CHAPTER 7: 1895–1905
The Second Railway Mania and the Russo-Japanese War
The extremely short length of this train—two “brake vans” (cabooses) and a single box car—leads one to believe it was a special train either with an important cargo or for maintenance, repair, or “break-down” purposes. The location is the viaduct near the Usui (Shin’etsu) Line summit. The prodigious amount of steam seen escaping from the front of the locomotive seems to indicate it is in need of new cylinder packing to stop leakage: perhaps an ailing unit working its way back to shops for repair.
The defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War not only boosted Japan’s self-image, but also went a considerable way towards creating the perception worldwide that Japan was henceforth a confirmed regional power with considerable potential of becoming a world power. In the aftermath of the war, a wave of energy swept the nation, and with that exuberance, Japan experienced a second railway mania. In the year after the war, according to one source, roughly 20,000 miles of competing projected railway lines were put forth by various proposed companies. Only a fraction received the approval of the Railway Council. Schemes were posited in all quarters of the realm for railway extension. The two years of 1896 and 1897 were remarkably active. 555 applications for provisional charters were received in 1896 alone. Private railways had by now become beyond question the primary builders of new railway line, the amount of private railway line increasing, on average, about 400 miles per year in both 1897 and 1898, a remarkable achievement when compared to prior years. The enthusiasm was not confined just to the home islands: railways using Japanese financial and technical backing were projected in Korea, where as a result of the war Japan’s influence was now firmly recognized, as well as Taiwan, the one significant territorial gain ceded by China to Japan. (Japan had demanded and had been ceded the strategic Liaodong peninsula and other areas, but France, Russia, and Germany had interceded, nominally on behalf of China, but coincidentally in their own self-interest, in what became known as the Triple Intervention, to force Japan to retrocede all Chinese territories gained except Taiwan and the Pescadores, which quite naturally was bitterly resented by the Japanese populace.)
In the aftermath of the war, proposals were made to nationalize the private lines, to build a direct line through central Tōkyō to connect the Shimbashi terminal with the Nippon Tetsudō’s Ueno terminal, a distance of 2½ miles, and to build a central station. Prior to this time, the German architectural firm of Ende-Boeckmann had been engaged to do city planning for Tōkyō, and the decision was made in 1895 to build such a line from Hamamatsucho station, just below Shimbashi, to the proposed site for a central station to be built in an area between the Imperial Palace and Ginza. It was suggested that the new line be constructed as an elevated line on an arched masonry viaduct, the under-side of which could be rented for warehouse (godown was the term of the day) or shop space, thereby generating income to offset the high land acquisition and construction costs, similar to a plan that had been undertaken in Berlin. An appropriation of ¥3,500,000 was passed by the newly prorogued Diet to cover costs. It was proposed that the Nippon Tetsudō should thereupon build a line south from its Ueno terminus to join at a new central station. Even at this early date, it was realized that due to the land values, the cost of construction would be sizeable. The Nippon demurred; understandably perhaps in view of the high land acquisition costs the scheme would have entailed, and for a time the scheme was to complete the line as far as the new proposed central station site, which was planned to serve as a terminus until further construction funds could be made available. In 1896, planning for the new elevated railway was entrusted to Franz Balzer, of the Royal Prussian Railways’ Stettin office, who had had a hand in the similar Berlin project.
The IJGR was called upon for the first time to participate in its first Imperial Funeral in January 1896. The Empress Dowager had died that month at Aoyama, and a special train was scheduled to conduct the Imperial coffin to Kyōto for burial alongside the Komei Emperor on February 2nd. There was accordingly something less than a month for the IJGR shops at Kōbe to turn out a suitable Imperial train for the occasion. There were at this point several Imperial carriages, based in both Tōkyō and Kyōto, but no bier carriage. With such little time at hand, work was focused on building the carriage for the Imperial coffin, while a first class and a first/second composite carriage were hastily converted to serve as new carriages for the Imperial Party. Japan’s first State Funeral train consisted of four first class carriages, one first/second composite carriage, three second class carriages, the bier carriage, two goods trucks (converted for use for baggage), and three brake vans (for railway officials). Departure was at 2:00 p.m. from Aoyama and arrival at Kyōto was the following day at 8:35 a.m. According to the Imperial Railway Department, “locomotive tenders” (freshly stocked with water and coal, leaving one to wonder if the main locomotive was changed or not) were changed at Shinjuku, Yokohama, Yamakita, Numadzu, Shizuoka, Hamamatsu, Nagoya, Ōgaki, Maibara, and Baba. Lest there be any delays or mishaps, the train was double-headed over mountainous sections of the route. The top engineers and firemen were selected for the train, and two back-up engine drivers accompanied the train in case of mishap. Special carriages were held on reserve at all the planned stops, to cover any exigencies. Clearly, the care evidenced was befitting the Imperial responsibility assumed. The day had changed from the times when an Imperial Train could be routed through an improperly set turnout at main line speed.
Curiously, on the return trip, one of the few instances was recorded when the Emperor Meiji actually asserted his Imperial will by whim. The Imperial train was set to depart Kyōto at 8:55 am, but on the morning of departure, the Emperor requested to have the train depart twenty minutes later. When informed that this would wreak havoc in the IJGR’s Tokaidō main-line schedule, he was indignant and is reported to have crossly retorted by saying, “Why should it be impossible to rearrange the schedule, considering that this is a special train for my use?” Obviously, his majesty had little inkling of what ramifications such a change would have caused on the timetable and railway operations of that particular day.
This map shows the extent of the railway network as projected on March 1897. By this point, many of the trunk lines on the Pacific coast of Honshū have been completed. Major building efforts were being concentrated on Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku, and along the Sea of Japan coast. Many of what would become the commuter lines of Tōkyō are starting to appear.
On the heels of war’s end, a trend of marked service improvements was becoming evident among certain railways, starting with the San’yo Tetsudō’s introduction of the first station porters, the akabo (lit. “red caps”). The war had given a boost to San’yo traffic and thanks to Nakamigawa’s foresight, one of it’s English language publications could boast,
“... the entire track, with the exception of a section of six miles, is free from any sharp curves or heavy grades [both impediments to high speed running], while the road-bed throughout, because of its unusually solid construction, affords the smoothest and easiest possible running of trains.”
As the century drew to a close, the San’yo overcame its lingering land acquisition woes and began to assume the form of a major trunk line. With typical San’yo vigor it showed signs (even before it had completed its mainline) of being the innovator among railways in Japan; a reputation it would cement in the course of following years. That innovations sprang from the San’yo is understandable when one considers that it faced the stiffest competition from well-established Inland Sea steamship lines that ran services to many of the towns along the line. In the earlier mentioned brochure-guide, the railway touted its innovations:
This postcard is believed to depict the funerary procession and train for the Dowager Empress Eisho. Shown in the foreground is part of the cortège in traditional court attire, followed by the Imperial Carriage, and at top the funeral train itself. The locomotive appears to resemble one of the Sharp Stewart D1 (later the 5000 Class) 0-4-2 tender locomotives that were among the first lot bought for the Kōbe–Ōsaka–Kyōtō route, although undoubtedly one of the newest and finest British or American 4-4-0s would have been used for the occasion.
“... It is now conceded that in America the art of railway management has reached a higher state of development than elsewhere.
The management of the Sanyo in the adoption of the latest modern inventions and appliances has taken America for its model, with the result that more attention to the comfort and convenience of travelers may be found on its line than on any other part of the railway system of Japan.
...
In the winter season the first and second class carriages are well-provided with heaters, while at all seasons electric lamps on the night trains have superseded the clumsy and noisy English system of car-lighting.”
The San’yo was a veritable fount of innovation. It kept its ticket offices open into the evening, bucking the archaic practice of limited sales hours then generally in place on other lines. It introduced group rate tickets, and tickets that were good for ten days rather than strictly for the day of issue. It made arrangements with the IJGR to operate a through-car service to Ōsaka and Kyōto. (For it’s part the IJGR was permitted to operate excursion trains over San’yo metals.) The San’yo instituted a half-rate return fare for round-trip tickets on longer distance bookings. It was the first to adopt the American system of through-checked baggage. At a time when no dinning cars were operating in Japan, a San’yo first class passenger could order catered meals at stations along the line that would telegraph the order, free of charge, to certain stations farther along the line with catering facilities so that a hot bento box meal (choice of Western or Japanese cuisine) would be waiting at the next catering station on the train’s arrival. Its improvements were not always focused on passenger traffic: among the innovations introduced by Nakamigawa’s proud line were the first widespread use of American-style freight cars on trucks outside Hokkaidō, and some of the first steel-bodied wagons, for coal haulage. As noted, the San’yo was one of the more enthusiastic early adopters of American-built locomotives, while the more conservative Nippon Tetsudō continued to remain loyal to British-built locomotives for some time.
1896 saw the introduction of class color coding that was to become a future nationwide standard when the seven year-old Kansai Tetsudō started coloring first class tickets white, with a corresponding white stripe along the sides of first class passenger cars, blue tickets and car stripes for second, and red for third class. By 1898, the first electric lighting had been introduced on San’yo passenger cars as noted and in the same year, the innovative San’yo had introduced “car boys,” young men who served on-board trains; what we would today call stewards or attendants.
“Car Boys” came to be an institution, and as demeaning as it sounds today to have the word Boy embroidered on the collar of one’s uniform (as the car boys of the Japanese railway service did), at that time, when the word hadn’t acquired such a pejorative connotation, it was undoubtedly taken with more of a matter-of-fact reaction. Apparently, they outshone many of their American counterparts—Pullman Porters who were grown men. One American effused, “There are [in Japan] all the modern conveniences to be found on an American train, including politeness on the part of trainmen, which goes much further than our popular notion of civility.... The nattily uniformed ‘boy,’ who is called that even by the Japanese themselves, is a sort of ideal Pullman porter, who attends to his duties as no [American] Pullman porter would think of doing, and smiles his sincere gratitude for the few coppers that a thankful passenger gives at the end of the journey.”
A Schenectady D12 Class (6400 in the 1909 renumbering) locomotive is seen handling an IJGR excursion train to Maiko beach via the San’yo Tetsudō mainline before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. The photo dates to sometime between 1902 and 1904. Among American builders, Schenectady, Brooks, and Rogers all were very active in solicitation of orders from Japan, along with their principal competitor, Baldwin. These locomotives were results of the first competitive bid process undertaken by the IJGR. The 6400 class is easily recognized by its distinctive asymmetrical cab-side window configuration.
In point of fact, another traveler found the number of youths who held jobs of not inconsiderable responsibility on Japanese railways remarkable. These were perhaps the young people of whom Surgeon Purcell was speaking in the 1870s: “... youngsters, old-fashioned before their time by reason of their need to work for their daily food from tender years...” Teenage boys occupied every post from the car stewards to the ticket collectors at the wickets (the British ticketing system was employed), to the station booking and ticketing agents, to the train guards who rode in the trains’ baggage cars and were responsible for applying train brakes and acting as safety lookouts, often chosen for having some ability in English language in order to be able to assist foreign travelers in case of need. Young girls as well were often used as what the British called crossing guards, the worker who closed the gates at roadway crossings to stop traffic on the approach of a train.
The San’yo was not alone in the introduction of innovations. On November 21, 1898 the Kansai railway, which had been inching eastward from Ōsaka, by a combination of mergers and construction of new lines, reached Nagoya, thereby creating the first alternative rail route between the two cities in competition with the IJGR’s Tokaidō line, and the first instance of significant genuine competition in Japan’s brief history of railway operations. Not oblivious to the need to project its image over that of the IJGR with which it would have to compete, the Kansai built an imposing Neo-renaissance station in Nagoya that compared very favorably to the one-story wood-frame and tile roof standardized IJGR design station,1 such that for a while, the Kansai Railway’s Aichi Station became known locally as the Gateway to Nagoya. Th at competition was in large part responsible for ensuing service improvements by the IJGR and started a process whereby the IJGR was prodded into improvements in order to meet the new competition arising from private companies. But not all private railways launched headlong into service improvements. While the San’yo was developing the reputation of being an innovator, the Nippon Tetsudō was developing a reputation for being hidebound and for treating its customers with something approaching condescension.
This view of a San’yo Tetsudō 4-4-0 shows the classic lines of a high-drivered (for Japan’s narrow gauge) 5’ 0 ¾” Baldwin express passenger engine introduced in 1897. On absorption into the IJGR roster, its class was designated the 5900 Class after nationalization. The San’yo Tetsudō had perhaps the best reputation as being one of the more innovative and best-equipped railways in Japan at that time. Note the state-of-the-art steam turbine electric generator situated between the headlamp and chimney to power the large American style headlamp, the likes of which would enable the San’yo to equip its passenger fleet with electric lighting. (Nevertheless, the marker lamp on the buffer beam is a thoroughly British oil lamp.) Just to the right of the buffer beam is a San’yo iron-plate open wagon for heavy coal traffic. Such a wagon, at a time when most Japanese railways were using wooden-bodied varieties, is another example of the San’yo’s forward-thinking philosophy.
There was a need for service improvements in many aspects of the typical Japanese passenger train of the day. With the advent of the first trains, anything was a luxury when compared to making an overland journey by foot, on horseback, in a kago, or by one of the few stagecoach lines then operating, but by the 1890s, matters had progressed to the point in Japan that issues of passenger comfort were being considered. As late as 1894, it was ill-advised to attempt to read at night in a typical Japanese passenger car, as Francis Trevithick noted when lamenting the low grade rape oil, inferior type of burners, and poor wick trimming in the standard oil lamps for lighting; this at a time by which most of the American and European passenger car fleets had long been equipped with the superior Pintsch compressed oil gas system, and many had been fitted with electric lighting. The first electric lighting only began a very gradual conversion of the existing fleet.
On another point of traveling comfort, Kadono Chōkyūrō observed:
“As regards passenger accommodation there still is plenty of room for improvement. When distances were short and traffic local, what accommodation there is was sufficient; but as at present the continuous lines or rails between Shimonoseki (Mitajiri) in the south and Aomori in the north reaches about 1,000 miles, a through passenger, unless of the most robust constitution, cannot undertake the journey without one or two stoppages for recuperation. Under the best circumstances, a railway journey over ten or twelve hours is tiresome enough (unless passed in sleeping), but when it comes to 1,000 miles without proper accommodation, one shrinks from the attempt. Refreshments are obtainable at almost every station, but travelers from foreign countries generally provide themselves with wicker baskets from the hotels, instead of relying upon station refreshments for subsistence.
In warming the carriage in winter, the old-fashioned, awkward hot-water foot-warmer is used. The heat from these usually proves to be rather pretense than an actuality, especially in the north.”
