‘Interrogating “Comprehensive Development”: The Colonial-Wartime Background to Japan’s Development Cooperation’— Background Paper No. 10 of the Research Project 'Japan’s Development Cooperation: A Historical Perspective' —Is Published

JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development (JICA Ogata Research Institute) research project "Japan’s Development Cooperation: A Historical Perspective" aims to analyze objectively and empirically the 60-year history of Japan's development cooperation from a variety of perspectives. The research results are going to be compiled into seven Japanese-language books.

The Institute has recently released the research project’s Background Paper No. 10 entitled, “Interrogating ‘Comprehensive Development’: The Colonial-Wartime Background to Japan’s Development Cooperation,” written by the late Associate Professor Aaron Stephen Moore of Arizona State University.

The author analyzes “comprehensive development,” which means, as explained by the author, “the close coordination of flood control, electricity production, agricultural development, urban planning, and transportation improvement, primarily through the construction of multi-purpose dams and other related infrastructure as a means to rapidly and efficiently promote industrialization and national development.” By focusing on Japan’s leading development consultant, he discusses how this development model was formed during the wartime era, greatly influencing the formation of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) paradigms during the post-war period.

The author passed away in September 2019, but his colleagues Professor Mizuno Hiromi of the University of Minnesota and Professor Ian Miller of Harvard University conducted the final revision of this paper. Visiting Fellow Sato Jin, who is a professor at the University of Tokyo and one of the authors in this JICA Ogata Research Institute book series, coordinated the revision process.

We wish to express our sincere gratitude for Professor Moore’s hard work and dedication.

Click the link below to read English-language background papers.