that Japanese earthquake knowledge outperformed local building traditions. ²⁶ Thus, he stressed the relevance of Japanese knowledge for other earthquake regions and justified Japanese authority in this field.

Significantly, Omori presented himself as a quasi-political representative of his country during those missions. Enjoying the institutional backing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he not only framed himself as official envoy – he was also keenly aware that his missions served political purposes. ²⁷ Through his authority as one of the world’s most respected figures in his field, he represented Japan as a member of the civilised nations. Omori stressed this point during the inaugural meeting of the International Seismological Association in 1901, when he pushed for changing the structure of the planned association from personal membership to state membership. Thus, he not only demonstrated that Japan was capable to dictate how an international scientific association was run but also affirmed the role of the seismologist as a representative of his country. ²⁸

By the 1910s, Omori had left an enduring legacy in the United States and elsewhere: Following the Messina Earthquake, Alfredo Montel translated Japanese knowledge into Italian and later published it in English. ²⁹ Thomas A. Jaggar, who founded the Hawaii Volcano Observatory in 1912, even postulated that earthquake observation should be established following the Japanese model. Jaggar travelled to Japan to learn seismometry from Omori directly and bought instruments for his observatory. ³⁰ Omori’s international reputation also significantly elevated his status within Japan: Between 1917 and 1923, he was awarded more research grants than his more famous colleagues in the prestigious discipline of physics. ³¹

Between the 1890s and 1920s, Omori laid the groundwork for new research collaborations and transnational knowledge exchanges. Profiting from the head start of seismology in Japan, he popularised knowledge generated from Japanese seismicity as universally valid earthquake knowledge. Omori’s goal was to use the authority of science to give Japan the same status in international affairs as the Western countries. This ambition continued to shape Japan’s approach to foreign policy even after Omori’s death in 1923, which marked a shift in Japanese earthquake sciences.

Shifting Missions: Japanese Science Diplomacy during the Interwar Years

In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese science diplomacy often continued along the patterns established in the Meiji period. However, the interwar years also saw new opportunities and shifts within Japan’s science diplomacy. Those happened within the context of national and international changes in science and technology: Like many governments around the world, Japan and its industry had stepped up funding for science and technology during First World War, with lasting effect. ³² As a consequence, the societal importance of engineers rose in the 1920s. To elevate their social status, engineers both fought for more influence in policy making and networked internationally for a technocratic world order that favoured peaceful cooperation based on science and technology. ³³ This led to changes in Japanese science diplomacy, namely an intensified focus on earthquake engineering and a new strategy to attract scientific conferences to Japan. With Japan’s push for imperial expansion in the 1930s, science diplomacy shifted to legitimising Japan’s ambitions and improving relations with the axis powers.

The new focus on earthquake engineering owed itself much to the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, which destroyed a major part of Tokyo and killed roughly 105,000 people. The enormity of the destruction led to a renewed interest in earthquake-resistant construction and paved the way for the founding of the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI). The ERI stood for a paradigm shift in Japanese earthquake research: It was founded in cooperation with the Mitsubishi Corporation which had been the biggest sponsor of earthquake-proof construction prior to the Great Kantō Earthquake. ³⁴ Under the leadership of shipbuilding engineer Suyehiro Kyōji (1877–1932), the ERI promoted an engineering- and physics-oriented approach, thus laying the ground for the new discipline of earthquake engineering. ³⁵ While adapting to newer seismological approaches, the institute continued earlier science diplomacy practices to represent Japan as a modern country that pioneered advances in science and technology. For example, the ERI sent two seismograms of the Great Kantō and Tango Earthquakes to the World Exhibition in Chicago in 1933. ³⁶ Moreover, Japanese scientists were routinely sent to examine earthquakes overseas, most notably an earthquake in India in 1934 and another in Chile in 1939. ³⁷ Similar patterns also showed on a local level: For example, a seismologist of colonial Taiwan’s Meteorological Observatory was sent to investigate an earthquake in Shantou, China, in 1918. ³⁸