A foot-warmer was a large zinc or tin container, often wedge-shaped like a footrest, with a screw cap on one end, into which boiling water was poured. Kadono is speaking of the situation on Honshū, where British practice was in place. Trevithick agreed that the imported British institution of the foot-pan, which was provided only to first and second class passengers, was unacceptable, particularly in its total absence from third class carriages: “[T]he Japanese kimono is not a garment which offers great protection against cold when the wearer has to place himself upon a wooden railway seat, and unless provided with warm wrappers, which the majority of third class passengers do not possess, a long journey at night during the winter must prove a very trying undertaking.”
Of course, foot warmers were only good for as long was the water in them remained hot. Trevithick was mindful of “the inconvenience and annoyance to passengers of continually changing foot warmers on a long night journey” when he noted that a patent foot warmer using a newer chemical technology of acetate of soda in place of water could be adopted, which held its heat for 8 hours: nearly 3 times longer than ordinary water, which lasted only about 2½ hours. (Japanese railways by and large used plain water.) One can only imagine the scene in winter some two and a half hours after a train had gotten underway as a mad scramble ensued at the next station to exchange spent foot warmers for fresh ones. The use of foot warmers, of course, is a result of following English practice on Honshū. On Hokkaidō passengers fared better, as its American-style passenger cars had been equipped with a cast iron coal-burning stove for heat in each car from the beginning of railway services there. Steam heating wasn’t introduced until very late in the Meiji era, commencing in 1903, and then only slowly. The exception was the San’yo which had installed steam heat on all its express trains by 1904. Noted one weary American in that same year: “There is only one experience so cold and cheerless as a winter trip on some of the English railways—and that is a journey in the snow season on a train in Japan.”
Other areas where Japanese railways lagged behind their Western counterparts were in clear definition of their responsibilities and liabilities as common carrier vis-à-vis the traveling public, shortage of motive power, freight facilities inadequate to handle demand, and shipping delays. This latter had risen to such a level around this time that complaints were raised that lags caused a delivery time of from ten to fifty days for a journey that should have taken only one or two by rail. Such was the excess demand for railway shipment of goods that when one particular shipper asked for a discount from the Nippon Tetsudō, the general manager would not allow for any discount at all if the shipper shipped 10,000 tons of freight or 100,000 tons. Freight hauling concerns took second priority to passenger traffic for almost the entire Meiji era.
The Sino-Japanese War only exacerbated the situation. The writer W. E. Curtis recorded the flavor of passenger service at the War’s end,
“While the railway management in Japan is in many respects admirable, they have an aggravating way of changing the schedules of trains without the slightest notice. People never know when or why a train is taken off, or the hour of its departure postponed. Sometimes a regiment of troops coming home from the war [with China] will disarrange the whole service. A member of the ministry, or some high public functionary, may want to take a trip by a special, and the railway managers will take off one of the regular trains to accommodate him. Such incidents are occurring every few days, and of course someone always suffers annoyance in consequence.”
The introduction of rail technology to Japan brought with it improvements not always appreciated today. A case in point is the trolley shown in this postcard. Modern day readers are likely to assume that it is a street washer and in a sense, it is. But a clue to its real purpose is found in the broken English caption of “Powder Water Electric Wheel.” At a time when many of Japan’s roads and streets were still of unpaved dirt, they could be muddy quagmires in wet season. But in the dry season of summer, particularly on heavily-trafficked roads, the amount of dust created by that traffic could be prodigious. This trolley was Ōsaka city’s answer. Its purpose was to spray dusty roads with water during the dry months to make the dust lay and thus alleviate the problem until another pass was needed; surely a welcome improvement for many a nearby housewife or shopkeeper weary from dusting. In addition to keeping the air cleaner, the trolley also presumably cooled down many a young boy on a hot summer’s day who was bold enough to play trolley dodger.
* * * * * * * * *
By the war’s conclusion, railways were ever increasingly becoming an integral part of the lifeblood and social fabric of the nation and as the network expanded, the effects began to be felt throughout the realm. In remote villages, the pace of life, as in countless small towns in America and Europe, began to be marked by the arrival and departure of trains. Newspapers and periodicals arrived on those same trains, helping to form public opinions in a novel manner with a speed hitherto unknown. With the advent of small parcels service by the railways, many items previously out of reach began to become more easily available to the well-off. Foods hitherto unavailable gradually became within reach. All manner of consumer goods once difficult to come by in the provinces were in reach if a person was wealthy enough to order them. The foreign tourist and domestic traveler alike were given a reasonable hope of finding bottles of Bass India Pale Ale or cans of corned beef from the packing plants of Chicago on sale in even modest sized towns where only twenty years hence finding a live chicken to buy and cook for dinner was not always possible. In any given town, the railway station became both a hub of activity, a civic forum, and the backdrop before which many of the notable incidents of the day would play out. The writer Lafcadio Hearn recorded one. On June seventh 1896, a passenger train, probably piloted by one of the American-built 4-4-0s or Moguls then favored by the Kyūshū Tetsudō for passenger service, pulled in to Kumamoto station, which was mobbed with a crowd of people. Hearn was among them and recorded the event in his short story At a Railway Station. On the train was Nomura Teichi, a thief who was wanted for the infamous murder of a well-known and much respected Kumamoto policeman named Sugihara some years hence, and the news of his apprehension had spread rapidly enough throughout the city, which still had not forgotten the crime, that there formed a curious crowd to await the train’s arrival. Behind the ticketing gate in the throng that day was the policeman’s widow and his small son, unborn at the time of the murder. As the thief and his police escort moved through the wicket, the escort called forth for the wife of the fallen man, who approached with the little boy. At that point according to Hearn’s narrative, the escorting officer broke the silent tension in low and certain words; “Little one, this is the man who killed your father four years ago. You had not been born; you were in your mother’s womb. That you have no father to love you now is the doing of this man. Look at him—look well at him, little boy! Do not be afraid. It is painful; but it is your duty. Look at him!” The crowd stood silent as the boy did indeed look the man in the eye, gazing “with his eyes widely open, as in fear; then he began to sob; then tears came; but steadily and obediently he still looked—looked—looked—straight into the cringing face,” as the thief broke down, kneeling on the platform in contrition. As the man was brought to his feet he begged for pardon of the small boy and the crowd parted to make way, silent and touched. Hearn then saw “what few men ever see,... the tears of a Japanese policeman.” By the time it was written, Hearn’s short story could have happened in any one of an increasing number of small provincial towns and bears eloquent witness to the fact that by the 1890s, a railway station in Japan had unmistakably taken a central place of importance in civic life of the nation; no less than the depot did in small-town America.
By the opening years of the 20th Century, railways were starting to integrate themselves into the national psyche of Japan in all the ways they had in the West. This included new generations of children who grew up taking for granted forms of transport that their parents and grandparents thought of as revolutionary. In this obviously posed view, two young boys are seen participating in that process as they play with toy trains most likely imported from Europe. Typically, only the sons of a family of above-average means would have had such expensive toys in the Meiji era. On the blackboard is written the picture’s title: “Well... This time, let’s play with our toys!”
One of the most lasting examples of the integration of railways into the daily fabric of Japanese life from this time is “The Railway Song” (Tetsudō Shōka), written by Owada Takeki to celebrate the opening of the Tokaidō Line. The lyrics describe a trip from Shimbashi southward along the new line, with each station being the subject of a verse.
The first verse reads:
Kiteki issei Shimbashi wo
Haya waga kisha wa hanaretari
Atago no yama ni irinokoru
Tsuki wo tabiji no tomo to shite
A rough approximation:
With a single whistle-blow,
My train departs Shimbashi.
The moon, set low, o’er Atago,2
Goes with me on my journey.
The song became immensely popular and to this day continues to be a time-honored children’s song. The first few verses are by now as hoary an old chestnut of Japanese children’s pop-culture as “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” is of American. Such was its popularity that when the San’yo line was completed to Shimonoseki in 1901, additional verses for each station along that line were added, and must have rendered the song utterly monotonous to sing in its entirety.
Naturally too, railways came to be the subject of the humorous side of daily life in Japan and did not escape public satire. In the comments to one of the lectures on Japanese railways which was given by Kadono Chōkyūrō at the local Asia Society, one worldly Hungarian wag, a certain Mr. Diósy, was recorded as having gone on record in the discussion that ensued after presentation with the tongue-in-cheek observation that:
“So well had the Japanese learned their lesson from our [Western] railway management that he was informed that at various stations in Japan, trains came in as much as forty-five minutes after the time advertised in the time-table. He also believed that many of the railway carriages were exceedingly draughty; and he had the authority of Professor Milne3 for saying that the names of the stations, as called out by porters, were perfectly indistinguishable, which showed that the best traditions of [Western] railway management were being carried out in Japan.”
Heating inadequacies and porter’s intonations notwithstanding, improvements continued apace. On May 25, 1899, the San’yo introduced Japan’s first dining cars on its premier trains, and a year later, the San’yo again took the lead with the introduction of the first sleeping cars in the realm. By 1900, Basil Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus at Tōkyō University, would write, “The arrangements of this line [the San’yo Railway] for the comfort of travelers are superior to those of the government and other private lines. It alone has had enterprise enough to provide dining and sleeping-cars.”
Pictured here is one portion of an early surviving San’yo Railway menu (announcing “We are ready for your Lunch”) from the San’yo’s very first years of dining car operation, before nationalization in 1906 rendered “San’yo Railway” an obsolete term, replacing it with the San’yo Line of the IJGR. Unfortunately, the other portion of the menu has been lost. The Kyōto-based Mikado Hotel assumed operation of the San’yo’s dining car services as a concessionaire in 1901, a position it held until 1938 when its operations were merged with those of another concessionaire. Aki oysters, a celebrated variety, have long been cultivated in the area around Hiroshima as a particular delicacy. The first laws regulating oyster cultivation in that area date back to the Tenmon period (1532–1542). The Aki oysters on the menu are an example of the San’yo’s efforts to make its service more appealing than those of the well-established Inland Sea steam boat lines against which it competed. Before delivery to the San’yo dining cars at the start of the run in Kōbe or Shimonoseki, the oysters would have been shipped in special closed box cars or vans, with louvered ends and sides and purpose-built racks of tray tanks containing saltwater to ensure live delivery.
Finally, on May 27, 1901 the San’yo completed its mainline to Shimonoseki, Japan’s port of embarkation for the Asian mainland and for Kyūshū. As might have been expected, the San’yo immediately put a steamer service in operation with its own small steamers to cross the two-mile straits to the Kyūshū railhead at Moji. (The San’yo had previously put steamer services in place between Shikoku and Hiroshima.) By 1904, the San’yo could also boast that it was operating the fastest express trains in the realm, although at an average speed of just under 29 miles per hour, it was more telling of the poor speed of the other lines than any true boast of speed compared to average express speeds worldwide. Also from the San’yo Railway’s efforts came the first joint luxury express train in Japan, which commenced running between Tōkyō and Shimonoseki in 1905 consisting of all first and second class carriages, sleeping cars, a dining car (worked on a concession basis by the Union of Lunch Box Salesmen), and later possessing Japan’s first observation/lounge car at the end. The new super-express was called eponymously the Shimbashi– Shimonoseki Special Express. After the period covered by this book, when a sister express which included third class accommodation was added and named the Sakura (“Cherry Blossom”), the Shimonoseki Express, as it was then commonly known, would be rechristened the Fuji and the two would become the most celebrated of Japan’s pre-World War II expresses. Due in part to the speed restrictions implicit in a narrower gauge, the speed of the new express, while novel by Japanese standards, fell well short of the mark of American and European speed standards: the average speed was 47 miles per hour, while in the US and Europe, average speeds on the best express trains at the beginning of the 20th century were in the neighborhood of the 60 mph mark.
A writer who traveled on the San’yo Express at this time was surprised to learn that budget conscious travelers in first class could book a berth on San’yo sleeping cars on a half-night basis. First class berths were surcharged at 2 yen 50 sen for the entire night, but only 1 yen 50 sen for a half-night. Second class sleeping berths were evidently seen as enough of a bargain at 20 sen for the top berth or 40 sen for the lower, such that no half-night discount was offered.
1897 saw the importation of the first locomotives with the “Atlantic” 4-4-2 wheel arrangement from the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia for use by the Nippon Tetsudō. In that same year, the Nippon Tetsudō took delivery of a type of locomotive that had never before been built in the world in any great quantity, but would prove to be such a versatile design that thousands of the type later would come to be placed on American railroads. There were significant coal reserves to be found in the Jōban coalfields that were situated along the new Jōban line of the Nippon, but the coal was hard anthracite, not top quality bituminous “loco coal.” When the line opened in 1897, the Nippon naturally wished to use the local Jōban anthracite coal rather than the costlier coal transported from outside the Nippon’s service area.
A short freight train trundles through the station at Abiko on the Nippon Tetsudō. Abiko is located on the Nippon Tetsudō Jōban line, approximately 40 kilometers from Ueno. The locomotive appears to be one of the Beyer-Peacock 0-6-0T tank engines imported starting in 1896 that would be designated the 1900 Class when absorbed into the IJGR’s roster upon nationalization. Note the short wheelbase compartment carriage in the station bay and the freight station consisting of nothing more than a canopied roof between it and the boxcar on the adjoining siding. A track ganger appears to be walking towards the station staff standing on the platform. Abiko, the junction from which the Narita Tetsudō departed for Narita, was deemed busy and significant enough to merit a full British style signal box. Over all, the British influence is clearly evident in the station configuration and signaling. In a scene unchanging worldwide, irrespective of era, the train has captured the attention of three small boys (to the right of the boxcar) who have stopped to watch as it passes by.
The wider Wooten firebox of the Atlantic type locomotive (a wheel arrangement suitable for fast passenger trains, which were comparatively light in weight) was well-adapted to burn such coal; hence the Nippon’s ordering a number of this locomotive type from Baldwin. However, the Nippon management also wished to have a heavy freight locomotive that would operate effectively on Jōban anthracite. Baldwin was consulted on this point as well, and it confidently promised it could satisfactorily design a locomotive that would perform suitably burning the Jōban anthracite, although no such designs existed at the time. The Nippon awarded it a contract for several, and Baldwin’s designer-draughtsmen took to the drawing boards. What evolved was a conventional “Consolidation” type 2-8-0 locomotive of the day—at that time, the freight locomotive of choice of many American railroads—but with a much larger and wider Wooten firebox. This firebox enabled it to burn Jōban anthracite, while at the same time produce a heating capacity equivalent to a conventional firebox that could only perform well on higher-grade “loco coal.” The result was a locomotive with roughly a comparable amount of pulling power, using coal of a lower caloric value. As the firebox needed to be much wider than the typical firebox, it could not be fitted between the rear driving wheels of the locomotive as was conventional; hence its place in the new design was behind the driving wheels, and a small set of wheels was placed beneath to support its weight. There had been a few scattered 2-8-2 type locomotives built earlier, but the result of the Nippon Tetsudō’s order was the world’s first class of 2-8-2 locomotives in any number. The type was dubbed the “Mikado” type to honor Japan and its Emperor and proved to be such a serviceable design that Baldwin capitalized on the design’s potential for other customers. Other builders followed suit, and eventually many thousands of these very versatile Mikado types would be appearing on railroads in America and throughout the world, where they quickly became the workhorses of freight haulage. The Mikado design, which had for its proving grounds the Nippon Tetsudō lines running through the Jōban antracite coal beds, would be destined to remain one of the world’s most common types of locomotives well into the 1930s.
