RAILWAY SHAMON

The Japanese have long used mon 紋 (the traditional Japanese crest or heraldic device) as marks of identification. The study of mon is an interesting undertaking in its own right. It is a prime example Japanese ingenuity in graphic design, both for its simplicity and in its ingenuity as a mnemonic device. While most Western readers are familiar with mon as a family crest, a shamon 社紋 is a company crest, corporate logo, or trademark. Japanese railways were quick to adopt their own particular shamon and to apply them to tender sides, locomotive cab or tank sides, rolling stock, and structures as indicia of ownership as well as to give a sense of corporate identity to the traveling public. “Branding” as it is known today was alive and quite sophisticated in Meiji Japan. As such, a good working knowledge of railway shamon can be very useful in identifying locomotives, structures, and rolling stock from old photographs, when other means of identification are lacking. The identity of a railroad, and thus a rough idea of the region, can sometimes be made by nothing more than the front of an old locomotive shed, as it was often the practice among many companies in Japan to work their shamon design even into the window framing or louvers of the round ventilation windows typically found in the pediment area above locomotive shed doors (the Kansai Tetsudō, Hokkaidō Tankō, and Nihon Tetsudō are three notable examples), or on other buildings. The Nihon Tetsudō shamon has even been found used as ventilator motifs for attic or eave vents of its station buildings. In the case of at least one railway, the Kansai Tetsudō, close examination of historical photos will reveal that the company used its shamon on the rear “porthole”-type cab windows in some of its British tank locomotives as sunscreens or coal guards.

Railway shamon are likewise often highly-symbolic in other ways: for example, evoking the geography through which the railway might run, as in the case of the San’yō Tetsudō shamon’s visual suggestion of the mountain range along which that coastal line ran. Spending more than a few moments’ examination will repay the viewer with a deeper appreciation of the ingenuity of the visual designs found in railway shamon. Many, but certainly not all, mon and shamon were traditionally circular well-prior to the advent of railways in Japan; a preexisting design convention that lent itself perfectly to symbolize the railway wheel. Many of the railway shamon to be seen on the following page are deftly designed to resemble the spoked driving-wheel of a steam locomotive. But many likewise take their visual inventiveness beyond that. The shamon of the Nihon or Nippon Tetsudō, for example, evokes the 16 petal Imperial chrysanthemum mon (in Japanese, the “Kiku no gomon” which is found on today’s Japanese passports, stamps, above entrances to embassies, etc.), which has come to be a symbol of Japan itself, and by slight variation, has mirrored that image with its driving wheel shamon design, not so subtly implying the important national stature of a company that was for a number of years the only trunk line railway running northward out of Tōkyō. Not inappropriate for a company which appropriated for itself the name “Japan Railway.” Similarly, the shamon of the Kyūshū Tetsudō adopts the same “spoked wheel” appearance when viewed positively, but when viewed negatively also bears a resemblance to the kiku no gomon. Better still, it does this by using nine identical cross-sections of railway rail arranged in a circle. The conceit goes further still, as one pronunciation of the number nine in Japanese is “Kyu”, so the shamon is also a visual pun and subtle reference to the railway name itself. The cross-sectioned rail device is of course also evident in the “stylized I beam” shamon of the Imperial Japanese Railway, from the kanji 工 kō meaning mechanic and implying engineering or technology (it also was the first character of the Kōbushō, the original government department of which the IJGR formed a part). The designers of railway shamon often used very ingenious ways to work one or more of the Japanese characters found in the particular railway name into the shamon as a visual reminder of the company’s identity. For example, the shamon of the Nishinari Tetsudō is obviously a stylized version of the kanji 西 that is pronounced nishi. More cleverly, the Jōbu Tetsudō and the Kōzuke Tetsudō both incorporated the kanji “上” (pronounced either as jō or kō) into their shamon in such a way as to make it appear once again to symbolize a spoked railway wheel. The Kōbu does the same with the kanji 甲 which is used in its name and is pronounced kō in this instance. Likewise, the kanji 中 or Chu is to be found in the shamon of the Chuetsu Tetsudō, as is the kanji 尾 bi in the Bisai shamon and the kanji 常 jō in that of the Jōsō. Similarly for the Kansai, Ganetsu, Hokkaidō, Hokkaidō Kansetsu, Hakatawan, Chugoku, Jinchu, Ota, Ryugasaki, and