At home and abroad, the ERI’s international activities resonated with a growing interest in rebuilding the international networks of science that had dissolved with the war. In Europe, new institutions such as the League of Nations promoted the revival of ‘scientific internationalism’. ³⁹ In the Pacific region, the Pacific Science Conferences were established for the same purpose, starting in Honolulu in 1920. ⁴⁰ Japan took advantage of those developments by actively trying to attract and host international science conferences, among those the 1926 Pacific Science Conference in Tokyo. It took place only three years after the Great Kantō Earthquake, because the organisers saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate Tokyo’s successful reconstruction and national strength to an international audience, which met with mixed responses. ⁴¹ At the conference, it was reported that the US were translating the Japanese periodical of the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee into English, which amassed to over 100 volumes. A talk about Five-Storied Pagodas received a high number of foreign questions. ⁴² Three years later, Japan also hosted the World Engineering Congress, which had traditionally taken place in the US or major European countries. The World Engineering Congress lasted 10 days and was followed by a month of excursions. Participants were taken not only to popular tourist destinations but also to engineering sites and factories, giving them a full view of Japan’s industrial strength and technological prowess. ⁴³

The 1929 World Engineering Congress showcased Japan as an international science power. Meanwhile, it also provided engineers with an opportunity to pursue their own form of ‘technocratic internationalism’, the idea of peaceful cooperation based on technological networks. ⁴⁴ At the congress, former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, John Ripley Freeman, learned that the ERI was designing a new type of seismograph that could measure earthquake motion within buildings. His conversations with his Japanese colleagues left Freeman convinced that there was much to gain from Japanese earthquake science. Back in the US, Freeman therefore drafted a systematic program of how to organise knowledge transfer and adaptation. ⁴⁵

In the early 1930s, the American Society of Civil Engineers followed up on Freeman’s program. One of its first steps was to translate earthquake engineering pioneer Naitō Tachū’s (1886–1970) work on earthquake-resistant construction. ⁴⁶ More important, the Society invited ERI director Suyehiro Kyōji on a lecture tour across the US. In 1931, Suyehiro held a series of lectures at four leading US institutions, including Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology. ⁴⁷ He also met with the Department of Seismology of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to discuss the design of future strong motion seismographs. ⁴⁸

In his lectures, Suyehiro stressed that he had come to ‘express the good will of Japan to the United States through Science’ and voiced his hopes for quick advances in earthquake science for the ‘well-being of the people of seismic countries’. Suyehiro explicitly emphasised the importance of transnational learning. Given the Japanese government’s unwillingness to invest more funds into developing strong motion seismology, he sought to push American colleagues into more research on the new technology and gave straightforward advice on the problems such research would have to address. ⁴⁹

Suyehiro’s lecture tour demonstrates the individual agency of scientists to pursue ‘diplomacy for science’, namely to promote international cooperation for their own research interests. While it still took place within the framework of ‘serving the nation’ – Japan was still presented as a ‘teacher’ for the US – Suyehiro was able to pursue his own agenda. His rhetoric of serving the ‘seismic countries’ reveals how technocratic internationalism informed his promotion of Japan–US relations.

By the 1930s, however, the main elements of Japanese science diplomacy were state-driven initiatives to support the increasingly expansionist Japanese empire. One central purpose of these initiatives was to present Japan as a scientifically skilled alternative model to the White powers, a goal that fed into the imperialist rhetoric of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Justifying Japan’s imperial expansion, the concept claimed that Japan would free colonised peoples from the Western powers and provide superior leadership. ⁵⁰ Efforts to put such visions into practice were evident, for example, in 1931, when Ethiopian Foreign Minister Heruy Welde Sellase visited Japan to establish diplomatic ties and trade between the two countries. Both countries had signed a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce in 1930 and now sought to extend their relationship. Japan was interested in trade with Ethiopia, while Ethiopia hoped for Japanese military assistance and advice to counter the Italian outreach. ⁵¹ In Japan, Sellase not only met up with Japanese diplomats, military personnel, and merchants but was also taken to a ‘sightseeing trip’ in Tokyo that included the Ueno Zoo, a military academy and Tokyo University. There, the Ethiopian delegation visited the ERI, where it was welcomed and shown around by then substitute director, Ishimoto Mishio (1893–1940).