Moves were afoot to establish locomotive manufactories and additional rolling stock manufacturers, not only for domestic purposes but also in anticipation for increasing demand that was expected to occur as China, Korea, Thailand and other countries on the mainland started railway building more extensively. First to be established were private rolling stock manufacturers, such as Hiraoka Kojo, founded by Hiraoka Hiroshi, the first Japanese Superintendant of Shimbashi Works. Then the first locomotive manufacturer, the Ōsaka Kisha Seizo Goshi-Kaisha, commenced business in 1896. It was founded by no less a personage than Inoue Masaru, who had retired three years before its founding from his post with the IJGR, and obviously saw his talents and reputation in developing Japanese railways as best applied in newer endeavors. The firm he founded would go on to merge with Hiraoka Kojo in 1901 to form the legendary Kisha Seizo Kaisha. Competitors also entered the field, and by the end of the Meiji reign loco builders such as Atsuta Tetsudō Sharyo (1896), the celebrated Nippon Sharyo (1896), and the world-renowned Kawasaki (an existing shipbuilder whose railway rolling stock manufacturing commenced in 1906) were on their way to making a name for themselves.
The days of the railway yatoi were almost at a close. From a high of some 200 yatoi who were first engaged in the first years of building, by 1882 that number had dropped to 21, and by 1895 had dropped to only 6, by which point, the day-to-day management of the lines was entirely in Japanese hands. The remaining half-dozen yatoi were in positions like that of the Trevithick brothers, who were among the last to go.
Partly as a result of the war with China, labor costs had risen, as had the prices of foodstuff and the cost of living in general. It was reported that the wages of coolies had risen by a factor of almost 100% between 1886 and 1896. By 1897 track or plate-layer gangs, normally consisting of seven men assigned to a two mile single line section, consisted of the following positions and wages: two at twenty cents a day, two at 24 cents a day, one at 27 cents a day, one at 30 cents a day, and one at 35 cents a day. Foremen for these gangs normally were assigned sections ranging from ten to twenty miles and were paid the equivalent of 40 to 75 Mexican cents per day accordingly. While prices and wages were rising generally across Japan, railway wages were stagnant on many lines, and labor unrest ensued, first in the paint shops of Shimbashi, but later notably on the recalcitrant Nippon Tetsudō, where one of Japan’s first and most effective major labor strikes occurred in 1898. The strike was noteworthy enough to merit mention in the foreign press. The Nippon Tetsudō had been the subject of complaints of poor treatment of its employees for some time and had in fact lowered the pay of engine drivers and firemen. Quite naturally in a time of rising cost of living, the affected staff had repeatedly petitioned for higher wages, all to no avail, to the point where they formed an association to militate on their behalf. Management responded by terminating the employment of the employees it perceived to be the primary instigators. The ploy backfired and only served to stiffen the resolve of the rank and file who began circulating strike notices to all stations up and down the line at the end of February 1898. Traffic movement came to a standstill. Part of the strike resulted from the feudal mindset of management, many of whom came from the former Samurai class and still comported themselves with the attitudes by which they had been raised. At the time, the IJGR had a four-grade ranking system, which many other railways, the Nippon included, followed. In descending order the grades were titled Chokunin-kan, Sōnin-kan, and Hannin-kan roughly translated “Imperially Appointed Official,” “Official Appointed with Imperial Approval,” and “Junior Official” respectively. At the bottom was a fourth class that didn’t even merit an official class title, consisting of rank and file workers. (To make matters worse, hannin was pronounced exactly like another word using different characters that meant a suspect or criminal, with all its negative implications.) Out of this arose friction, as stationmasters and conductors were classed as hannin, while engine drivers and firemen were classed in the nameless bottom ranking. This was not a distinction without a difference: there were more liberal travel allowances, perquisites, and the like that were allowed to hannin. During the Sino-Japanese War, the contrast in classes was made even sharper, as many of the hannin rank received special commendations and awards, as particularly exemplary performance records merited, but few rewards were distributed for the many extraordinary efforts put forth by the drivers and firemen.
A Dubs product ordered for and used by the Nippon Tetsudō, despite the caption. This 4-6-2T tank locomotive class consisted of four members that were introduced in 1898. The Nippon Tetsudō remained partial to British locomotives long after the other major railways had become customers of American locomotive builders in ever increasing degrees. This locomotive came equipped with a steam actuated reversing gear, something of an innovation for the day. The confusion in the foreign press of Victorian and Edwardian times as to which railway had purchased locomotives was due to the Japanese Government, through the Railway Bureau, acting as a purchasing agent on behalf of private railways, which the technical press of the day mistakenly assumed meant automatic use by the IJGR. The locomotives were designated as the 3800 Class upon nationalization.
Twenty-six of these neat little Columbia type 2-4-2T tank locomotives were imported in 1898, the last year of importation of American examples of this particular type of small locomotive to Japan, although importation of British-built A8s would continue up to 1904. Schenectady was the builder, and the locomotives would become IJGR Class 900 under the 1909 numbering scheme. This builder’s photo however shows a class member “as-built” for the Nippon Tetsudō, complete with English language tank-side road name. Liveries such as this typically lasted no longer than the first re-paint, however photos do exist of a Nishinari Tetsudō British-built A8 locomotive with the road name spelled out in the Romaji alphabet. As the style of the lettering on the Nishinari tank loco was American, not British, the lettering was almost certainly applied in Japan, probably as a public relations device at a time when anything foreign was faddishly seen as progressive.
A builder’s photograph of one of the Hannover 2-6-2T “Prairie Tank” type locomotives built in 1904 for the Nippon Tetsudō, a neat hybrid of British and German design practice. Six of these locomotives were imported from Germany for mixed service and were assigned Class 3170 during the 1909 renumbering.
The Nippon Tetsudō (again, not the IJGR as captioned) ordered two of these small-drivered 4-4-0 locomotives from Dubs in 1898. They would be designated as Class 5830 upon nationalization. The two-truck tender used in this class is unusual and seems almost disproportionately large compared to the locomotive. Most of the tenders for the British-built locomotives were rigid wheelbase six-wheel tenders. As the Nippon Tetsudō was never known for particularly fast running even by the slow Japanese standards of the day, the small diameter of the drivers would not have been unusual. Note the wide firebox. In the decade before Nationalization, the Nippon Tetsudō began to order some forward-looking designs, and became increasingly sensitive to locomotives that could burn the anthracite coal that was available in the Jōban region through which it ran once its Jōban line was opened in 1897.
A relative comparison is made in this general arrangement outline between one of the earliest tank locomotives and the world’s first mass-produced 2-8-2, built in 1897 by Baldwin for the Nippon Tetsudō to burn an anthracite coal from the Jōban coalfields situated close-by the railway’s main line. These locos were designated Class 9700 on nationalization. The 2-8-2 locomotive type was dubbed the “Mikado” wheel arrangement in honor of the Meiji Emperor; a name that came to be used throughout the English speaking world as the shorthand term for this versatile wheel arrangement. From a 1903 pen and ink drawing by Kashima Shosuke.
The Nippon Tetsudō took delivery of this Mallet compound 0-4-4-0T locomotive from the German builder Maffei in 1903. A slightly different sister locomotive was ordered for comparison. Together, these two examples were the first Mallet type locomotives imported to Japan. The design was a natural for Japanese operating conditions with its four cylinder drive in place of the usual two, and articulated front power unit to negotiate tight curves necessitated on mountain lines. They were a type well-suited for mountainous freight haulage or banking duties. The locomotives were 1067mm versions of similar locomotives that had been built for the Royal Bavarian State Railways, but were heavier, had larger fireboxes, and larger water tanks, all of which resulted in slightly greater tractive effort. Nationalization cut short further purchases, and when the IJGR began purchasing Mallet locomotives, it was for much larger Alco 0-4-4-0 tender locomotives from the US for heavy freight hauling.
Another grievance called for the removal of certain individuals in higher management, due to the fact that some ¥60,000 had disappeared from the company books, and rather than pursue the individuals in management who were responsible, the company made good the embezzlement loss on its books by drawing down the fund put aside for employee bonuses. The company’s wage structure was also the cause of dissatisfaction: for workers who earned less than ¥25 per month (such as drivers and stokers) the rate of the first pay increase on promotion was ¥2½, while for those making over ¥25 per month, such as a typical hannin, the first pay increase rate was double at ¥5. Similarly, if one was paid on a daily basis, if a person was making a daily wage of less than 90 sen, the rate of first pay increase was 5 sen, while those paid over 90 sen were increase by double that amount. In short, the wage scale discriminated against the lower-paid workers, when, in 1897 (at a time when wage levels elsewhere were rising at rates of 30–50%, and the cost of living had risen by almost as much), mere office clerks who were trained in a matter of months received proportionately a larger pay increase than engine drivers who took years to train and who had much heavier responsibilities for public safety. The discontent was palpable: so much so that the drivers and stokers petitioned management with their grievances, only to have management respond by firing the individuals perceived to have been instrumental in presentation of the grievance. Rather than cowing the workers, this only resulted in a countermeasure, as the rank and file’s response was the forming of an association known as the Treatment Improvement Association, Taigū Kaizen Kumiai (待遇改善組合).
An interesting comparison can be also be made between the Kōbe-built F1 (later 9150) class Consolidation locomotive for the IJGR shown here and the Baldwin-built F2 Class locomotive shown following this image. The lines of this locomotive bear a vague resemblance to the contemporary “E Class” locomotives of the London North Western Railway. Side tanks on a tender locomotive are a somewhat unusual feature worldwide, but were an obvious advantage both in adding to a locomotive’s range between water stops and additional weight on the locomotive’s driving wheels, increasing its tractive effort. The class was built between the years of 1900 and 1908. The device behind the chimney was used to compress air in the cylinders when going downgrade with the steam cut off. It assisted in maintaining the British system vacuum brakes, which were used on Honshū, and would have been very useful, given the general inferiority of the vacuum brake system over American Westinghouse airbrakes, particularly in a mountainous land such as Japan. They were much in vogue on various Japanese locomotive classes used on mountain services of the day. The painting is a watercolor by the Keio University student Kashima Shosuke, circa 1904, and seems to indicate that the lining and numbering of these locomotives was blue.
When confronted anew with the demands of the new organization, management employed the same tactic of firing the key figures in the Treatment Improvement Association, and this act would proved to be the watershed event. Within a short time after the dismissals, work stoppages spread up and down the line, and public opinion turned in favor of the workers after the press had reported enough of the facts to have generated public interest. After about two weeks of traffic suspension, management capitulated in large part to the demands. Drivers and stokers were raised to hannin class, on par with stationmasters, they were given less condescending job titles, there was wage structure reform, and all the strike participants, except the two chief agitators, were re-in-stated. Of course the two agitators who sacrificed themselves to benefit the greater good went on to become some of the founding members of the Japanese labor movement, and indeed this strike went down in the annals as having pride of place in the history of the organized labor movement in Japan.
Frances Trevithick likewise admitted that there still remained much to be improved. Speaking in 1894, he noted that the case of staff being on duty long hours without adequate periods of rest was an area in dire need of amelioration. Amusingly, another area where Trevithick saw room for improvement was the need of train crews to do a proper stop before descending a grade to pin down the brakes of the freight cars in their train (operating on the British system, there were no freight car brake wheels to set the car brakes, by walking along the rooftops of moving cars as American brakemen did... a train would need to come to a full stop before the downgrade, and the brakemen would walk along the train, fixing the brakes using the brake lever found on the under-frame of every so many wagons as were appropriate) instead of relying simply on the brakes of the locomotive, tender (if any) and brake van (caboose) where the brakemen rode.
The length of the freight train in this busy scene suggests that is has been specially posed for the IJGR photographer. The mere fact that the locomotive bears running number 801 would date the view to before the 1909 renumbering, but in fact it is known to have been taken in 1905–1906. Number 801 was a Baldwin Consolidation-type of the F2 or 9200 class. The view is most likely taken in the vicinity of Kawasaki. Note the heads of two brakemen peering out of the windows in the brake compartments of the first two boxcars behind the tender. Freight cars with brake cabins were characteristic of Japanese freight rolling stock.
By roughly mid-point in the decade, America has started to become competitive in the manufacture of steel rails, and the first large orders from Japan for steel rails from US rolling mills dates from around this time. The New York Times first mentioned the trend in the spring of 1896, remarking on an order for 500 tons of rail from the Illinois Steel Company that was set to be shipped on the steamer P. Sawyer. By summer, it was interviewing Iwahara Kenzo, the Mitsui Co. purchasing agent who had come to negotiate rail contracts with Carnegie Steel, this time for almost ten times the initial amount at 9,000 tons. By the time Joseph Ury Crawford was mentioned in its pages in late November, the amount he had been authorized to purchase on behalf of the Japanese Government was 15,000 tons. All this within the course of a single year—a year coincidentally that saw Matsumoto Sohichiro, Inoue’s successor at the Railway Bureau come to the US on a fact-finding study of the American railway system. Matsumoto’s report was favorable and receptive to further orders of American-made equipment. Not surprisingly, American locomotives continued to supplant British-built competitors in point of price and delivery times, in part because the British manufacturers were contentedly happy with their full order books at the time and were not inclined radically to expand capacity. British manufacturers were somewhat more accustomed to building locomotives to drawings supplied from the Chief Mechanical Engineer’s offices of the particular railway than American locomotive manufacturers, who were more accustomed to receiving only performance specifications and preparing design drawings from those parameters in-house for the customer’s approval. The latter method was attractive to Japanese railways, allowing them to shift the design tasks (for which there were few domestic candidates) and research and development costs to the builder. In 1898, when market demand on British locomotive production capacity was reaching a peak, British builders couldn’t keep up with domestic demand, let alone demand from abroad, and locomotive delivery dates were being quoted some two years from the order date for large orders. Against this, American builders such as Baldwin were able to turn out two locomotives per day and could ship an order as large as 40 locomotives in eight to ten weeks. A New York Times headline under date of February 19, 1905, reported that Baldwin had just received the largest order for locomotives by any foreign government in the firm’s history: 152 locomotives having been ordered by Japan. According to the reckonings of the day, an American locomotive could be bought for about 20% less than a comparable British locomotive, once shipping costs were factored in. Despite the superior quality and claimed economy of the British product (American locomotives tended to burn more coal to pull the same load) it was understandable, and perhaps unavoidable, that the period from 1895 to 1910 was the period of American locomotive ascendancy in Japan.
