Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan

In the 1930s, a cohort of professional human scientists coalesced around a common and particular understanding of objectivity as the foundation of legitimate knowledge, and of fieldwork as the pathway to objectivity. Into the Field is the first collective biography of this cohort, evocatively described by one contemporary as the men of one age.

At the height of imperialism, the men of one age undertook field research in territories under Japanese rule in pursuit of "objective" information th...