MEIJI-ERA LIVERIES

There are simply no authoritative sources that have come to light as of the time of this writing that give any reliable indication what the various liveries of Meiji era railway companies were, save one or two scraps. Unlike Victorian Britain, where a railway’s livery formed an integral part of the corporate image, was an adjunct of marketing, and served to differentiate its trains from those of the competition and where a very complete record of various liveries was made that still exists, the livery of a Japanese railway company’s rolling stock in the Meiji era was a matter that simply wasn’t seen as being of any particular importance by the various railway companies, and to date no period record describing them has come to light. What follows is no more than educated speculation, coupled with what bits of recorded evidence as are known.

Shimbashi Line (Early Meiji)

Some sources have taken the position that virtually no guidance whatsoever can be gleaned from the contemporary early Meiji color woodblock prints depicting locomotives and rolling stock. This is perhaps because the writers who have addressed the subject matter have been viewed the surviving prints as a corpus. When one examines the prints individually, they fall into four distinct categories: 1. Railway images said to be in other lands or intended represent railways conceptually or in general, with no apparent concern about showing an actual railway in situ in Japan, 2. Railway images in which it is obvious that the novelty of pigmentation derived from Western aniline dyes, first imported to Japan around the same time, is also a component of the print or in which the surrounding structures bear no resemblance whatsoever to any known railway location in Japan (it is in these prints that one often finds depictions of trains and locomotive that are so patently absurd as to have been made by the artist only from verbal or written descriptions he had heard or read), 3. Railway images where the scene itself can be identified (due to station buildings or lineside structures) as having been drawn from life, but which contain locomotives and/ or rolling stock which never existed or ran in Japan, and 4. Railway images where both the scene and the locomotives and/or rolling stock can be reasonably identified as having been drawn from real life observation.

The only class worthy of real analysis is Category 4. One should completely discount those images that were never intended to depict an actual scene (Category 1) and those where it is obvious that they served the dual purpose of introducing the viewing public to the novelty of aniline dyes (Category 2—the class from which the most outlandish and improbable liveries are to be found). Also discounted must be those prints which depict locomotives and rolling stock which is of a type known never to have been used in Japan, but which otherwise depict locations that are known to be accurate as witnessed by station and other line-side structures (Class 3). Here, several possibilities come into play. Depending on the age of the print, it is possible that it was drawn after some of the structures had been built, but before any locomotives or rolling stock had been placed on the line. Or, it could have been as simple a matter as the artist having visited at a time when no trains were passing by. Often times these prints show evidence of locomotives having been ‘lifted’ from the pages of a Western woodcut or copperplate engraving, as would have been contained in the illustrated books and magazines that were starting to trickle into Japan from Europe and the US, or from a Japanese book on the subject. One tell-tale image appears repeatedly in the early prints: that of a freakish looking “locomotive” with a vertical boiler topped with a chimney centered amidst four large wheels, the likes of which never ran in Japan nor on any other railroad in the world for that matter: its inspiration is an experimental New York City self-propelled steam-pumper fire engine named the “J. C. Carey” that was taken from the November 20, 1858 issue of Harper’s Weekly (page 749), a copy of which evidently had made its way to Japan and was used as source material for some popular Meiji illustrated books of the day. (Similarly, the artist Kiyochika appropriated the image of an 1850s-era American locomotive from an American print for one of his most famous prints of the Shimbashi line at Takanawa.)

Once one has separated the chaff from the wheat, to arrive at those images described by Category 4, one finds a remarkable consistency as to the livery of the very earliest locomotives and rolling stock on the Shimbashi line. Not only is this consistency notable, but it is all the more telling to find that many of the different and divergent artists seem to have agreed upon the liveries they used to depict the locomotives and rolling stock. Taking these prints into consideration, we can make an educated guess that the livery of the earliest locomotives and rolling stock on the Shimabashi line was as follows: Locomotives had black boilers and smokeboxes, in orthodox British style (except the Avonside and Sharp Stewart locomotives that may have had light brown or golden ochre side tanks and cabs). Almost all the early locomotives sported polished bright work, red buffer beams and lining. This is particularly true of the Sharp Stewart locomotives, and the builder’s photo of the Vulcan locomotive clearly shows it was elaborately lined. Likewise do the builder’s photos of the two Dubs locomotives. Freight wagons were probably painted a bright red oxide (in US railroad par-lance, a vivid Boxcar Red, more red than rust brown). Apparently some of the first boxcars were hurriedly converted to third class passenger cars and could be seen running in the bright red oxide used by the freight stock. Conventional passenger cars were, consistent with similar cars built in the UK for service in New Zealand, the color of varnished natural wood, possibly pinstriped or lined-out in vermillion or bright red. As varnish was one of the cheapest to apply but quickest coverings to wear out, and as the Japanese climate is fraught with much harsher extremes of heat and cold than is Britain’s, where the first carriages were manufactured, it can be presumed that the natural wood color seen through varnish disappeared when that varnish finish was quickly abandoned in favor of an actual paint that gave better protection and was more serviceable. One print that is fairly accurate in other details shows passenger carriages on each end as being natural wood color, while those in the middle are painted Brunswick Green, a fairly common paint color in that era. It is known that the first class carriages where always marshaled in the middle of the early Shimbashi trains, so this gives rise to the suspicion that the first class carriages, which presumably would have been among the first to have been repainted as receiving a higher standard of maintenance, were painted in this hue within a reasonable time that accounted for wear and tear on the original varnish conjectured. By the early 1880s many prints show passenger carriages in red, leading one to suspect that a they had been repainted in bright red oxide similar to that used on freight wagons, as it was a cheap and easy paint to formulate in Japan, at a time when the paint manufacturing industry had yet to be established.