The Nara Tetsudō opened in 1895, directly linking the ancient towns of Nara (Japan’s capital from 710 to 794) and Kyōto, with a roster of twelve locomotives, of which this example was one. The locomotive is one of the very few Japanese locomotives that did not originate from Great Britain, Germany or the United States, having been built by Switzerland’s well-known Winterthur works. No. 7, shown as delivered, ran for ten years as a Nara locomotive before the Nara Tetsudō was absorbed by the Kansai Tetsudō in 1905, giving the Kansai (which had already reached Nara) access to the city of Kyōto. Nationalization the following year cut short the potential for the renewal of competition with IJGR Tokaidō trains respecting the Kansai’s new Kyōto/Ōsaka and Kyōto/Nagoya routes.
With the opening of the Tokaidō line and the revision of the Extraterritoriality Treaties, the scrapping of the internal passport system of travel for non-Japanese would eventually occur—but not until the new century had opened. Nevertheless, by the mid-1890s the internal passport system was becoming a matter of routine. An English traveler in 1898 described his experiences in the following words:
“Arrived at the railway station, we are received by an officer in full uniform, who will direct sundry menials clad in butcher blue kimonos, but bare as to their hairy brown legs, to carry our luggage into the station while he conducts us to the booking office. The gentleman (usually in spectacles), who smiles benignly at us through the diminutive pigeon-hole, then disburdens his mind of a polite but totally unintelligible sentence in Japanese. A dim recollection of the hints of the guide-book leads us to correctly surmise that he is making affectionate inquiry for our passport. This indispensable document is not the banknote-looking paper, signed ‘Salisbury’ in one corner... It is a State document obtainable only at the Japanese Foreign Office.... [I]n most of the large seaports of Japan there exists a portion of the town known as the “Foreign Concession,” within which all foreigners... may reside... Within twenty-five miles of this concession, but no further, may the foreigner direct his wandering steps. To advance one yard outside this special district, known as the ‘Treaty Limits,” is a criminal offence, unless the individual be armed with a “passport.’... It is easy of acquirement, and of great service. At the Japanese Foreign Office are drawn up lists of places arranged in the form of tours, separate passports being issued for each series. The traveler selects the itinerary for which he desires a passport from one of these lists. The routes cover all the places of beauty or interest in Japan, but no passport can be extended, nor can a traveler deviate in any particular from the tour laid down for him therein. A passport is valid for three months, and each traveler before obtaining one has to sign a declaration stating that he is traveling ‘for the benefit of his health.’ This declaration is of a sufficiently elastic nature to prevent anyone from doing violence to his sense of veracity in subscribing to it. Three large seals depend from the passport in an imposing manner. One of the conditions of issue is that this document shall be returned to the Foreign Office immediately upon expiration or upon the holder leaving the country. Failure to comply with this rule entails very heavy penalties, and also the certainty of a refusal should an application ever again be made for a passport at a subsequent date.”
Despite the strictures and inconvenience of the Internal Passports for foreign tourists and resident aliens, with the extension of the railways to many parts of Japan by the mid-1890s, a modern tourism industry began to germinate for native Japanese and foreigners alike. Japan had had tourism for centuries. Visits to Mt. Fuji, the Itsukushima Shrine, Kyōto and its many sights, the Tokugawa mausoleum and the scenic beauties of Nikko were as popular before the advent of the railways as they were after. As early as 1881, according to the Tōkyō Eiri Shimbun, trains on the Shimbashi line had to run until as late as 2:30 in the morning from the stop nearest Ikegami Temple to accommodate crowds who had been there for festivities. Pilgrims had been streaming to Japan’s holiest site, the Grand Shrine at Ise, since the earliest feudal times; centuries before the Sangu Tetsudō (lit. “Shrine-bound Railway”), the epitome of the Japanese extension line, was established in 1893 to transport pilgrims from the closest station on the Kansai Tetsudō to the shrine precincts.
It would be difficult to conjure a photograph that expressed the aesthetic of Meiji-era railways better than this view, showing a small A8 style 2-4-2T tank locomotive of the Sangu Tetsudō pulling its train of three box cars, a string of four-wheel passenger compartment carriages, and one sole first/second class bogie carriage, positioned in the center of the train as was typically the case in Meiji-era train consists, over the Miyagawa Bridge on the approach to Ise, home of the most sacred Shintō Shrine in all Japan. The Sangu opened Miyagawa Station, across the eponymous river from Ise in 1893, but it wouldn’t be until 1897 that this bridge had been completed and the line could run the remaining few miles into Ise proper.
With the opening of the Tokaidō line and the rapid extension of the major trunk lines of the Nippon, San’yo, Kyūshū and Kansai railways in the 1890s, many of Japan’s points of interest were placed within convenient and feasible reach of both native and foreign travelers. Before 1880, a typical Westerner visiting Japan would probably have debarked at either Nagasaki or Yokohama, visited Tōkyō and environs, proceeded to Mt. Fuji and the Great Buddha at Kamakura (both of which were in reasonable proximity to Yokohama) and if adventurous, would have culminated the sightseeing with a trip to the impressive tombs of the Tokugawa Shōguns amidst the scenic grandeur of Nikko, as one of the best maintained roads led there from Tōkyō and it could be reached via one of the earliest stagecoach lines in the realm. The more seasoned travellers would have gone to the length of obtaining an internal passport enabling them to take a steamer to Kōbe/ Ōsaka, and then proceed to visit the ancient cities of Kyōto and Nara. Rarely did a typical foreign tourist travel farther afield.
By the middle of the 1890s, the situation was changing. Nikko was at the end of a short branch line leaving the Nippon mainline from Utsunomiya that was completed in 1890. Nara, the ancient capital of Japan with its giant Buddha and 8th century Horyu-ji Temple complex (where the oldest wooden buildings in the world are to be found to this day), via the Kansai Tetsudō and the new Nara Tetsudō, and Kyōto both were accessible by rail. Fuji stood along the Tokaidō line, and resort towns in its vicinity such as Miyanoshita were already publishing brochures and guidebooks in English aimed at the foreign market. The Great Buddha of Kamakura was rendered a mere day-trip by train from Tōkyō or Yokohama, as was the Grand Shrine of Ise from Nagoya. Later, as the San’yo mainline was completed, the celebrated sites along the Inland Sea were more easily accessible: the scenic town of Onomichi, the historic sites of the great naval battles of Dan-no-Ura and Ichi-no-Tani, the Itsukushima Shrine at Miyajima, built partially over water with its celebrated “floating” Torii gate. At Shimonoseki, the San’yo built the San’yo hotel, which it operated as an adjunct operation. Similarly, the Kansai Tetsudō’s president invested in construction of the celebrated Nara Hotel in Nara, one of Japan’s top tourist destinations, situated on the Kansai’s main line, as a joint venture with the owners of the Miyako Hotel in Kyōto. Both were adopting the innovation of the railway hotel that had proven profitable in Europe and North America and had helped to stimulate tourism.4
Even the little Kyōto Tetsudō made a bid for both the domestic and foreign tourist markets: it touted its proximity to the famed Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) of Kyōto and white water boat rides over the Hozu river rapids departing from its Kameoka station with postcards and tourist brochures in both Japanese and English; this at a time when the road was only 38 miles long (the railhead had only reached Sonobe, less than halfway to the railway’s intended terminus on the Japan Sea at Maizuru) and the railway only possessed twelve locomotives on its roster. The grottos at Gembudō soon became accessible with completion of the Bantan Tetsudō and with that line’s completion and the building of the IJGR Inyō-Renraku line, Japan’s second-most sacred Shintō shrine at Izumo became accessible. Hot springs and hill towns (to escape the stifling humidity of Tōkyō summers) were then fashionable among well-to-do Japanese and foreign residents. Karuizawa,5 earlier mentioned, became a popular summer resort for the well-to-do nestled high in the mountains northwest of Tōkyō on the Shin’etsu mainline. Various hot springs (“Onsen”) in Shikoku came to have a little narrow gauge train leading to them. One of the most visited stations on the little Dōgo Tetsudō in Shikoku was the local hot springs. Prior to the advent of railways, a good day of hearty tourism in Japan would result in an average of between 18 and 25 miles covered, depending on terrain and the passability of un-bridged rivers. This was often by foot or on horseback, rain or shine. The prospect of traveling eight hours in pouring rain on foot or atop a packhorse to accomplish only 20 miles of travel was alone enough to discourage travel among all but the most stalwart. Given the alternative, a train trip from Tōkyō to Kōbe that included some 70 stations stops, some of which were quite lengthy, wasn’t as bad a prospect as it might seem by today’s standard. The fastest express in the mid-1890s cut out twenty of the 70 odd stations on the Tōkyō–Kōbe route, but still only averaged 12 miles per hour. Nevertheless, the results of the first steps of tourism development were remarkable, stirred notably by the domestic market. By the close of the nineteenth century, the first steps taken to develop what we would see as the germ of a modern tourism industry were showing promising signs of success. Indeed by 1902, more than a hundred million passenger tickets were sold annually in Japan, an increase of more than double the amount sold in 1896.
Ever the innovator, the San’yo Tetsudō was not afraid to bid for the foreign tourist market, as shown by this advertisement in English. When this ad first appeared in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, the progressive line had put in place three steamer routes connecting with Shikoku and a ferry route to Kyūshū. It could also state that all its express trains (four in number) were electric-lit, steam heated, and furnished with sleeping and dining cars, a boast that other railways in the realm would have been hard pressed to make. Other interesting traveling arrangements are evident in the advertisement. One can’t help but wonder how many foreign visitors chose to visit Matsuyama for the purpose of seeing a P.O.W. infirmary “where the wounded Russians are nursed.”
Once the Bantan Tetsudō (from Himeji on the San’yo Tetsudō) and the IJGR’s Inyō-Renraku (later to be re-named San’in) line to Tottori had been opened, the basalt grottos at Gembudō (the entrance is visible in about the center of the photo) were easily accessible by rail. Gembudō station itself opened in March 1912. This postcard view shows an IJGR express train of late Meiji clerestory coaching stock pulled by a British-built 4-4-0. The rubber stamp on the card would have been put on it at a particular destination, as a souvenir.
The San’yo also operated a ferry service to Pusan, Korea as part of its ever-expanding services. Realizing that it was the gateway to the Asian continent for the bulk of the Japanese population of Honshū, it put into service the steamer shown in this card, presumably the Iki Maru. The card evidences a certain whimsy in its train motif with its truncated locomotive. Relatively few non-government railway postcards were printed before nationalization.
Traveling was still quite far removed from what the present day person would imagine. Take as an illustrative example the further travels of Charles Taylor, on the Nippon Tetsudō when he traveled in the mid-1890s during a particularly severe typhoon and flooding season:
"At last we arrive, by grace of heaven, [after considerable rain and difficulty by mud-swollen local roads] full of pains and aches, at Motomiya Station6 in time to take the 2.57 P. M. train to Sendai, having been four hours and one-half coming eighteen miles [on foot, due to mud that prevented travel by rickshaw]. At the station we learn that the bridges are washed away, and the railroad damaged as far as Aomori; also that no southern trains from Tōkyō had arrived at this station since the night before last, as the bridges on that section of the road are also unsafe.... While I am waiting for the train, the people gather about me in large numbers, gazing intently in my face and watching every movement, until this kind of free exhibition becomes too much for me, and I request the station master, through my guide, to allow me to enter the enclosure, hoping there to escape the curious throng. But even here [on the station platform, behind the ticketing gate] I am not free from their inquisitive stares. They stretch their necks, and some of them climb on the fence, smiling at my oddities, or standing spellbound at the strange sight. What a relief to see the train approaching to relieve me from my very annoying position. We take second-class tickets to Sendai. The third-class compartments are crowded with natives, and the comforts are limited... there are no conveniences on the third-class cars, while many of the second-class cars have toilet rooms.” [Elsewhere he labeled the train in which he rode as the Nippon’s “Anti-Express” Train due to the slow speeds encountered...]
On arriving at Sendai, he learned that though travel to Aomori on the Nippon Tetsudō was no longer possible due to wash-outs, and so he worked his way back southward by another route, to connect up with the Nippon Tetsudō at another point.
“We walk about a quarter of a mile [along the road from the point where his rickshaw and the rickshaw carrying his baggage both have bogged down] over mud and stones till we come to a swollen stream, the Furussata, generally a small and unpretentious current, now a rapid river enlarged by the recent rains. We cross it by another [ferry] boat. While waiting on the bank I perceive, not far away, the wreck of the large railroad bridge which spanned this water only a short time ago. In ten minutes, we are safely landed, over shoetops of mud. The river has subsided six or eight feet since yesterday, otherwise we would have been unable to cross it to-day. We walk half a mile on solid ground, then resume our jinrickshas, bid a courteous Japanese officer farewell, and start off on a six-mile ride to Utsu-No-Miya [sic] Station, arriving at 10.10 A. M., just as the bell rings for the train to start for Nikko. My guide unselfishly begs me to enter the train and go on to Nikko, while he will await the arrival of the jinricksha with our baggage and follow on the 12.30 train. But I tell him I will not desert him at the last minute; we will both wait. He urges me repeatedly, and finding me persistent in my refusal asks the guard if he cannot hold the train a few minutes till the men [rickshaw runners with the baggage] appear. The obliging guard consents to wait ten minutes, saying that beyond that he dare not delay the train. The greatest interest is manifested by all the railway officials in the arrival of our [baggage] jinricksha. Some of the passengers, wondering what is wrong, get out and ask questions. A crowd quickly gathers at the station and around me. Minutes pass and no sign of the jinricksha. Finally, when it is within two minutes of starting time the men and wagon are seen in the distance. A shout of joy goes up, and a half-dozen men from the station run at the top of their speed to meet the tardy jinricksha, and all together fairly make it fly to the station. It is exactly twenty minutes past ten when the baggage is placed on board the train. Another glad shout fills the air. I bow and smile and try to thank the people for their good-will, and they bow and bow, and we are now steaming along in comfortable cars to Nikko. I think often of this incident, as well as of many other kindnesses shown to us by these good-natured people, and wonder would an American train wait a traveler’s convenience in any State in our Union?”
