1. RED SUN RISING
Rocketry, the Cold War, and the Rise of
Japan as a Technological Superpower,
1935-2003
Subodhana Wijeyeratne

2. The traditional narrative of the Second World War presents a Japan that, by the end, was
reliant on the wood ‘Oka’ suicide rocket.
There was no equivalent of Operation Paperclip that saw the likes of Werner von Braun
taken to the USA, and schematics of
the V2 rocket taken to the USSR.

3. FRITZ ZWICKY’S DISCOVERY
But this is not the full story, as Fritz Zwicky of
the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers
iscovered.
In other words: current accounts of
the development of rocketry in Japan
are incomplete from the onset.

4. HISTORIOGRAPHY
A preoccupation with the superpower experience
A lack of overview
A focus on discourse

5. 1935-1958
Timeline: Transwar Continuity
Wartime research
Collaboration with Germany
Preliminary research & the role of
universities
Wartime engineering corps

6. Cover image, Seisan
kenykuu, vol. 8 #4, 19XX
Tokyo University
Institute of Industrial
Science
Pencil Rocket (first three)
Baby S (next two)
Baby R (far right)

7. HII-B Heavy
Lift Rocket
(2009)
8-ton payload
capacity

8. 1952-1990S
Building modernity: infrastructure and
political economy
Infrastructure: from the peripheries to the stars and
‘factories of knowledge’.
High technology as economic driver: the turn to profit
The emergency of state-public links: Mitsubishi,
Toshiba, and others

9. Tanegashima
Launch Facility
(1969)
Tanegashima,
Japan

10. 1960S-2003
Generating dreams
The futurology of Itokawa Hideo
Publicity of space exploration
Satellite culture: ‘Okaeri Hayabusa’, etc.

12. THANK YOU