Later Meiji

As to later times, at present, unless and until some long-forgotten document is discovered, the best that can be learned on this matter is to be gleaned by further study of the Watanabe/Iwasaki collection of photographs in the Transportation Museum in Tōkyo which were taken around the turn of the last century and are a primary source for study of Meiji-era rolling stock. These show that often times, locomotives imported from the UK, US, and Germany retained the colors in which they were supplied by the various manufacturers, until each such locomotive was in need of a repaint, at which point, at least on the IJGR, each locomotive was generally turned out in utilitarian (often unlined) black. This was a logical consequence of the state of the paint and pigment industry in Japan in Meiji times. While pigments such as lead white and red oxide had been widely available during the Tokugawa period, Japan’s first modern paint manufactory was not opened until 1881 and the modern paint and pigment industry initially grew slowly, resulting in paint, pigments, shellacs, and oils that were dutiable imported commodities for quite some time in Meiji. At a time when funds for railway development were not plentiful, it made sense to economize and to confine liveries to the most serviceable and cheapest paints such as red oxide and drop black. The IJGR “standard black” locomotive livery was sometimes lined out, with polished brightwork—brass steam domes, chimney caps, bells, in some cases boiler bands, and the like. Red is suspected by some Japanese students on the subject to have been among the most common colors used for lining, although the Watanabe/Iwasaki collection photos of locomotives of railways such as the Hankaku, the Ota, and the Nishinari show a preference to using a very light color for lining, as is also evident on some San’yo and Nippon Tetsudō locomotives. Whether this is white, cream, straw, yellow (the most likely candidates) or some other light hue that was often used for pinstriping is open to speculation. Lining is to be seen in many contemporary photos, so it was perhaps not an uncommon practice over “unlined.” Buffer beams were “buffer beam red” with polished steel buffer heads, which was becoming something of a British standard by the time of importation of locomotives to Japan. Buffer shank housings are believed to have been painted “buffer beam red” as well. This is not an immutable rule, however. It should be kept in mind that the Meiji era was one where little capital was available to companies to expand and build their lines, so economization was the watchword of the day, hence the quick probable conversion of locomotive liveries to black as each locomotive came due for re-painting.