Sellase’s visit to the Institute exemplifies how Japan’s diplomacy used science as a tool to represent Japan as a modernised country that could very well serve as a model and advisor for Ethiopia. Sellase, for his part, acknowledged the scientific prowess of the Japanese after his return to Ethiopia. In a book about his visit to Japan, Sellase described his visit to the ERI and proclaimed that Japan, because of its seismic conditions, had developed admirable research in this field, operating a large research institute only fifty years after it had learned seismology from Britain. ⁵²

Just as Japan sought to impress its notion of leadership on Ethiopia, seismology was used to legitimise Japan as a leading scientific and colonial power in East Asia. In Japan’s colony Taiwan, earthquake scientists rewrote building codes in the 1930s, dismissing traditional Taiwanese architecture as inappropriate for earthquake safety. ⁵³ Japanese researchers also worked to maintain close relationships with Western colonies in East Asia. In 1933, Captain Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen, a military engineer from the Dutch East Indies, who had been interested in seismology since the Great Kantō Earthquake, was granted a trip to Japan by his government to study earthquakes and earthquake-resistant construction at the ERI. ⁵⁴ In turn, in 1934 ERI director Ishimoto Mishio was made Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau. ⁵⁵ The High Commissioner for India reached out to the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1929 on behalf of the Punjab government to obtain Japanese literature on seismology and earthquake engineering. ⁵⁶ When an earthquake prevention committee was founded in Manila in 1937, the Japanese government sent Japanese literature to congratulate. ⁵⁷

By the mid-1930s, scientific exchanges increasingly served as a tool to strengthen allegiance within the axis powers of Japan, Germany and Italy. Fostering friendship between the Fascist powers was especially valued vis-à-vis Italy. Seismology spearheaded official cultural delegations accompanying the Italo-Japanese Alliance of 1936, which even preceded the official Cultural Agreement of 1939. ⁵⁸ In 1937, ERI director Ishimoto Mishio was chosen to act as an official ‘Italo-Japanese exchange professor’ to foster the scientific exchange between the two seismic countries. Ishimoto held public lectures on Japanese seismology in Rome and Naples in 1938, received the degree of Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy and remained active in Italo-Japanese cultural associations. ⁵⁹

Scientific ties were also close with Germany. Germany had long been a preferred country to study and learn from for Japanese researchers, but the inverse also became true in earthquake engineering. ⁶⁰ Siemens engineer Rudolf Briske, who was sent to Tokyo to assist with the construction of the Tokyo Metro after the Great Kantō Earthquake, wrote his dissertation on earthquake-proof construction. Briske explicitly thanked seismologist Imamura Akitsune and notable earthquake engineers Naitō Tachū and Mononobe Nagaho for explaining their work, which was seen as a sign of equality between German and Japanese engineers. ⁶¹ Many Japanese researchers, in turn, picked up German works on frame construction, acknowledging that frames were crucial to earthquake-proof construction and referred to them using the German word ‘Rahmen’ beginning in the 1930s. ⁶² By 1940, Japanese and German institutions still pondered the possibility of further scientific exchanges. As the Geophysical Institute of Leipzig suggested in a letter to the German Japanese Institute, it would welcome a Japanese scientist named Arakawa, if it could send one of its researchers in return to learn earthquake-proof construction. This plan never came to fruition because of the ongoing war, but it speaks to the significance of science as a consolidating force for Japan’s and Germany’s political alliance. ⁶³

