This feature issue deals with a historical analysis of the scientific practices in and around the former Japanese colonial Universities. In relation to techno-science/medicine in East Asia, the historical significance of Japanese colonialism was a question which has been pondered at length but which has not been subjected to full-scale investigation until recently. Except for a few medical histories and histories of technology by economic historians, the history of science in the Japanese colonies was mostly a neglected field. However, from this field, we will shed new lights on some interesting issues. Such as: how the Japanese exploited the manpower and natural resources of neighboring Asian countries in terms of techno-science, and how the colonized accepted and actually developed techno-science on their own. The continuity and discontinuity of Japan's colonial experience is also an issue to be explored, in terms of whether or not there is any colonial legacy of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, as claimed by the Japanese.