Livery “details” (if they can be called that) are known for only three classes as a matter of any certainty. Its is known that the IJGR 6200 class locomotives were painted black, lined red with polished brightwork at least in the years 1897–1898 as a fuller description appeared in published form in the 1970s. The Nippon Railway 9700 class locomotive (the renowned first “Mikado” class of any size in the world) were said to have been delivered sporting a green livery. The Kansai Railway 7850 class locomotives were said to be painted crimson, probably not far removed from the British Midland Railway’s Crimson Lake, as the locomotives were British built and the builder would have been familiar with that paint color formula. Its is possible to state from examination of Watanabe/Iwasaki photos that the Kōbu Tetsudō 600 (A8) class locomotives, the Kansai Swiss-built 2800 class locos, the German 0-4-4-0T 4500 class Mallet of the Nippon Tetsudō, the Dubs 4-4-0 5830 class of the Nippon, the Nippon Tetsudō Neilson 7750 class (similar to the Kansai crimson locos mentioned above), and a diminutive IJGR Bagnall 0-4-0T of 1903 all bore liveries that unquestionably were lined in a broad band of a very dark color, so the contrasting primary color couldn’t have been black. A dark green, such as Brunswick or Holly Green is a likely suspect for these examples. Watanabe/Iwasaki photos of the German-built Hannover 3170 class locos of the Nippon railway clearly show a livery of a dark edging color framing a lighter color being used for panel insets on the sidetanks and bunker, so again the overall color of the tanks and bunker couldn’t have been black. From the same photographic collection, it appears that many of the Brooks locomotives had “Russian Steel” boiler jackets with polished steel boiler bands, while the tenders were painted a dark color, probably black, or a dark blue that would have complemented the Russian Steel very nicely. The Watanabe/Iwasaki photos of IJGR loco 550 of the 9150 class again shows lining darker than the overall color and a 1903 watercolor of the same locomotive in the author’s possession done by a very skilled and fastidious railway student shows that the lining was light blue. Perhaps the two generalizations that can safely be said are that, as a rule, the IJGR locomotives were the most somber in respect of livery and that lining is very much evident on non-IJGR locomotives. On its British locomotives, the IJGR affixed large polished brass running numbers on both sides, at the top of the smokebox door, and the back of the tender or the bunker of tank locomotives almost without fail, as did the Tōbu, and Kansai. The Nippon Tetsudō and the Kyūshū Tetsudō did the same with their British locomotives, except they generally omitted the smokebox door numbers. The San’yō sometimes didn’t affix numbers to the back of locomotives or tenders. American locomotives of the day usually had their running numbers cast on makers’ plates fixed on the center of the smokebox door, and these were generally retained by all railways. The Hankaku Tetsudō did not seem to use kanji, but followed the practice of painting its name in the Roman alphabet on the sides of its tank engines and tenders thusly: “Hankaku Ry.” apparently maintaining the American style livery details in which it’s locomotives were first finished. The Nishinari sometimes employed its shamon alone, or sometimes in conjunction with the Roman words “NISHINARIT.K.” (Nishinari Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha or Nishinari Railway Company) Note that there was often no space after the word “Nishinari” and the abbreviation for “Tetsudō.” This too was a copy of the American style liveries, as often the American locomotives would be delivered with the railroad name “NISHINARI T. K.” painted on the tank side. American builders probably assumed that T. K. was the equivalent of the common abbreviation R. R. and therefore sometimes neglected to abbreviate using a full “T. K. K.” which is a more accurate rendition of the equivalent American abbreviation “R. R. Co.” There exists a photo showing a British built A8 locomotive painted thusly: “NISHINARIT.K.” which almost certainly was not the manner in which it was painted leaving the UK. Even less is known of passenger and freight stock. It is presumed that the first English-built passenger carriages may have been simply clear varnish over the natural grain of the wood, which may not have proved serviceable in the harsher climatic conditions of Japan, leading to subsequent painting. The restored early compartment carriage at the Transportation Museum in Tōkyo (which is of 1880s–1890s vintage and not the earliest stock) is painted a light gray-green, but this color is but a “best educated guess” conjecture, not based on any irrefutable data. The initial passenger cars imported to Hokkaidō were probably straw, as that is the color of the preserved first class car that was in storage for most of its days and probably kept its original color. That coach alone had the kanji Kaitakushi painted on its center panel, while it and all others were emblazoned with the legend “Horonai Railway of Hokkaidō” above the windows stretching the length of the car. Photos of some of the earliest Tokaidō line passenger bogie stock clearly show the panels above the windows as painted white or cream with a chocolate brown lower body (the cream possibly being caused by the effect of varnish over white paint that had yellowed with age, a phenomenon that gave rise to the similar and celebrated “Chocolate and Cream” livery of passenger carriages on England’s Great Western Railway). Written correspondence to The Locomotive magazine dated 1904 describes the sleeping cars in use on the Tōkaido express trains thusly: “Interior finish of these car is of Cab[i]net Oak well varnished while exterior is painted in Chocolate brown, lined & lettered in gold, and is kept polished like a piano.” Reference to old hand colored postcards of the late Meiji era predominantly show IJGR passenger cars ranging from a light chocolate brown with a white, blue, or red stripe at the waistline (to indicate class) to a deep brown-lake color very similar to the color used on IJR carriage stock from the 1920s into the 1950s. However the hand-colored postcards of Meiji are likewise not totally reliable as different versions of the same postcard have been known to sport entirely different liveries, for example, the postcard of the Kyūshū Tetsudō express train at Ishimaya exists in at least two states: one showing the passenger cars in a two-tone color scheme of vivid burnt orange below the waistline and cream above, and one showing the same passenger cars in bottle green. Clearly the hand coloring is not reliable. Whether any of the liveries to be found in late Meiji hand-tinted postcards are based on reality or were the simple whim of the colorist at the time is open to debate. However, it is encouraging to consider that by late Meiji, railways were so familiar to the populace and the sight of railway trains (and hence the manner in which they were painted) had been reinforced again and again on a daily basis in the subconscious of the average citizen, that perhaps it would have been second nature to have painted an object one saw every day, day after day, in the colors of and as it appeared in real life. That, coupled with the fact that most of the late Meiji hand-tinted railway postcards seem to contain no patently outlandish liveries (as do some of the early Meiji woodblock prints mentioned above), leads one to hope that at least the liveries depicted on these postcards, within limitations, shouldn’t be discounted out of hand. But clearly no conclusions can be drawn unless and until independent corroborative sources are found in the course of historical research.