Technological culture and its value orientation: case study: modernisation in the Japanese agricultural sector

This paper analyses technology in modern Japan using three models of technological culture where the author claims "technological culture" as complex structures of certain technological principles in connection with a set of value orientations such as world view, attitudes towards living things, productivity and labour. The author elaborates three models of the thus defined "technological culture", on the basis of ethnographical data of three cultures, namely Asian culture, European culture and Latin American culture. These three cultures are radically different from each other, with no direct contact until the second half of the nineteenth century. By taking three cultures as points of reference, the author relativises and objectifies more efficiently one of the three points, including the observer's culture.