Promoting a Peaceful Japan: Science Diplomacy in Postwar Japan

Shortly after the Second World War had ended, Japanese seismology sought to rehabilitate and reintegrate itself into the international community. Due to their prewar ties to US seismology, Japanese seismology mostly escaped restructuring during the US occupation, because Beno Gutenberg (1889–1960), director of the Caltech Seismological Lab, who was sent to evaluate Japanese seismology in 1947, had met Suyehiro Kyōji in 1931 and thus had already had good ties relationships to Japanese seismologists. Gutenberg therefore vouched for them in his report. Paralleling the Japanese dealings with wartime memory, including the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese seismologists constructed their own victim narrative and an identity based on peace. ⁶⁴ Many of them had witnessed the defunding and ‘oppression’ of earthquake research during the war and claimed that wartime contributions like Ishimoto Mishio’s work on resource extraction and infrastructure had been compulsory. ⁶⁵ Equally important, seismologists now also committed themselves to a ‘peaceful’ science, a promise that seemed to be reflected in earthquake prediction. Research on earthquake prediction, seismologists claimed, now enabled them to serve their ‘democratic’ duty towards the citizens rather than the state. The notion gained traction when it became known that Imamura Akitsune (1870–1948) had successfully predicted the Nankai Earthquake of 1946 using a mostly private network. ⁶⁶

The international reintegration of Japanese seismology was helped by the fact that it served US interests. The US Geological Survey ran an office of the Military Geology Unit in Tokyo, which hired Japanese scientists and conducted geologic mapping in Japan and its former colonial territory, which included reports on earthquakes. ⁶⁷ Japanese seismologists also contributed data on USSR nuclear tests to the US. ⁶⁸ In 1948, the US Coast and Geodetic Survey created the Seismic Sea Wave Warning System in the Pacific, relying mostly on seismic and tide stations operated by themselves and the US military. US occupation authorities also ordered Japan to create a national tsunami warning system and to report earthquakes over Magnitude 3 to the US authorities by phone. ⁶⁹

Around 1960, Japan even became a hub for data exchange between the US and the USSR, serving as a science diplomacy corridor between blocs. When a 5-m earthquake tsunami hit the Kuril Islands in 1958, the USSR sent a research delegation under seismologist Dimitri Kirnos to Japan, who studied its tsunami warning service, and asked for warnings in the process. Since then, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued English-language tsunami warnings via radioteletype directed to the USSR. With increased international cooperation following the Chilean Tsunami of 1960, Japan negotiated for a bilateral exchange of tsunami warnings and observational data and continued to serve as an exchange hub for tsunami data between the USSR and the US even after the international Pacific Tsunami Warning System was inaugurated in 1965. ⁷⁰

Meanwhile, in order to maintain a strictly civil and peaceful image, Japanese seismologists further pursued earthquake prediction to mobilise funds and expand the measuring network inherited from the Meiji period to remain competitive during the science race of the Cold War. This stood in contrast to the advancement of postwar seismology in the US and the USSR, which had grown in order to detect subterranean atomic nuclear tests, and only slowly shifted to earthquake prediction during the 1960s, partly because of domestic civilian pressure. ⁷¹ When international interest in earthquake prediction increased, it also entered science diplomacy. For example, scientific cooperation in earthquake prediction served to smooth over conflicts accompanying the renegotiations of the US–Japanese security treaty, which had attracted considerable civilian opposition around 1960. Shortly thereafter, in 1965, Japan launched an ambitious research project on earthquake prediction, which spurred similar projects in the US and other countries. ⁷² In 1972, earthquake prediction became part of the Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection between the US and the USSR. ⁷³

