About

Hiromi Mizuno is an Associate Professor of History, Heritage Studies, and Public History at the University of Minnesota, affiliated with the Graduate Program in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. She holds a PhD in History from UCLA and specializes in Modern Japan and Asia, with research interests encompassing science and technology, empires and post-empires, the Cold War, intellectual and cultural history, environment and agriculture, soil, fertilizer, nitrogen, human rights, and international laws. Mizuno has contributed extensively to the understanding of Japan’s scientific nationalism, agricultural modernization, and the cultural and political dynamics of East Asia, with notable publications including 'Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan' and 'Engineering Asia: Technology, Colonial Development, and the Cold War Order.' Her work also explores Japan’s postwar reconstruction, emigration, and the geopolitics of agricultural trade, among other topics. She actively participates in professional organizations, serving as Vice President and President of the Midwest Conference for Asian Affairs, and as an associate editor for Studies on Asia. Mizuno's research has been recognized with awards such as the 2024 Vernon Carstensen Memorial Best Article Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other institutions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Library science
• History
• Law
• World Wide Web
• Ecology
• Biology
• Ancient history

Selected publications

• Okinawa Agriculture and the Sterile Insect Technique

  Agricultural History · 2024-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Bitter melon is a popular gourd vegetable native to Okinawa in Japan. However, because of the melon fly, a very damaging pest on the quarantine list, bitter melon could not be sold in mainland Japan until the fly was eradicated from Okinawa Prefecture in 1993 by using the nuclear-derived sterile insect technique (SIT). This essay examines the SIT project in Okinawa that began in 1972 when the United States returned Okinawa to Japan. The twenty-year-long project required the irradiation and release of fifty-three billion melon flies. Its success helped Okinawa's troubled agricultural sector and made theoretical contributions to the SIT with sophisticated models to gauge the sexual competitiveness of sterile flies. Commemorative publications and scientific reports, however, are silent about Okinawa's status as a US military-base island. Rather than seeing the SIT as the solution to the pest problem, this article situates Okinawan agriculture and the SIT project in the deeper context of colonialism, overdependence on pesticides, and the nuclearization of Japan, by taking seriously the fact that the entomologist who led the project felt profound ambivalence toward “peaceful” atomic technology.

  PublisherDOI

• 5 Mitsui Bussan and the Manchurian soybean trade: Geopolitics and economic strategies in China's Northeast, ca. 1870s–1920s

  2024-06-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines how soybeans became a global commodity, by focusing on the intermediary role of the Japanese trading company Mitsui Bussan. In the early twentieth century, soybeans were almost exclusively grown in Northeast China, also known as Manchuria. Their global commodification was a result of complex imperial rivalries among China, Japan, and Russia in northeast China as well as the rapid rise of vegetable oil consumption in Europe. We demonstrate how Mitsui Bussan navigated the shifting geopolitical terrain by taking advantage of the competition between the Russian and Japanese empires, utilizing Chinese middlemen effectively, and securing support from the Japanese government and military. By placing the soybean trade in a geopolitical context, we shed light on how global commodity markets, trade, and international relations were intertwined.

  PublisherDOI

• In Memoriam: Aaron S. Moore (1972–2019)

  Technology and Culture · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access

  forerunner in the history of technology in Asia, friend, colleague, and scholar.His life and career cut short has left an empty space in the heart of a network of scholars who have known and benefited from his quiet curiosity

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mutant rice and agricultural modernization in Asia

  History and Technology · 2020 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Biology

  By using the genealogy of hybrid rice, Mahsuri, developed in Malaysia by Japanese agronomists in the 1960s, this article tells a story of agricultural modernization in Asia that challenges the US-centered narrative of the Green Revolution. Cross-racial hybrid Mahsuri’s parent is Taichung 65 from colonial Taiwan, and its off-spring is irradiated Mahsuri Mutant. By highlighting the deep connection between colonial development and post-World War II technical assistance, the role of intra-Asia networks in crop improvement programs in Asia, and the agency of postcolonial Asian nations, this article critiques the ironies embedded in the mutant rice and in the concept of development.

  PublisherDOI

• Science for the Empire

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 53 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • History
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• Eloge: Aaron S. Moore (1972–2019)

  Isis · 2020 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Library science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• chapter 4. Mapping Marxism onto the Politics of the Scientific

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020-09-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• chapter 5. Constructing the Japanese Scientific Tradition

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020-09-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mitsui Bussan and the Manchurian soybean trade: Geopolitics and economic strategies in China’s Northeast, ca. 1870s–1920s

  Business History · 2019-12-01 · 7 citations

  article1st author

  This article examines how soybeans became a global commodity, by focusing on the intermediary role of the Japanese trading company Mitsui Bussan. In the early twentieth century, soybeans were almost exclusively grown in Northeast China, also known as Manchuria. Their global commodification was a result of complex imperial rivalries among China, Japan, and Russia in northeast China as well as the rapid rise of vegetable oil consumption in Europe. We demonstrate how Mitsui Bussan navigated the shifting geopolitical terrain by taking advantage of the competition between the Russian and Japanese empires, utilizing Chinese middlemen effectively, and securing support from the Japanese government and military. By placing the soybean trade in a geopolitical context, we shed light on how global commodity markets, trade, and international relations were intertwined.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: A Kula Ring for the Flying Geese: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia

  Bloomsbury Academic eBooks · 2018-01-01 · 8 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• John P. DiMoia

  67 shared

• Lisa Onaga

  Nanyang Technological University

  64 shared

• Philip Brown

  64 shared

• Yulia Frumer

  64 shared

• Takashi Nishiyama

  Wesleyan University

  64 shared

• Ying Tan

  64 shared

• Christopher W. Jones

  Fiona Stanley Hospital

  64 shared

• Nobuhiro Yamane

  Gunma University

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• The 2024 Vernon Carstensen Memorial Best Article Award, “Oki…
• National Endowment for the Humanities, 2021-2022, 2021- 2022
• Science for the Empire awarded Choice Outstanding Academic B…
• Environmental Humanities Initiative Fellowship, 2020-2025
• Hoover Institute/EA Library, Stanford University, research g…