After a summer hiatus, the SBP Substack is returning with a miniseries on Japan’s railways, in anticipation of the release of Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan by John Dougill this November. In the spirit of John’s book, which is so sensitive to local histories, I’d like to look to the past, aspiring to nothing more than a potted history, highlighting interesting episodes in the history of Japan's railways.
With that out of the way, let’s start at the beginning.
The story of Japan’s development could be told like this: in 1868 the isolationist, feudal order gave way to modernizing elements within Japan and foreign influence without. Thus 1868 marks a clean break from the past followed by an unmitigated upward trend. While this is a helpful schematic, a finer-grained history reveals the false starts and unrealized efforts that marked the inception of Japan’s acclaimed railways.
The question of a modern rail system was of utmost importance to the Meiji government, and the construction of the first rail system was being negotiated as early as 1869 with preliminary land survey by 1870. This resulted in a Tokyo–Yokohama branch line, which holds the title of Japan’s first railway, but it was by no means the first time such a prospect had been considered. Prior to its dissolution, the Bakufu government courted both American and French proposals of various forms. As late as 1867, Anton L. C. Portman—an American diplomat who had been a member of Commodore Mathew Perry’s mission to Japan—had reached an agreement to construct a similar line between then Edo and Yokohama. Less than a year later, the Meiji government having come to power, the agreement was discarded, despite vigorous protest and maneuvering by the Americans. As history would have it, the newly installed Meiji reformers would have a distinct preference for the British in matters of rail.
In December 1869, Harry Parkes, Britain’s senior diplomat to Japan, met with several of the Meiji leaders, Ito Hirobumi, Japan’s first prime minister, among them. They discussed the construction of rail infrastructure with British financing and technical supervision. This consisted of a main line joining Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka with branches to the deep-water ports of Yokohama, Kobe, and Tsuruga. While not as fraught as the wholesale ownership by a foreign power—like that of the abortive American proposal, the Japanese reformers, several of whom had left Japan before the end of the shogunate to study in Britain, were keenly aware of the context of British colonialism and the pretext which debt and indemnity had provided for subjugation.
Nor was the nascent government of a single mind on the importance of this particular foreign innovation; Saigo Takamori, an influential member of the Meiji restorationists and military, opposed the construction of the railways in favor of an isolationist position and bolstering the military—warships rather than trains. The ideological context is important here but far beyond the current scope. Japan had been “opened” more than a decade earlier by American gunships. Accordingly, the politics of restoration were infused with a desire to expel foreign influence to varying degrees. The military, which tended to the more hardline isolationist and reactionary position, stymied the rail project throughout its construction by refusing to relinquish land that it controlled surrounding Tokyo Bay.
But the Western-aligned elites held sway and the railroad came about despite opposition, though—and this speaks to the importance of the project in the minds of the Japanese elites, who saw it both as symbolic of Japan’s emergence into modernity and a way to physically unite the county—it would be the only foreign loan the Meiji government took. Financing was initially procured through Horatio Nelson Lay, a former British diplomat. Soon, the effort was embroiled in scandal when it was revealed that Lay had devised to skim profits off the sale of Japanese bonds intended to finance the rail project. The Japanese moved to replace him, securing finance through the Oriental Bank of Britain, a British bank operating in the eastern colonies.
British influence extended beyond finance. Two British subjects in particular were brought on to the project: William Cargill, a manager from the Oriental Bank branch, was named the Director of Railways and Telegraphs and Edmund Morel, who had experience building rail in Australia and New Zealand, Chief Engineer. These two yatoi (foreign employees) standout as instrumental to the endeavor, though Morel’s tenure was short lived (literally, he was brought on in 1870 and died in 1871). The comparatively narrow British colonial gauge of 3 feet 6 inches was adopted—this wouldn’t be superseded until the construction of the wider-gauge Shinkansen. So was the standard of left-hand traffic, something almost entirely confined to Britain and its former colonies. To be sure, the project was not solely a British affair. Japanese experts replaced foreigners as soon as they were properly trained. As the railways began to take shape so too did the organizational bureaucracy proper to the building of railways and other modern infrastructure. The Ministry of Public Works was created in 1870 and the Railway Bureau, helmed by Inoue Masaru, soon after. Inoue, who studied engineering at University College London, would come to be known as the “father of Japanese railways” for his accomplishments in the first decades of the Meiji period.
To bring us to the close of this episode, the section between Shinagawa Station and Yokohama Station began train service in June of 1872. The New York Times reported on the event in its July 24 issue, stating—noted here both for its chauvinism and retrospective irony—that “the Japanese have very little idea of punctuality.” Full service between Shinbashi Station and Yokohama Station began on October 14 of the same year. In attendance was Emperor Meiji, who road the line as a passenger. The date now marks Railway Day in Japan.
Sources:
Aoki, Eiichi. “Dawn of Japanese Railways” in A History of Japanese Railways, 1872–1999. East Japan Railway Culture Foundation, 2000. Access.
Free, Dan. Early Japanese Railways 1853–1914: Engineering Triumphs That Transformed Meiji-era Japan. Tuttle Publishing, 2008.
Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan. Harvard University Press, 2002.
Stay tuned for September’s installment. You can preorder and learn more about the forthcoming title Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan on our website.