CONTENTS

PREFACE	9
PROLOGUE
Japan Before 1853	11
CHAPTER 1: 1853–1868
Introduction of Railway Technology, the Shōgunal Railway Proposal, and the First Railway Concession	21
CHAPTER 2: 1869–1870
Intrigue, Influence, and Incompetence as Railway Planning Begins in Earnest	39
CHAPTER 3: 1870–1872
Building the First Railway	57
CHAPTER 4: 1873–1877
Kōbe to Kyōto	87
CHAPTER 5: 1877–1884
Ōtsu, Tsuruga, Nagahama, and East to the Nōbi Plain	99
CHAPTER 6: 1880–1895
Extending and Integrating the System	109
CHAPTER 7: 1895–1905
The Second Railway Mania and the Russo-Japanese War	181
CHAPTER 8: 1906–1912
Nationalization and Self-sufficiency	223
EPILOGUE: 1913–1914
Tōkyō Station	255
APPENDIX
Original Metropolitan Terminii of Principal Meiji Era Non-Government Railways	262
Workshop Locations	262
Gauge Equivalents and Representative Lines	262
IJGR Locomotive Numbering Schemes 1872–1909	262
Railway Shamon	266
Meiji-Era Locomotive Naming	267
Head and Tail Lamp and Disk Codes	268
Meiji-Era Liveries	268
Correspondence Enclosing the Portman Grant	270
Sir Harry Parkes’ Address at the Ōsaka–Kyōto Opening	270
Charter of the Japan Railway Company	271
Railways by Region	272
Western Sources for Rolling Stock Drawings	276
Dramatis Personae	277
Japanese Railway Lexicon	279
Japanese Geographic Lexicon	280
Bibliography	281
Photo Credits	282
Footnotes	284
Index	286
Acknowledgments	287

An unidentified coastal location, perhaps on the Atami line during construction, as presumably a contractor’s temporary narrow gauge (762mm) line is visible to the right while construction baulks and scaffolding are still visible at the curtained mouth of the new tunnel shaft just seen to the left of the smokebox door. The locomotive seen is a D-9 class member, designated the 6270 class and built by Dubs, soon to be the North British Locomotive Works. The running number on the smokebox door dates the photograph to after 1909 when IJGR changed its numbering scheme.