[After further rain delay at Nikko Taylor resumed his trip...] “After a rest of a couple of days we take up our regular plan of travel, proposing to leave here to-morrow for Tōkyō. It has been raining in Nikko for the past five days, and is still raining. We learn that the railroad between Nikko and Tōkyō is badly washed [out], and in some places covered with water to a depth of ten or twelve feet, and that passengers to the latter city are conveyed by boat over the breaks in the road and across the rice fields to places of safety; also that you can go to Tōkyō in ten hours, three of which are by boat. A boat capsized this morning and its occupants were thrown out, but none of them were drowned. We are hoping for more favorable reports, but will, in any case, attempt to reach Tōkyō to-morrow by the early train. We arise early and find the sun shining brightly, as if to give us a good send-off. We leave Nikko by the 7.30 train... We arrive at Utso-No-Miya Station, where we change cars, and in about twenty minutes take another train, which carries us to the village of Nakada. We can go no further by train, for although the water is subsiding in other places the tracks here are under three or four feet [of water]. Large sampans await us, and taking our places in one of these, with other passengers, we are sculled to a temporary station provided by the railroad company.... The temporary station is made of a canvas stretched over long poles to protect us from the sun. Benches are here, made of rough boards. There are fully four hundred people here awaiting the arrival of the train... We have waited here since 11.45 this morning, and it is two o’clock before the shrill whistle announces the approaching train, and an engine draws a long line of empty passenger coaches up beside the station. Then follows a comical sight. There is a great scramble for the cars. Some of the people, in their eagerness actually jump through the windows.... And now they are all in and we are off, really off, for Tōkyō. We cross the Tone-gawa on a fine iron bridge, which was, several days ago, under thirteen feet of water.”
Due to its geographic location, the 38 mile long Kyōto Tetsudō was better situated to exploit the tourist market than some railways. Early in the 20th Century it produced this brochure (the front cover and first two pages are shown) for English-speaking clientele, focusing on white-water rapids boat rides on the Hozu river. In an era when bicycling was a popular new fad, the railway encouraged bicycling excursions by carrying passengers’ bicycles free of charge.
By November 1911, when conventioneers of the American Institute of Mining Engineers visited on a special excursion following the conclusion of its San Francisco convention, Japan had become less of a destination for only the super-rich foreign visitor or the adventurer than it had been only decades before. But visits by foreign delegations were still not so routine that they did not merit the issuance of a special commemorative ticket. This well-worn memento shows the so-called floating torii gate at Miyajima, one of Japan’s most recognized tourist icons, visited by the AIME members after stopping at a mine in the Shikoku region. The Miyajima visit occurred while en route via Inland Sea steamer to inspect the Yawata steel complex in Kyūshū. (Curiously, the surviving AIME official itinerary does not list any mine visits for Kyūshū.) The delegates returned northward by rail, visited copper mines in the Ashio vicinity, were officially hosted by Baron Eiichi Shibusawa, were fêted with municipal ceremonies in Tōkyō, Kyōto, Ōsaka, and Kokura, and were treated to receptions by the industrial houses of Mitsui and Sumitomo, both of which were actively involved in various mining ventures.
The United Kingdom’s renowned Royal Navy China Squadron visited Japan in October 1905 on a congratulatory and goodwill visit at the end of the Russo-Japanese War and its arrival was fêted as way to further the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Two railway passes are shown from that visit. The Kansai Tetsudō treated the Royal Navy to an excursion to the ancient city and former Imperial capital of Nara with its giant Buddha and famed domesticated deer that roam the city freely. Minatomachi was the Kansai’s own Ōsaka terminal, from which the special departed, but the pass-holders could take a regular Kansai train from Ōsaka Umeda, into which the Kansai apparently also had running rights, and change upon arrival at Minatomachi. The Kōya Tetsudō offered trips from it’s Shiomibashi terminal in Ōsaka to Nagano (present day Kawachi Nagano), south of the city, from which the Kanshin-ji and Kongō-ji Temples could be visited.
Like Taylor, many a foreign visitor praised the level of personal service encountered on Japanese railways. W. E. Curtis, writing in 1896, was similarly impressed with the level of service and dedication of Japanese railway employees:
“As a rule, however, railway officials are very obliging and take a great deal of trouble to accommodate travelers. Nor is it possible to induce them to accept a fee. In Europe a traveler is compelled to pay everybody connected with a train or a railway station if he wants to protect himself from annoyance. He has to fee the baggagemen, the porters, the conductors, the guards and all hands, and the treatment he receives is governed by his generosity. In Japan you are expected to give a penny to the porter who carries your luggage from the jinrikisha to the baggage room, for that is his ‘pidgin,’7 and he receives no pay from the railway, but if you offered a fee of any amount to any one else he would be grossly insulted. The same is true of policemen. As an illustration, I carelessly left a notebook on the seat of a car in which I had traveled from Tōkyō to Yokohama, and did not discover my loss until the train had left for the next station. I went to the stationmaster, who immediately sent a telegram to the man in charge of the train, and I found my notebook awaiting me when I returned to the hotel at Tōkyō that evening. I offered to pay the stationmaster and the telegraph operator for their trouble. They made very polite bows and assured me that they felt greatly honored by having an opportunity to do me a service, but declined to accept money.”
In 1907 US President Theodore Roosevelt wished to send the so-called “Great White Fleet” of the US Navy on an around-the-world good will tour, but faced not inconsiderable Congressional opposition on grounds of government waste. Undaunted, the President realized he had sufficient funds unspent within his current appropriations to finance roughly half of the undertaking. In true “bully” fashion, the President ordered it half way around the world, leaving it for Congress to decide whether to appropriate enough money to enable the fleet’s return. The visit helped ease Japanese resentment felt towards the US at a tense time, as the US had brokered what the Japanese public felt was an unfair peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War and California had recently enacted discriminatory laws segregating Japanese children in public schools. When they reached Japan in October 1908, officers were given complimentary first class passes for unlimited travel on the IJGR during their leave (above). The enlisted sailors didn’t fare quite as well. Out of concern over an international incident and in view of an earlier barroom brawl in Brazil involving the crew, sailors with a history of heavy drinking were confined aboard ship, but those sober enough to be granted shore leave privileges were greeted in Tōkyō with streetcar passes and these specially decorated Tōkyō Municipal trolleys, which by then had replaced the original horse-drawn trams.
The Mito Tetsudō was among the first of a number of railways that came to be formed to connect a sizeable town with a mainline railway and thus afford railway service to the locale. Mito was the provincial seat of one of the three great branches of the Tokugawa family from which Shōguns could be chosen. As such it had become an important center of learning and culture over the centuries. The 41-mile-long line departed from the Nippon Tetsudō mainline at Oyama. The Mito terminus, shown here, was inaugurated on January 16, 1889, and is a typical station of that period. By the turn of the century, when many smaller lines were undergoing a process of being absorbed by the “Big Five,” the Mito Tetsudō had become the Nippon Tetsudō’s Mito branch.
* * * * * * * * *
In 1900 a new milestone was passed when the IJGR hired its first women employees, clerks hired in Tōkyō, although Charles Taylor’s foregoing observation makes clear that young girls had been employed as crossing guards at an earlier date. That year also saw a recession and a constriction in new railway building. Bankruptcies occurred, while some of the financially weaker or smaller lines were amalgamated with sounder or larger lines of the industry. The Nippon Tetsudō had its Nikko branch and acquired Ryomo Railway and Mito Railway, which had itself swallowed the smaller Ōta Tetsudō. The Kansai had absorbed the Naniwa and Ōsaka roads. Through a labyrinthine series of mergers, managing committees, and interlocking identities of controlling shareholders (primarily wealthy merchants and bankers in Ōsaka) the little Hankai and Nankai Tetsudō were operated as one system. The 762mm-gauged Settsu Tetsudō had been sold to the 1067mm-gauged Hankaku Tetsudō and re-gauged accordingly. On Shikoku, the Dogo and the Nanyo railways joined the Iyo Tetsudō. Back on Honshū, the Nara Tetsudō had by then acquired the Hatsuse Tetsudō, and on Kyūshū the ever-growing Kyūshū Tetsudō system had completed its acquisition of the Chikuho and Imari railways. The Private Railway Law No. 64 of March 19th, 1900 limited the abilities of the Shitetsu (non-government railways) to mortgage their railway lines and buildings, which resulted in very few small railway companies being chartered thereafter until 1910 when the situation was remedied by the promulgation of another major railway law.
As venture capital was still scarce in Japan, even in the boom that followed immediately on the heels of the Sino-Japanese War, small destinations took to developing their own local branches to the closest railway with typical Japanese ingenuity. The resultant railways endeared themselves to Western tourists as a source of bemusement and curiosity: the gyusha kidō and the jinsha kidō. Gyusha kidō translates literally “Ox car tramway,” and they were just that; small, light railways where oxen were used for motive power, for the most part industrial ventures on private land that were not authorized under the existing statutory framework for railway regulation.8 The most notable example among them was the Ashio Tetsudō. Ashio lies just west of Nikko, and as the Nikko Tetsudō from Utsunomiya was completed, it became feasible to run a rail line to Ashio, only a short distance away. The prize for the effort lay in the fact that at Ashio was one of the largest copper deposits in Japan, and the line was seized upon as a way to transport the output from the mines to the railhead at Nikko. While the line was primarily a commodity carrier, the locals used it for transportation as well. Due to its terminus at Nikko, tourists came into contact with it, considered it quite a curiosity, and because of that, quite a number of photos of it were made, recording its operation. There was even one example of a logging railway powered by dogs on the island of Shikoku, which was commonly called a kensha (dog car) tetsudō.
The Hankaku Tetsudō ran from Amagasaki on the coast near Ōsaka northwesterly to Fukuchiyama and in so doing, crossed some very scenic mountainous terrain. One of the bridges on this 70-mile-long line shows the amount of civil engineering lines with relatively modest route mileage would have faced. Note the tunnel in the background, and the footpath zigzagging over the mountain at the left of this pre-1904 photo: what would have passed as a fairly typical back-country road in Japan before the advent of railways.
The Nikko Tetsudō, an undertaking of the Nippon Tetsudō, was quite understandably created to link the venerable town of Nikko with the Nippon Tetusdō’s mainline some 25 miles away at Utsunomiya. Service to the Nikko station terminus was commenced on August 1, 1890. For decades Nikko had been (and still is) one of Japan’s major tourist destinations, with its spectacular mountain scenery, Lake Chuzenji, the Kegon Falls (one of Japan’s three largest), and the famed tombs of the first and third Tokugawa Shoguns. For this reason, the second station shown here that was inaugurated in 1915 (a work of the noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright) included a VIP waiting room and a ballroom/reception hall on the second floor. The structure still serves as a station today. One of the other lines in the area, the Nikko Denki Kidō opened in 1910, would eventually be absorbed by the Tobu Tetsudō in 1947 and give Nikko the rarity of competing train services to Tōkyō.
The most celebrated of the jinsha kidō was the Zusō Jinsha Tetsudō, later re-named the Atami Keiben Tetsudō,9 established in 1895 at Odawara—the first jinsha railway in Japan. It ran to the hot springs (onsen) at Atami, a celebrated seaside resort. What distinguished Jinsha Tetsudō or Kidō (tramway) from their brethren was the motive power: strong-legged stout youths from among the local populace. “Trains” consisted of small push-cars on rails, each just big enough to seat 4 to 6 adults, and each of which were propelled typically by a crew of three runners who would push the car along level stretches and upgrade, and then hop on the end platforms at downgrades to serve as brakemen to operate the handbrakes. The cars would not be coupled together, but would generally operate in convoy fashion, as the three or four runners would position themselves directly behind or at the rear corner of each car. From the time of the inception of the Atami Jinsha, as it came to be called by many, and its ilk until the final years of the Meiji era, a number of Jinsha (lit. “Man[powered] car”) Tetsudō sprang forth at various locations throughout Japan where finances would not permit the acquisition of a steam locomotive.
Plans to exploit the copper deposits at Ashio led to the construction of a Gyusha Tetsudō (Ox-drawn railway) from the mines to the railhead at Nikkō. The small flatcars were locally built to the most rudimentary standards. Wooden “dummy” balks serve as buffers, while the braking was effected by skid shoes that are visible between the wheels in the third of these photographs, which shows some of the local girls, with younger siblings slung on their backs, hitching a ride into town with a load of copper. The first view shows one of the drivers and oxen at rest. Note the brake stand for operating the hand brake that is situated at the front of each car. The gauge of the Ashio Tetsudō was 610mm (2 foot). The remaining three pictures show trains—perhaps convoys is a more accurate term—operating over the line, the latter showing its entry into Nikkō over one of the municipal bridges. Note the canopies of branches fitted over the oxen in the last view.
Some Western travelers viewed the Jinsha Kidō in bemusement, evidence of the topsy-turvy or backward nature in which they perceived Japan compared to the West, rather than as an ingenious response to light railway development using minimal capital outlay in a country where the cost of labor was then a fraction of the prevailing cost in Western nations and the cost of horses was still rather high. An American tourist, Charles Lorrimer, who traveled on the Atami Jinsha (before increasing profitability permitted it to convert to steam motive power) saw matters with a less jaundiced eye than some, was clearly charmed by the little line, and left one of the more enlivened descriptions of a trip along its length, dating from his visit around 1903:
“[Shimbashi] station resounded with the click-clack, click-clack of clogs [geta; wooden sandals] as the crowds waddled down the long platform and disappeared into the second and third class carriages. Japanese of all kinds and conditions are the most inveterate travelers you can imagine.... Presently several passengers, after repeated bowings and scrapings climbed into our car; one, an old lady... might have dated from the Age of Chivalry: that is, if one might judge by the delightful farewells she gave to a friend... as the train began slowly to move, one poetic, musical phrase, over and over, ‘Rokkon shojo oyama wa kaisei’—‘May your six senses be pure and the honorable mountain weather for you, fine.’...
The railway runs first through fields of pink and white lotus, which as we passed were in full flower for miles—and of a beauty and sweetness indescribable. Another lovely member of the lily family was blooming, also, along the little green dykes separating the rice fields—a vivid scarlet lily growing in a full, feathery cluster on a single, strong, wine-colored stem. When the wind tossed the hundreds of blood-red tassels they fluttered like tiny flags... After an hour the train set us down at Kodzu [Kozu], close to the seashore. While diminutive porters piled our bags and baggage into the tram car which runs a few miles farther on [the Odawara Denki], we took tea in a pretty inn room—all windows as Japanese rooms invariably are in summer.
Presently the rattling tram, after four jolty miles, deposited us at Odmara [sic; Odawara], a sad stronghold of departed grandeur.... From Odamara [sic] it is five minutes’ walk to the point where the Atami road branches off, the fork being marked by a little station with a swinging sign ‘Jinsha Tetsudō’—Jinricksha Tramway.
These two photographs give a good detailed view of second and first class Atami Jinsha Tetsudō coaches during the last days of manpower operation in 1907. In the first photo, a second class carriage rolls by as the trackworkers take a rest and let the excavation tools from the current tasks lay, on what is probably an unpredictable spring day judging from the amount of runners’ outerwear hanging from the carriage. Note the proper carriage rooftop lamp pot for interior lighting during night runs. The second view shows a first class open-air carriage and gives a good view of the brake mechanism that was operated on downgrades by the chief runner from the front running board; left hand on the brake lever, right hand on the grab-iron.
