Mapping the West Asian technological culture from the East: University of Kyoto's surveys of agriculture and small industries of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the 1960s

This presentation examines the history of two Japanese surveys of technology, agriculture, craft, and rural society in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I will put these surveys in the context of economic and energy-related exchanges of Japan with the Middle East and previous anthropological and archeological surveys by Japanese surveyors. Emerging from institutional and governmental initiatives that expanded after the 1950s, these surveys were shaped by earlier Japanese fieldworks in China and Central Asia and fueled by postwar concerns with industrialization and national development. Particularly two teams of researchers from the University of Kyoto, who were involved in multiple waves of geographical and archeological fieldwork, published two books in the 1960s that contains photographs, diagrams, workshop plans, measurements, and detailed descriptions of many urban craft and rural agricultural technologies. Their surveys reveal a different understanding of technology which sees it not simply as tools or machines, but as diverse configurations of materials, human labor, knowledge, and space. These surveys also highlight the gendered and familial organization of craft labor that was about to transform by the mechanization and modern technological adaptation.