Kintetsu, to name but a few. The design motifs of shamon have been used to suggest lengths of track, as in the shamon of the Kaya Tetsudō and the Nanao Tetsudō. Note that there are seven crossties in the circle of track which forms the Nanao Tetsudō shamon, and one pronunciation of the kanji for the number seven in Japanese is nana-, yet another visual pun. Similarly, the Sangi Tetsudō shamon suggests a rail junction with diverging and converging rail lines, resembling a junction of three double-tracked lines, while one pronunciation for the number three in Japanese is san. Later in Meiji, the lightning bolt motif was adopted time and again as a part of the shamon of electric railways. Any number of visual devices in many railway shamon can accordingly be a visual clue to one or more of the kanji characters in the railway’s name or character. The kanji used in the name of the Ome Tetsudō are the same as those used in the similar sounding Japanese word for “plum” (ume). It should come as no surprise to see that the company’s shamon resembles a plum blossom. The Kawagoe Tetsudō took its name from its principal terminus, the town of Kawagoe in the Kanto region. Kawagoe is a four-syllable word that literally means “River Crossing” and the Kawagoe shamon makes one of the fullest uses of visual puns and allusion to be found among railway shamon. Overall the motif is the familiar spoked railway wheel. The use of three lines in depicting each of the spokes of the driver-like shamon (which design itself again calls to mind the diverging/converging rail junction lines motif of the Sangi shamon) resembles the kanji 川 kawa, meaning “river.” The use of five spokes is a visual pun on the kanji for the number five, pronounced go, and finally the use of the “stylized I beam section of rail” like that of the IJR shamon is similar to the hiragana character “ェ” which is pronounced -eh. So it is, that for the astute viewer, the company’s full name is there to be seen on the face of its shamon. Additionally, it is useful to know something of the respective practices as to shamon placement as this in itself can aid in identification of a locomotive otherwise unidentified, or help in eliminating possibilities. Quite atypically among railways, the IJGR normally positioned its shamon not on cab or tender sides, but only on the rear of tenders or the rear of coal bunkers of tank locomotives. Locomotives with no visible shamon or other indicia on their cab sides or tender sides may often be IJGR locomotives. In addition, the IJR shamon itself was quite small relative to other railway shamon sizes, and appears as a quite small marking often above the buffer beam of tenders or rear bunkers. However, the IJGR shamon figures quite prominently on the sides of freight car rolling stock. The Hokkaidō Tankō Tetsudō seemed to use a shamon on its engine cabs or tenders half the time, the Roman letters “HTTKK” on its cabs and tenders the other half, and only rarely the two in combination. The San’yō Tetsudō usually positioned its shamon on cab sides as opposed to tender sides, and its shamon almost invariably was flanked on either side by the two kanji making up the word San’yō, in traditional Japanese right-to-left reading order, i.e. “陽 [shamon] 山” with the kanji slightly above the center line of the shamon as if they were superscripts. The Kansai Tetsudō almost never put its shamon on its locomotives or tenders, preferring instead to emblazon cab or tank sides with its full name (read right to left in traditional fashion) thusly: “道 鉄西関,” usually in a flat arch formation over the locomotive’s running number. Likewise, the Hankaku Tetsudō almost invariably did not use its shamon on its locomotives. The Tōbu, Kōbu, Kyūshū, Nankai and Nippon all rather routinely followed the formula of putting only a shamon on locomotive sides as the sole means of identification, as did the tiny Ryūgasaki, Ōme, and Kōzuke Railways. The Nippon vaguely seems to have favored shamon placement above the locomotive running number, but not always. The little Chugoku Tetsudō usually wrote the two kanji of its name in traditional right-to-left Japanese fashion with its shamon between them thusly: “国 [shamon] 中” usually positioned to the rear of the locomotive running number in “superscript” fashion. The Ōta Railway usually employed both shamon (normally situated under the running number) and on some locomotives the Roman alphabet legend “OTA RAILWAY.” (note the full stop) on its locomotives. The Kyōto Tetsudō put its name “道鉄都京” reading right-to-left in a flat arch formation above its shamon on cab sides. In the schematic representative railway shamon shown, those of Japanese built or controlled railways in colonial regions or regions of influence are included to assist in differentiation, as similar names were sometimes used and as such railways were sometimes written about on par with home railways, potentially creating confusion for modern readers.