A typical train on the Atami Jinsha Tetsudō is shown being pushed upgrade. On level and downgrade stretches while underway, much more space was kept between the individual carriages.
The inside of the station is like a doll’s house—three people and a bag fill it to overflowing. As our party consisted of four, each of us had to stand outside in turn, while the rest negotiated at a tiny stall in one corner for the Asahi beer and lemonade, destined presently to chaperone our luncheon of sandwiches.
Meanwhile, the Jinricksha ‘train’ was being made up. Three little cars, marked ostentatiously 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, with the dumpy figures of shoe boxes, were pushed towards us on a track without exaggeration only two feet broad.10 No visible motive power appeared. Where there should have been dynamos or engines [as in a trolley], there were only primitive brakes. Nor were the cars coupled together.
A tin horn manipulated by a fearful and wonderful official was the signal for ‘all aboard.’ Our car, open at the sides, and on top covered only with a fluttering awning [i. e., the first class car] had two little seats facing each other. The space between left scant room to put our knees, for the scale of everything connected with the car was like a child’s make-believe toy, rather than a serious grown-up passenger train.
First, our conductor pompously closed and locked our half-doors himself. Next he verified his original calculations over our fares (we each paid 97 sen—44 cents gold—for 16 miles) with a gilded official behind the ticket office window, who almost consumed with curiosity over the unusual sight of four Americans, had great difficulty in delivering his parting instructions impressively. A little tin box like a specimen case, containing our fares and accurate descriptions of each passenger, his destination, occupation, the color of his eyes and hair, with other details, was slung about the conductor’s neck, giving him the look of an ardent naturalist. Then we were quite ready.
At this last moment, the motive power appeared—five stalwart coolies for each car. More splendid specimens of manhood I have never seen. Their muscles were like gnarled trees; their chests like Sandow’s.11
Off we started with a whoop and a shout, the men trotting and pushing as though they enjoyed it. Our car, by reason of its [first class] dignity, went ahead, the second-class following about six paces behind, the third next, the baggage car last, which proved an unsuitable arrangement, for it was by far the heaviest, and came down the hill upon us periodically, in spite of brakes, causing terrifying shouts from the coolies, and thumping the poor third-class passengers....
After about three miles, our most important conductor, in his wonderful uniform blew a little tin horn, and suddenly we ran into a village that appeared instantly as if at the call of the cracked trumpet. We slowed up between two lines of cottages, with sliding screens pushed back, leaving them, according to summer custom, open to the day.... Leaving our little car we looked [about the village]....
Another blast of the tin horn... summoned us to rejoin the train. We ran absurd risks of choking with laughter at the sight of the conductor, who appeared, evidently for our benefit, in a semi-military suit of fearful and wonderful make. The material was ticking, blue and white [pillow] ticking, which, combined with the natural plumpness of his figure, made him look like an over-stuffed pillow. For ornaments, he had white cotton covered buttons in dazzling rows which began where his celluloid collar and coat met uncertainly—like the brook and the river—and then continued straight down to his native waraji (straw sandals) that contrasted strangely with the enormous pith helmet finishing off the other end of him....
From this first station the road wound up the hills. Our coolies pushed hard the whole day puffing regularly like engines and uttering grunts of encouragement to one another periodically. At the top of each incline we stopped, rather to let them wipe the streams of perspiration off their faces than to rest, for they were such splendid men that the effort hardly appeared to tire them at all. Really they seemed to be playing rather than working; laughing and joking continually, as if they enjoyed the idea of pushing us immensely.
One of the fellows on our car appeared to be a ‘head man’—a practical leader rather than a gilded functionary like the conductor. He was a splendid, powerful youth, a very Hercules for muscle, and for endurance hardly to be matched by that ancient demi-god. At the end of each mile he seemed fresher and stronger than at the start. He told us that his ‘run’ was twelve miles, six with the up-train to a certain un-pronounceable little station, then six back to Odawara with the down train, and this he did every day of his life, winter and summer, for the sum of thirty yen (about $15.) It sounds little enough, but in reality this is a big wage for a man of the coolie class. Farm laborers and even mechanics receive a good deal less. But then, they work steadily for the greater part of their lives, whereas these tram coolies can only endure the physical strain for a few years. In addition to their hard work the convivial life of the roads leads the men into temptations, induces them to squander their pay gambling, or worse, drink the deadly hot sake wine. Instead of regarding their splendid muscles as invested capital, they draw continual overdrafts on their strength, and after a time lungs or heart weaken, so that it is rare to see a ‘pusher’ over 30 years of age.
Skirting a fence of hills, we reached our second little station on the summit of a green ridge.... We made a very short stop, then were off again—gently down hill this time, and actually overhanging the sea without more than a twelve-inch margin between our track and the jagged spray-washed rocks—which made it the more exciting. Our coolies at once divided in two groups; half climbed on to the little step in front of each car, the rest on behind. The men ahead manipulated a very primitive brake between them; except for that we were entirely at the mercy of our own impetus.
Feeling the gentle slope of the downgrade, each little car leaped playfully forward, then along at a growing speed. We whirled past most lovely views of wooded promontories jutting out into the sea as blue as periwinkle. We darted through groves of bamboo, hung with prayer-papers tied by pious pilgrims in the hope that the fluttering wind might waft the desires there written down to Buddha. We flew past battered little wayside shrines, from which a thin odor of incense, the never-to-be-forgotten smell of the Far East, was wafted to us. We crossed the most ridiculous little bridges, over rushing streams that made quiet pools of light...
It was a most delightful and exhilarating sensation, this quick run through the air... with the delightful element of wonder as to whether at the next corner we should get around it safely or not. With regret we came to the last bend, the other side of which our exotic conductor promised we should find Idzusan [Izu-san], the last stop before Atami. It was a splendid corner, to be sure, this final one. All the coolies leaned as far as ever they could towards the bank, so close that the ferns and lilies brushed them—and with a whoop and a yell we negotiated it safely, and entered Idzusan, a little hamlet, whose houses nestle against the rocks like swallow’s nests....
We left the car and walked a little way towards the beach... We were inclined to idle there,... [b]ut our conductor came after us, to beg that we... retrace our steps... The coolies made a final spurt up the last hill. The reflection of the sunset was dazzling [on the sea]—as if a hundred signal corps heliographed to one another: Atami. ‘The honorable hot water,’ our coolies explained, by which they meant the geyser, pride of Atami, the only one in Japan.12...
Our little train reached the top of the hill, and then ran dizzily down into the little station. There we reluctantly alighted, charmed by our novel and unique experiences...”
This photograph gives an interesting insight into the nature of the civil engineering works found on one of the tramway lines that emanated around Nikko and Lake Chuzenji. Pictured is a portion of the Nikko Denki Tetsudō along the Daiya river, roughly midpoint between Nikko and Umagaeshi, beyond the limit of electric traction operation. A detailed examination of the trestle skirting the hill on the left and the small bridge crossing the stream in mid-ground reveals the fact that both have been built from rough-hewn small logs that were completely unmilled. Cost was obviously a consideration in initial construction of the line.
Pictured here is the new “Atami,” locomotive Number 1, with its small train on the Atami Tetsudō shortly after conversion to steam operation and re-gauging in 1907, as the 610mm/2’ gauge rail can still be seen in place between the outer rails on this stretch of line. The entire train seems aware of the fact that it is being photographed while passing by a local thatched-roof minka, or peasant’s house. The locomotive is probably an open-air tram-style locomotive bought from Baldwin that originally had a canopy roof its entire length, but was later re-configured along more standard lines with a conventional cab. Note the new tram-style carriage and the brass automobile headlight serving as a headlamp.
This 1903 map shows the railway system three years before nationalization, when the number of private railways was close to its peak.
The Sasago Tunnel was on the IJGR’s Chūō (中央 “Central”) Line, which finally gave the military the defensible national mainline away from coastal areas that it had long desired. At the time of its completion in 1903, the Sasago Tunnel (4.656 kilometers in length and 2,250 feet above sea level) was the longest in Japan, and the pride of the IJGR. It would remain so for almost 30 years until completion of the 9.7 kilometer Shimizu Tunnel in 1931. The Chūō line terminated in Nagoya, serving as an alternate route to that portion of the Tokaidō line running from Tōkyō to Nagoya along the coastline via Chigasaki, Kōzu, Numazu, Shizuoka, and Hamamatsu. A track crew of nine is making adjustments to the line shortly after opening while some of the local inhabitants look on from the grade crossing next to a trackworkers’ or crossing guard’s hut.
The outbreak of hostilities in the Russo-Japanese War brought with it a wave of patriotic fervor among the populace. Seen here are two views of troop trains leaving Tōkyō for the ports from which troops were dispatched. The first view shows a train piloted by an American-built 4-4-0 leaving Tōkyō for Ujina (Hiroshima’s port) while the second view shows a train of older style four-wheel compartment stock leaving Shinagawa station on the original Shimbashi–Yokohama line, with a good view of an idle A8 class locomotive standing in the yard. That four-wheel compartment non-corridor carriages that were gradually coming to be used only on suburban services or secondary lines were pressed into service for long distance troop trains shows how hard-pressed the railways must have been to muster rolling stock to meet the magnitude of the necessary troop movements. It must have been a long and arduous journey (averaging 20 mph) for the troops to have been in carriages with no corridor connections, many providing no access to lavatories except during stops in local stations. Note the small boy in his soldier’s suit and flag in the foreground of the second view.
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By the time Lorrimer was decrying the drinking of “the deadly hot sake wine,” Japan was second in Asia only to India in railway development. The average passenger car contained 38.5 seats, a relatively low figure due to the high percentage of 4-wheel stock (the standard 4-wheel compartment type carriage carried only 50 people in third class configuration or 32 people in 2nd class configuration). There was more than adequate growth potential: in 1903, passenger traffic volume per person still amounted to only 2.4 trips per year aggregating a yearly average per person of only 42 miles. In 1903, 1,313 passengers and 547 tons of goods passed over each mile of railway every day on average.
In the ten-year period since adoption of the 1892 Railway Law, “First Period” lines were starting to open. The Ōū line was well underway and would be completed in 1905. The Inyo–Renraku line was inching southwesterly along the Sea of Japan coast and would eventually be the first segment of what is now known as the San-in line. The Shinonoi Line, built in part to assist in the construction of the Chūō line, from Shinonoi on the Shin’etsu line was opened in late 1902, vaguely approximating the original proposed 1885 route from the Usui region to a junction with the new Chūō line at Shiojiri. By March 31, 1903 some 1,101 miles of so-called “First Period” lines had been opened to traffic, and well over half the entire “First Period” programme was complete. By that same date, 674 miles of “Second Period” designated route mileage had been assumed by private lines with Diet approval, of which 365 miles had been opened. 1903 also saw the completion of the Sasago Tunnel on the ever-lengthening Chūō line. That tunnel, at some 4,656 meters in length, would stand as the longest tunnel in Japan until completion of the Shimizu Tunnel (9,704 meters) in 1931. Similarly, the Torii Tunnel (at an elevation of 3,189 feet) on the same line was the highest elevation then reached by any railway in the realm. The interior Central line, long desired by the military, became a reality when the final link on the route to Nagoya was completed in 1911. By 1905, the railway system of Hokkaidō had been extended to Hakodate, creating a ready rail link to Honshū by the shortest available ferry route to Aomori. The steadily-growing accretions couldn’t have come at a better time, for Japan once again found itself confronted with foreign problems.
The unit pictured here boarding at the Shimbashi station freight platforms early in the war has the luxury of some of the newest passenger stock then in service, as evidenced by the profile of the clerestory roof of a design introduced around the turn of the century. Of particular interest is the as-yet unused specimen of the standard IJGR pattern buffer stops seen to the right in this view. As this example has yet to be embedded in an excavated site and laid-over with rails and ballast, the photograph neatly shows the manner in which they were pre-fabricated.
Accompanied by the shouts of Teikoku Banzai “Long live the Empire” according to the original caption, a troop train leaves Kōbe early in the war bound for the front. The depth of popular support for the cause of checking Russian territorial expansion and the morale-lifting effect it had on the troops could not be more obvious in this ebullient photograph.
A rather more poignant farewell is evidenced this view showing a class of schoolchildren brought to an unidentified station to see departing troops off in song. Almost instinctively, and without parallels in the coming conflicts of the 1930s and 40s, the Japanese populace realized the gravity of the undertaking facing them, and were perhaps at the zenith of national unity of opinion in support of their national cause.
Russia, then in the course of one of the more expansionist phases in its history, was moving still more aggressively in Manchuria and close to Korea. As had been noted earlier, it had commenced building of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1891 to strengthen its foothold in East Asia, which would make the supply and arming of Vladivostok and Russian towns along the line in Yakutsk all the more easy. Indeed, the railway never served an economic function during the first decades of its operation, as its use was overwhelmingly military. The situation in China had deteriorated even more. The abortive Boxer Rebellion in north China, centering in Beijing, had proven to be the first international crisis of the 1900s. By the time of its conclusion, brought about by an international military coalition consisting of Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, Italy, and (notably) Japan, only the most blind could not have foreseen that the Manchu Ch’ing dynasty was about to topple under the weight of it’s own corruption and ineffectiveness. The period of Chinese history known as “The Scramble for Concessions”13 had been underway for some time, and in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion, it was not unrealistic to assume that the world powers would soon be partitioning China into respective “Zones of Influence” that arose out of those concessions, from which eventual colonization was the expected result. Insofar as East Asia was concerned, Japan was indisputably one of those powers and was determined to make sure its position was not diminished vis-à-vis the gains that seemed to be within grasp of the other powers.
The two postmarks date these scenes of the railway and station at Kure to sometime between 1904 and 1907. Kure was located by an excellent natural harbor and a railway line to that harbor and adjoining military base were government priorities in the very first years of the 20th century. With the advent of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Kure was to become one of the main ports of debarkation for troopships to the front. In fact, the government’s 12-mile “Kure Tetsudō” that departed from the San’yo mainline at Kaita on the outskirts of Hiroshima was hastily finished as a war priority and was inaugurated on December first, 1903. It was immediately leased to the San’yo on its completion, and that railway continued to operate it until nationalization. One imagines that the station was quite a bit busier during the war than it appears to be in the view shown. The view of the “Kwannombana Tunnel” and the one farther beyond, the mouth of which is visible over the postmark gives a good indication of the terrain through which the San’yo Tetsudō ran.