Perhaps the most important arena of Japanese seismology’s science diplomacy, however, was to develop Japan into the global centre for research on earthquake engineering and for dissemination of earthquake knowledge. After a First World Conference on Earthquake Engineering was held in California in 1956, Japanese delegates insisted on following it up with a second conference in Japan, which was held in Tokyo in 1960. Continuing the prewar tradition of rooting earthquake engineering in Japanese tradition, Tanabashi Ryō gave a talk on Five-Storied Pagodas to illustrate his paradigm-changing work that eventually became the basis of flexible earthquake-proof high-rise buildings. The opening speeches all evoked earthquake science’s duty to serve the ‘welfare of mankind’ and save it from disasters, echoing and expanding upon the rhetoric Suyehiro had used during his lecture tour in 1931. ⁷⁴ Conference chairman Muto Kiyoshi successfully lobbied to create a permanent network, which was founded as the International Association for Earthquake Engineering in 1963. This association was again structured as a head organisation of national associations – now with its central office in Tokyo. ⁷⁵

In the following years, Japan became a central provider of knowledge and technical training in earthquake engineering for developing countries. In 1962, following a proposal from the Japanese government to the UNESCO, the International Institute for Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (IISEE) was created within the architecture department of the University of Tokyo. The goal of this institute was to improve education in earthquake science for developing countries, for which the UNESCO awarded fellowships. As the United Nations Development Program put it, Japan was ideal for this purpose, since it ‘is situated in one of the most active seismic zones of the world and its scientists and engineers have acquired a high reputation’ and ‘already acquired valuable experience in dealing with the special problems of training people from different countries’. Since then, over 1600 fellows have completed the program. ⁷⁶

Japanese official development assistance also participated at the IISEE project and began to support earthquake prevention in the 1960s, which fit in well with its agenda of emphasising infrastructure development and technological assistance. ⁷⁷ Continuing prewar practices, delegations of earthquake scientists were sent to study major earthquakes abroad and provide knowledge to assist reconstruction. ⁷⁸ In the high-profile case of the Skopje Earthquake of 1963, Japanese scientists studied the aftermath of the earthquake, gave advice on how to rebuild in an earthquake-resistant way and provided teaching staff for an Earthquake Engineering Institute newly founded in Skopje in 1964. Famed Japanese architect Tange Kenzō was commissioned to plan large sections of the reconstruction. ⁷⁹ While building diplomatic and business relations with Jordan in 1974 as part of the Japanese strategy to ameliorate relations with the Middle East, Japanese assistance also included the sharing of seismological research. ⁸⁰ Since the 1980s, disaster relief became a fixed pillar of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency’s assistance program, which includes assistance in earthquake-resistant reconstruction all over the world. ⁸¹ Japan has also been actively promoting the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (Yokohama 1994, Kobe 2005, and Sendai 2015), hosting all three of its conferences at sites that have seen the largest earthquake disasters in modern Japanese history. ⁸²

Conclusion

Earthquake science has played an important role in Japanese science diplomacy for over 130 years and helped to accumulate a cultural capital which Japan still draws from today. The foundations were laid in the late nineteenth century, when an emerging Japanese earthquake science allowed Japan to establish itself in a niche where the non-Western country could exert authority over the Western powers. Throughout the years, these claims of authority were demonstrated and justified in the context of world exhibitions, research expeditions, science networks, and international conferences that showcased carefully curated Japanese traditions and experiences with violent earthquakes on its own soil and the amount of funds and research dedicated to them. Japanese researchers were recognised for their expertise, especially as ‘teachers’ of earthquake-proof construction, independent of the shifting geo-political circumstances. While in the prewar period, science diplomacy served to legitimise ‘civilised’ Japan’s colonial rule over East Asia and aided forging political alliances, postwar earthquake science depicted Japan as a peaceful ‘developed’ country coming to the aid of less knowledgeable countries in need. Earthquake science even helped open diplomatic channels in difficult conditions both during the 1930s and the Cold War. The long-term cooperation with the US also facilitated Japan’s resurgence after Second World War. In hindsight, however, it also seems that the strategy to build up a niche science based on local expertise as a tool of science diplomacy did not overturn the often-implicit assumption of Western leadership in science in general, so Western countries are still reluctant to learn from Asia in other fields. The recent COVID-19 pandemic may be only the latest example here. ⁸³