Based on recently discovered personal archives of a Japanese chemical engineer— Shimomura Kôtarô—this article examines the intertwined nature of his work as a scientist with his spiritual life, including his interest in occultism. It argues that, contrary to current understanding, not all engineers of Japanese modernization considered technology to be the panacea, an answer to the Japanese predicament. For some of them, pursuit of scientific knowledge was a way of understanding the universe. Shimomura’s faith in a relationship between science and magic, manifested in youth, found its expression in his exploration of occultism and psychic phenomena in his retirement. More generally, the article takes a critical look at the stakes of laying out the careers and thought of men such as Shimomura along the binary of religion and science in the intellectual landscape of modern Japan in which such distinctions were not operative.