The Seventh Annual Meeting of the Business History Society of Japan was held at the Meiji University, Tokyo, on the 5th and 6th of November, 1971. On the 5th, fourteen papers were read on various topics of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, American and German business history, On the 6th, five papers were read on the above noted common topic, “Introduction and Development of Science and Technology in Japan”, of the pre-World-War-II period.
Yamaguchi, one of the organizers of the common topic reports, emphasized that we must study in a close relations with the development of Japanese business enterprise when and how the western science and technology were introduced into Japanese industries and how they were developed by Japanese engineers.
The first speaker, Professor Kenji Imazu of the kobe University, evaluated the level of science and technology in Japan at the end of Tokugawa and the beginning of Meiji period, comparing it with that in the western industrialized countries. Then he pointed out that the leading role in introducing western science and technolngy was played by the Kobusho (The Ministry of Industry) mainly in relation with the development of shipping, telegraph, shipbuilding and mining industries in the early stage of Japan's industrialization.
Professor Shuji Ohashi of the Niigata University, reported on the development of iron and steel industry in the Meiji period, following the cases of the governmental Kamaishi Iron Mines, Kamaishi Tanaka Works, Military and Naval Arsenals, and the governmental Yawata Ironworks. He emphasized that the trial and error process was the major source of technological development both in governmental and private business.
Professor Toshiaki Chokki of the Hosei University, spoke on the manufacturing of industrial machines, specially on the development of loom-building industry in the Meiji and Taisho period. The speaker emphasized the role of Sakichi Toyoda in developing automatic looms and pointed out the need to make a distinction between the loom-builders who had been independent weavers and those who had been engineers of the major cotton spinning mills, just as we can conceptualize the two types of loom-builders in American, i. e. Slater type and Lowell-Moody type.
Professor Hoshimi Uchida of the Tokyo College of Economics reported on the forms of introducing and developing the technologies in the chemical industries in Japan. He explained by an elaborate chart the process between initial research and final development of technology and stated that the kind of technologies Japan introduced and the process of introducing them were rather similar to those in the cases of other industrial nations, but we can find a conspicuous difference in the process of domestic diffusion of technologies, once introduced into Japan.
The last speaker, Professor Mitsutomo Yuasa of the Kobe University, . reported on the relations between school education and industrial technology of pre War II Japan and concluded that in Japan active engineers did not grow up from within industries but the technologies were introduced from. advanced countries primarily through school education.
Professor Yamaguchi presided the following panel discussion.

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