The situation with Russia had gone from bad to worse. The Japanese viewed Russian expansionism with great alarm, and saw the homeland itself as one of Russia’s ultimate goals. Russia had, after all, acquired large tracts of land north of the Amur river in Manchuria (about twice the size of France) by some very sharp dealing and sharp diplomatic maneuverings with China with the Treaty of Aigun and the Treaty of Peking in 1858 and 1860 respectively, and had dispatched a force to the Japanese island of Tsushima (which is strategically situated in the 100-mile-wide straits that separate Korea from Japan) in 1861 to take the island from Japan, only to be evicted by British force of arms. Similarly, it had forcibly evicted Japan from Sakhalin Island by 1875. Despite having initially indicated publicly its intention to build the Trans-Siberian Railway approach to Vladivostok in Russian territory, the 1890s weren’t over before it used its leverage to coax from China’s weakened government a railway concession to allow the building of the Trans-Siberian directly across Manchuria in a more direct route, leading to the formation of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The Chinese Eastern Railway was nominally under joint Chinese and Russian direction and control, but this fooled no one. Only the most naïve of diplomats would have expected Russia not to seize the Chinese Eastern Railway (and to annex a generous swath of territory on both sides of the right of way) if the threat was ever perceived to be grave enough to Russian security. The pact creating the Chinese Eastern even went so far as to permit Russian troops to be garrisoned along the line, ostensibly to protect it from local acts of sabotage. (This was not altogether unrealistic. Railways were a lightning rod for anti-foreign fervor which was then gathering in northern China. During the Boxer Rebellion, the fledgling Imperial Chinese Railway was to be particularly hard-hit as a symbol of the Western colonial influence that the Boxers sought to eradicate, and was the subject of considerable destruction during that rebellion.) True to form, Russian troops started pouring into Manchuria to protect the Chinese Eastern Railway during the Boxer Rebellion. In its aftermath, the international community fretted ineffectually, trying to negotiate their withdrawal, which Russia promised, but never undertook. After a number of hollow promises passed without consummation, it became clear that Russia had colonial designs on Manchuria that were gradually to coming to fruition.
It was a time when Russia was perceived by the British as a great threat to the carefully crafted European balance of power. Britain had, for the first time since the defeat of Napoleon, entered into its first alliance formalized by written treaty, which was designed to counter the increasing threat it was feeling from Russia and a rising Germany. That treaty was the Anglo-Japanese Treaty negotiated during 1901 and signed in January 1902, in large part designed to give Japan additional security from Russian incursions, while freeing the Asiatic Squadron of the British Royal Navy from police and patrol duties in the Far East to permit it to be returned to Europe to be put to more effective use countering any Russian or German threat to European security.
To make matters worse, in the wake of the coerced concessions that followed the abortive Boxer Rebellion, Russia had the arrogance in 1901 to extract from China, by lease, the Liaodong Peninsula—the very Peninsula which Japan had conquered and won in the Sino-Japanese War, but only some 6 years before had been forced by Russia (with France and Germany) to return to China. That act alone was one of the most maladroit blunders of Russian Far East policy of the period, coming as short on the heels of Japan’s capture of the same lands as it did. Evidently, it mattered little to Russia’s government ministers and military, who gravely underestimated Japan’s new-found abilities and sense of mission, and it probably mattered less to Tsar Nicholas, for while still a crown prince in 1891, on his way to inaugurate construction of the Trans-Siberian at a ceremony set for Vladivostok by decree of his father, Alexander III, he had paid a state visit to Japan, and while there, a Japanese nationalist had attempted to assassinate him with a Japanese short sword. Nicholas ever after carried a scar on his forehead and a natural distrust toward the Japanese.
Railways figured in the theatre of operations in the Russo-Japanese War, but not as pervasively as one might have expected. The relatively quick success of the Japanese Army in the field was somewhat unexpected and came before many of the necessary locomotives and items of rolling stock and plant could be landed on the Korean peninsula, despite having been quickly ordered from Germany and the US even before the start of the conflict. By the time the rolling stock had arrived, in many instances the army had moved on. In absence of motive power, the Tetsudō Rentai (Railway Regiment) of the Army did the best it could with materiel in hand. Shown here are soldiers in Korea serving as motive power for a hastily-laid field railway from the local railway station seen in the background to the advance emplacements of their field artillery to bring up the guns’ supply of shells.
The Japanese assessed the situation, and concluded that Russia was, simply put, aggressive. Anyone in possession of his proper senses would have been hard-pressed to come to any conclusion but that Russia’s behavior in the Triple Intervention, followed almost immediately by the lease of the Liaodong, was anything other than a barefaced flaunting of raw power and imperialistic realpolitik with serious consequences for both Chinese and Japanese security. The Russians remonstrated that there were merely trying to obtain a warm water port that didn’t freeze in the winter as did Vladivostok (a city whose very name connotes domination: in Russian it means Lord of the East). But that was precisely the point. Ports are for harboring navies. Under the magnifying glass of tension, what would otherwise have been petty squabbles assumed proportions approaching crisis. The completion of the Chinese Eastern link of the Trans-Siberian in 1903 brought matters to near the boiling point. As intelligence reports of what it was carrying trickled in to Tōkyō, it was becoming obvious that the railway’s true purpose was not commercial, but military, as the bulk of shipments then consisted of military, not commercial or private shipments.14 Japan realized that Russia was playing a game of huge stakes for hegemony in Manchuria and Korea, and many observers in the West were inclined to concur with her. Japan also realized that it was in Russia’s interest to delay a true confrontation for as long as possible to give it the opportunity to build up its military presence in the Far East via the Trans-Siberian Railway. The crisis built, diplomatic missions shuttled back and forth with the increasing frequency that bespeak the gravity of the situation. Deadlines and ultimatums were given, and ultimately, let pass. Despite the increased tension, Russia made the audacious move of stationing troops across the Yalu River, which formed the border between the Chinese province of Manchuria and Korea, in fortifications it built on Korean soil, signaling its territorial designs not just on northern China, but Korea as well. Finally, the promised deadline for the withdrawal of the Russian troops stationed during the Boxer Rebellion, ostensibly to guard the railway, came and went in October 1903, with Russia having made no moves to withdraw them. This was among the final acts that proved to be the breaking point. Japan broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on February 8, 1904.
This view of Tieh Ling station in Manchuria shows in good detail the rolling stock of the period that was brought over from Japan after re-gauging of the railways lines captured to Japanese 1067mm gauge. Empty cars, once they arrived at advance destinations such as this, were used to ferry wounded soldiers back to rear-line field hospitals or Japan, as evidenced by the medics in white on the train at right which is about to depart full of walking-wounded evacuees bound for the rear.
War broke out when Japan launched a surprise naval attack. It occurred around 11:00 pm local time on that same February 8th, and the objective was the Russian naval squadron and navy base at Port Arthur at the southern tip of the Liaodong peninsula. One of the last diplomatic acts was the departure from Tōkyō of the Russian ambassador, Baron de Rosen, who was caught still on duty in Japan on the day of the surprise attack, and had to wait several days until he could book his passage departing from Yokohama aboard the French steamer Yarra (France and Russia were at that time contracting parties in a bi-lateral alliance). One of the journalists who was waiting in Tōkyō to be assigned as a war correspondent to the Japanese Army, Frederick Palmer, recorded the events surrounding his departure.
When the Russian port of Dalny (Chin. Dalian, Jap. Dairen), on the Liaodong Peninsula above Port Arthur, fell to Japan, the Russians managed to remove all the motive power, but failed to evacuate, burn, or destroy the rolling stock then located in the city; a serious underestimation of Japanese determination and ingenuity. The Japanese were quick to capitalize on this mistake and within a short period of time, Russian rolling stock was being used in supply trains powered by Manchurian labor hired on-the-spot and regulars of the Japanese Army. With eight men on each car’s side, 16 to a wagon, and staff aboard to operate hand brakes, trains up to 40 wagons long were operated. The artist Melton Prior, one of the war correspondents for the Illustrated London News, captured one of these trains in operation before the Army’s Tetsudō Rentai had engineered conversion of the line to the Japanese gauge to enable locomotives and rolling stock hastily brought from Japan to be used.
“The train for Yokohama which the Baron chose went at nine the evening before the departure of the steamer. As the carriage passed out of the Legation gates, a faint murmur rose from the bystanders—a murmur of curiosity rather than assault. The police escort was scarcely needed. Tokio, which has no slums, seems to have no mobs. The crowd which banked the open space that the police made at Shimbashi Station was wholly quiet. Not alone the Legation people were there to bid him once more bon voyage, but many Japanese officials awaited his arrival in the rooms upstairs. It was an incident of the bureaucratic system which grinds to the same fineness on all occasions that the Ministers had to buy their platform tickets in due course.
From the station itself the crowd was entirely excluded. The train was the regular one going at that hour, and the usual stream of getas [wooden clogs] went clicking over the concrete to the second and third class compartments. Two or three minutes before the gong sounded, the Baron, looking ill and worn, leading, the Legation folk and the Japanese officials followed him to his compartment, where, after the Russians had entered, the others paused, and then bowed as the train pulled out with no guard except a few soldiers in the compartment ahead of the Baron’s. A carriage met him at the Yokohama station, and the police saw him aboard the Yarra, which was to bear him to Europe. The next morning a few friends were on the pier. He smiled to them as the steamer drew away, taking him out of a land that he liked and that liked him.”
All government expenditure on railway building was immediately curtailed unless necessary for the war effort. The railways were again put to hurried service, supporting troop and materiel movements. By the opening of hostilities, the situation was quite different than it had been ten years earlier. The trunk system had been completed to Shimonoseki (only some 100 miles from Pusan, Korea across the Tsushima Straits) and troops could be dispatched much more effectively to the mainland. In the interim since the Sino-Chinese War, the Japanese had developed the logistical capacities of the railways and of the harbor facilities in various southern coastal towns to permit its army quickly to concentrate and dispatch troops to the Asian mainland. All up and down the trunk line formed by the Nippon–Tokaidō–San’yo trio, troops were seen off by throngs of patriotic subjects at stations as their trains headed for the southern ports of embarkation: Sasebo, Kure, Ujina (Hiroshima’s main port facility), Moji (now Kitakyūshū), and Nagasaki. As had occurred during the Sino-Japanese War, traffic was again disrupted on home lines, and the burgeoning passenger traffic was seen as a source of financing for the war efforts. War taxes in the form of ticket surcharges were levied on passenger journeys, having the salutary effect of depressing unnecessary civilian travel, while raising funds. To keep troop movements as secret as could be from any Russian spies or sympathizers, many troop trains ran at night and lighting was put out on all passenger trains in the vicinity of any troop train, and vice-versa. According to one source, of the total Japanese troops put in the field, roughly 1 in 20 were engineers or transport corps; a figure unmatched in any other non-colonial Asian army, and more on par with some European armies of the day.
The Japanese Army’s Tetsudō Rentai generally re-gauged the captured Russian railway lines with commendable efficiency, given the resources with which they had to work. This view of re-gauging in the vicinity of Liao-Yang, however, is not without its comic aspect. It’s difficult to tell whether the crew is attempting to straighten a bent rail, curve a straight rail, or is simply attempting to raise the height of the line for leveling, using a spare rail as a lever. In at some instances, re-gauging was mistakenly depicted by both war correspondents and graphic artists to have been Japanese destruction of the lines, showing an ill-considered analysis of the situation by the observer: advancing armies generally seek to keep captured lines intact for future supply purposes, only retreating armies seek to destroy them, and it was the Russian forces, not the Japanese, that were consistently on the retreat.
The Japanese Army had studied and adopted the tactics of the German army in the wake of its rapid victories in the Franco-Prussian War, and had adopted the use of 600mm German Feldbahn (“field [of battle] railway”) equipment for logistical support. The army had created its first Railway Battalion, the Tetsudō Rentai (鉄道連隊 Railway Regiment) in 1896, based across the Tōkyō bay from Tōkyō on the Chiba peninsula. The unit was expected to operate the German Feldbahn equipment the government had ordered before the outbreak, some shipments of which were still in transit and much of which arrived too late to be effectively used. Nevertheless, the battalion was much employed in Korea and Manchuria, as it hurriedly built, oversaw, or sped completion of several railway lines to support the Japanese advance. Likewise, the government had come to the assistance of the Japanese contractors who were engaged in building a railway between Pusan (the Korean port at the very south-eastern corner of Korea) and Seoul, on the condition that the railway be opened for traffic by the end of 1904. Work was done around the clock, day and night, all along the entire 276 route miles of the line, rather than in segments. True to schedule, on New Year’s Day 1905 the railway was opened for service, and with it, for the first time, Tōkyō was linked by rail (and a 100-mile ferry service) with the capital of another country. From Tōkyō, Seoul could be reached in the unheard of time of 34 hours by train to Shimonoseki, nine hours across the Tsushima Straits, and another 15 hours from Pusan to Seoul.
Japan’s first attack was made at a time of year most advantageous to Japan, during winter, when the fleet at Vladivostok was frozen in, and troop movements along the Trans-Siberian would be most difficult, due the bitter Siberian winter and the fact that the railway had not yet been built around frozen Lake Baikal, when ferry service was suspended each winter.15 The entire Trans-Siberian had been built very lightly. The rails were only 54 pounds to the yard, which would bear only light locomotives, resulting in shorter trains and commensurate load restrictions precisely at a time when heavy trains bearing maximum loads would have been desired. The gap at Lake Baikal caused concern. The Russians had for some years been in the habit of laying a light temporary rail line across the ice of Lake Baikal, which froze to an average depth of some 9½ feet, but in the winter of 1904, the ice was proving to be particularly unstable, and the laying of that temporary line was disrupted, hindering troop and materiel movement to the East. With the Russian ships in Russia’s only warm water facility at Port Arthur effectively neutralized as a result of the success of Japan’s first-strike assault, and the Vladivostok ships largely frozen in, there were effectively no other Russian naval squadrons of any size in the region,16 the unhindered transport of Japanese troops across the Straits of Tsushima to Korea was greatly facilitated, and the IJA quickly accomplished it’s build-up on the Korean peninsula, while the Russian Viceroy for the East, Alexieff, and the field commander Kuropatkin were obliged at the outset to make a tactical retreat, moving their headquarters to safer points inland from Port Arthur. This of course made Japanese occupation of the Korea much easier. With the garrisons at Port Arthur and Dairen pinned down, Russian forces in Korea had to be supplied from more remote locations. Russian reinforcements trickled in to Harbin (hundreds of miles inland from the threat of any Japanese naval attack), the strategic junction on the Chinese Eastern Railway where the branch to Port Arthur diverged from the mainline to Vladivostok and to Mukden and Liaoyang to the south.
The Japanese Army’s northward advance to the Yalu River boundary between Manchuria and Korea was so quick that the small Feldbahn-type railway equipment (which was suited to serve as short lines from a major railhead for a moderate distance to the front) proved to be less useful than had been expected. However, a short Feldbahn-style line was built after the victory over the Russians at the Battle of the Yalu that ran from Antung (present day Dandong) to Fenghuangshang, roughly 30 miles, which was operated in Jinsha fashion with local “war coolies” pushing convoys of the tiny cars until the locomotives could be brought forward. Orders had been hurriedly placed just before the war’s outset for additional locomotives from Baldwin and the American Locomotive Company (“Alco” a recently formed amalgamation of the Brooks, Schenectady, Cooke, Pittsburgh, Rhode Island, Dickson, Manchester, and Richmond locomotive manufacturers) and any other manufacturer who could promptly supply locomotives.17 As the Japanese advanced from the Yalu and other landing points along the Manchurian coast, by-passing Port Arthur and moving northward up the Liaodong Peninsula along the Port Arthur Branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway toward the critical junction of Harbin, they learned that the Russians had managed to evacuate virtually all of the locomotives and rolling stock, leaving the railway useless, as it was built to the Russian 1520mm (5’ 0”) gauge and both Japanese and Korean rolling stock were of different gauges. However, when Dalny (Dairen) was cut off and captured, the Japanese discovered that a considerable number of freight wagons that had been abandoned there and again war coolies operated the line using the captured freight cars by manpower.
Once re-gauging efforts were completed, Japanese reinforcements and supplies began to pour ever northward by rail. This view shows one of those troop trains supposedly arriving at Liao-Yang, headed up by a Kyūshū Tetsudō mogul (8550 Class upon subsequent nationalization) that was among the rolling stock hurriedly gathered up and imported to Manchuria. Troops traveled in the ubiquitous three plank wagons found throughout the Japanese railway system. As evidenced by the locomotive, any private railway that could afford to contribute stock was approached and urged to donate to a pool of expeditionary stock. One often finds photos of “Big Five” rolling stock in Manchuria during the war.
Tetsudō Rentai engineers were soon pressed into service regauging the Port Arthur Dalny Branch to the north to 1067 mm gauge to allow Japanese-gauge locomotives hastily brought over from Japan to be used: about 200 locomotives, mainly B6 0-6-2T tank locomotives (at least 30 of the latest batch from Dubs B6), 2-6-0 Moguls, and F2 class 2-8-0 Consolidations—locomotives that were otherwise badly needed at home to handle the increased traffic to embarkation ports were hastily shipped to Manchuria. It was easy work to unfasten the rails, move them 1’ 6” inwards, and then re-spike them to the Japanese gauge. To ensure the Russians couldn’t re-gauge with as much ease if the tides of war shifted back against the Japanese, the Japanese crews who re-gauged the Russian lines were mindful to cut the cross-ties off after the regauging to the narrower gauge.
As Japanese troops pushed ever northward toward Mukden, Russian forces had not gained one significant victory, but had become very adept at skillful retreats and had avoided decisive routs along the way. The effects of the meagre logistical support due to the limited capacity of the single-tracked Trans-Siberian Railway was beginning to show, and the balance of fortune was tipping in favor of the Japanese, whose forces were blessed with the higher morale resulting from the string of successes. Tahshihchiao, the town that formed the junction on the railway to the north with a branch running to the nearby port of Newchuang (Yingkou), fell on July 25th. With control of that branch and with Newchuang port having already fallen to Japanese control, the Japanese obtained yet another railway line of supply that was of great utility. Next along the rail line to Mukden, Liaoyang fell on August 25, 1904. By October 3, 1904 the Tetsudō Rentai had completed regauging of the Port Arthur branch from the port of Dalny into Liaoyang, and the sound of steam whistles were heard at the station as supply trains powered by the 1067mm locomotives hurriedly brought over from Japan started to arrive. The stronghold of Port Arthur itself finally capitulated on January 2, 1905, providing yet another supply port linked to the ever-expanding former Russian rail system in Japanese hands and leaving the way clear for the forces involved in the siege to join the main bulk of the Army in its push to Mukden and the prize of Harbin.
An interesting view of a purpose-built field alteration to one of the IJGR three-plank wagons used to transport troops and materiel in the aftermath of Liao-Yang, permitting tent canvas to be stretched over the car for protection from the elements of the occupants or cargo, as the case may be.
The first of these two views records the arrival of a train of wounded soldiers in Tōkyō during the progress of the war. Note the four schoolboys in their white caps, probably which identify them as volunteers, each ready to do his part, as assistants in some capacity, the smallest of who is probably no more than 6 or 7 years old. One can’t help but admire the sense of responsibility and service shown by a youngster of such tender age. After arrival at stations, the wounded were taken to local hospitals. The second view shows newly-arrived wounded being taken from the side entrance of Shimbashi station as an assembled crowd welcomes them home.
While there are a fair number of photographs of the Imperial Train from the Meiji era, fewer photographs of V.I.P. trains that were specially run as circumstances merited have survived. This photo is one of those few although not in the homeland. It shows the arrival of then Minister of War (later Prime Minister) Terauchi Masatake at Dalian (Dairen) Manchuria, during or just after the Russo-Japanese War. An all Japanese special train of stock brought from Japan consisting of B6 locomotive number 756, an IJGR brake van, a special salon carriage (perhaps one of the carriages from the Imperial Train?), a first or second class carriage for his entourage, and an additional brake van for baggage and impedimenta at the rear stands ready quayside as the party arrives on a ship who’s stern bears the name “Ōyo Maru Naruo.” Naruo is in the vicinity of Kōbe.
On learning of the fall of Port Arthur, in an effort to regain some initiative, to disrupt Japanese supply lines, and to relieve Mukden of some of the pressure slowly coming to bear upon it, the Russians launched a cavalry raid from their positions north of Liaoyang consisting of 6,000 Cossacks and several batteries of field guns under Major General Mischenko. The raiders were to flank the Japanese army and once the lines had been penetrated to proceed southward. The objective was the port of Newchwang, where the ever growing Japanese supply depot was guarded by a small garrison of roughly 500 men that would have been easily overrun. Along the way Mischenko planned to stop at points to destroy the rail line between Newchwang and the rear of the Japanese army. The Russians were able to succeed in penetrating the line and maintained something of an element of surprise, but as soon as the first intelligence reports reached the Japanese, it was not difficult to guess at the raiders’ objective. Alerts were sent to the garrison and a relief train of 16 wagons was hurriedly dispatched in the direction of Newchwang with a crew of civil engineers, extra rails, spikes, bridging timbers, tools and supplies, and several hundred reinforcements for the small garrison. The race to Newchwang was on. Although the Russians had a head start, fortune smiled on the Japanese. Because it was the dead of winter and the surrounding countryside had been rendered a wasteland by the prior fighting, Mischenko’s raiders were encumbered with a larger than average number of supply wagons, which slowed their pace significantly, turning what would typically have been a two day ride during forage season into four. Worse yet, the Cossacks had not been properly instructed how effectively to render a railway useless, and their damage consisted in the main of removing rails and other minor works of sabotage, all of which was quickly repaired by the nimble Japanese under the careful supervision of the accompanying Tetsudō Rentai engineers. The race came down to the wire. As Mischenko’s raiders were making their final approach to Newchwang along the railway line they believed they had disabled, they heard the furious exhaust beat of a locomotive at speed to their rear. Surprise was now on the side of the Japanese, who raked the cavalry column with fire as they steamed past full speed on their way into the city. The approaching scream of the steam whistle was enough to put the small garrison, already on alert behind hastily strengthened defenses, on notice of the arrival of reinforcements, and considerably buoyed morale. This heart stopping, nick-of-time arrival roughly doubled the number of defenders to about 1,000. The reinforcements were quickly assigned posts at the defenses as quickly as they could be de-trained and after three successive cavalry charges had failed, Mischenko was obliged to withdraw his Cossacks and rejoin the main body of the Russian army. The supply depot at Newchwang had been relieved, while the Russians had been denied the initiative and handed yet another defeat. The repulse of the Newchwang Raid was the only notable role (other than supply and troop transport) that railways were to play during the course of the war.
On the eve of nationalization, Japan celebrated the 5,000 mile mark in the development of its railway system, in conjunction with which the commemorative postcard at left was issued, supposedly depicting an up express train on the Tokaidō line roaring past the 5,000 milepost. A charming scene, but the card does not depict a Japanese train. The postcard publisher has merely copied a Tuck postcard (shown at right) of the celebrated London Brighton and South Coast Railway Brighton Belle express train, superimposed a seashore in the foreground, and drawn Mt. Fuji in the background. Even the distinctive “Stroudley’s Improved Engine Green” livery on a Billington 4-4-0 that never ran in Japan has been kept. No Japanese railway is known to have employed such a livery and no such locomotives were imported. Even the marker lamps and indicators on the locomotive front, unique to the LBSCR, have been set over in wholesale fashion from the Tuck card. Not all Meiji railway illustrations can be taken at face value.
Mukden fell in March. With the fall of Mukden, the fate of Harbin, and with it Vladivostok, was now in balance. To have lost Harbin would have effectively denied Russia of any practical means of re-supplying Vladivostok. The fall of Harbin would have sealed the fate of Vladivostok and with that would have withered any realistic hope for Russian victory absent an absurdly costly and protracted war of attrition. With the Japanese in a position to move on Harbin, having defeated General Stoessel’s defenses at Port Arthur, Russia’s last and only realistic hope lay in a hastily assembled relief fleet, cobbled together from its Baltic fleet and any older ships that could be pressed into service. That fleet had left the Baltic ports near St. Petersburg in October 1904 under command of Admiral Rozhestvensky for a long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope on its way to Port Arthur.18 On its arrival in Asian waters, after a long-suffering voyage replete in mishaps and adversity, it was quickly dispatched by the Imperial Japanese Navy under the formidable Admiral Togo in the decisive Battle of Tsushima, named after the small island roughly midway between Japan and Korea in the 100 mile stretch of water that separated them where the battle occurred. The victory at Tsushima and the fall of Port Arthur left the Japanese navy at liberty to deal with the remaining ships based at Vladivostok. Predictably, Sakhalin Island was next to fall to the Japanese. This didn’t bode well for Vladivostok as the war machine in Manchuria crept ever closer to the critical rail junction at Harbin, and new forces on Sakhalin raised the specter of Vladivostok soon finding itself in the jaws of a vice.
In the meantime, domestic revolution and unrest in Russia had intervened, obliging the Czar to agree to share some of his power with Russia’s first national legislature, the Duma, and to be favorably disposed to a peaceful resolution. The cost of the war was staggering to Japan’s economy, such that Japan was approaching the point of financial exhaustion. Japan had accomplished a great deal of its objectives. To it, the difficult logistical task of supplying an army far inland beyond Harbin quite naturally must have appeared altogether less than attractive. Both parties agreed to a mediated peace conference proposed at the opportune moment by American president Theodore Roosevelt, which resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth and the cessation of hostilities.
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On the heels of the war’s conclusion, further cause for celebration occurred in 1905 when the railway mileage in Japan reached 5,000 miles. People looked back nostalgically to the days of 1889 and drew suitable parallels, as just on the eve of completion of the Tokaidō line, the nation had celebrated its 1,000 mile landmark. As business returned to normal, the amalgamation trend that was well underway before the outbreak of hostilities continued apace: The Kansai had acquired the Kiwa, Nanwa, and Nara railways. The Kyūshū Tetsudō had merged into its route-mileage the rights-ofway of the Hōshu and Karatsu Tetsudō. The San’yo had taken the Bantan under its wing and across the Inland Sea on Shikoku had absorbed the Sanuki Tetsudō, to become the only railway other than the IJGR operating on more than one island. By this point in time, the largest private railways, which consisted of the Nippon Tetsudō, the San’yo, the Kyūshū, the Kansai, and the Hokkaidō Tanko Tetsudō (successor of the Poronai), had in the public consciousness collectively attained the nickname of “The Big Five.”
Well prior to the war, the government had made another effort at establishing a steel industry, this time with a better chance of success. The Diet had passed enabling legislation in 1896. February 1897 saw Yawata, near Kokura in north Kyūshū being chosen as the site and plans were soon put in hand to build a large-capacity steel-making complex there. The proposed complex was carefully studied and planned, with as much study as one would have expected of the best contemporary European or American steel mills. In order to cope with the increased materials being off-loaded, development of the port of Wakamatsu was subsidized. A dam was built to form a reservoir that would provide the necessary amounts of water the plant would consume, and to aid in construction of that dam, Shay locomotives from the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio were ordered. When it opened in 1901, the results were every bit as successful as the results at Kamaishi had been a failure, and it couldn’t keep up with demand, being expanded as rapidly as efforts would allow. Yawata was the cradle of the Japanese steel industry and became one of its centers. With it came the ability to mass-produce high quality steel in larger volumes than had ever previously been accomplished in Japan and with that came the possibility of domestically manufacturing locomotives and rails on a large scale. Indeed, a factory expressly designed to forge and turn the steel tires that are put on locomotive driving wheels and other railway shops were envisioned for the Yawata complex and had become operational by 1905. As had passed the epoch of the yatoi in Japan, so was the epoch of foreign-built locomotives about to follow.
The IJGR made quite a celebration of the ceremonies marking the completion of 5,000 miles of railways in Japan. This view is believed to show the arrival at ceremonies of one of the dignitaries; perhaps General Nogi (judging from appearances) who would have been one of the biggest celebrities of the day as it was the era just following his victories in the Russo-Japanese War. Note the footwear of those who have already entered the hall that are visible through the horse’s legs.
This photograph of a repair shop for railway and other heavy works, probably part of the Yawata complex, is emblematic of the extent to which Japan was becoming increasingly self-sufficient by the end of the Meiji era. A class of engineering apprentices stands beneath a small German-built Orenstein und Koppel tank locomotive (Yawata bought several in 1911 for its own rail network at the factory complex) during a class visit in an obviously posed scene.
This is a more accurate commemorative postcard view depicting the ceremonies marking the completion of 5,000 miles of railways that took place in Nagoya on May 20, 1906. Note the hanging banners emblazoned with the mon of the various railway companies, many of which were on the verge of being nationalized when this photograph was taken. The postcard bears the special cancellation of the 5,000 mile festivities.
Yawata ordered 5 of Shay’s patent locomotive from Ohio’s Lima Locomotive Works: four 10-ton, two-truck Shay (order nos. 1867, 1868, 1882 &1883) and one 13-ton, two-truck unit (order no. 2001). The first four were shipped on April 27th, 1907 and were assigned running numbers 47 through 50. The larger unit shipped on November 6th that same year. These locomotives were used in the construction of the Kawachi Dam, which formed the reservoir for the mill’s water supply. This photograph shows Lima order number 1883, in ‘as-built’ or close to ‘as-built’ condition, around 1907. Despite the adaptability of the gear-driven Shay locomotive to mountainous terrain, particularly to logging operations, the slow but sure-footed type never gained as much acceptance in Japan as one might have expected. Some examples made their way to Taiwan for use there by Japanese colonial interests.