Meiji Technocrats: The Choshu Five Who Built Modern Japan

2018/07/11

When I was a child, I used to look forward to waiting for the new Ginza Line trains at Nihombashi Station when my family went out to central Tokyo. The unique aluminum alloy bodies that appeared among the old orange cars excited my young heart. Nearly 35 years have passed since then, and the cars that shone so brightly back then have already retired. In the meantime, the interior lights no longer switch to emergency lighting for a moment before entering a station, all cars are now equipped with air conditioning—which couldn't be installed before because the tunnels were too small—and now large, clear LCD displays are installed above the doors.

As one gets older, there are many opportunities to realize the progress of technology, not just with these Ginza Line cars. However, this is not limited to the modern era. From the end of the Edo period to the Meiji era, Japanese technology was being updated by incorporating new techniques and knowledge from the West. I became interested in why Japan was able to modernize at such a high speed and have conducted research on the Ministry of Public Works, which was responsible for the so-called "Promotion of Industry" policy in the early Meiji years. Within that, I found the progress of technology and its meaning to be deeply interesting. Since the government at the time directly developed modernization projects such as railways and various factories, bureaucrats themselves possessed valuable skills and acquired high levels of expertise. I wrote this book to introduce the pioneers of such technocrats.

Specifically, I focused on the five individuals (the Choshu Five) who smuggled themselves out of the Choshu Domain together at the end of the Edo period. I followed the lives of Yozo Yamao, Masaru Inoue, and Kinsuke Endo—who studied scientific knowledge to become technocrats and laid the foundations in fields such as industry, railways, and minting—while contrasting them with Hirobumi Ito and Kaoru Inoue, who returned to Japan early and later flourished as politicians.

In doing so, I paid attention to the framework of technocrats, administrative bureaucrats, and politicians, and was conscious of depicting the process by which they gradually formed into a system from their early stages. I also focused on the expertise that is inseparable from technology. In order to provide material for thinking about expertise, which is becoming increasingly important today, I also strove to clarify the expertise embodied by technocrats and how it changed.

Technology continues to progress steadily today, and expertise will likely continue to deepen in the future, but we must not forget our respect for the people who historically played a part in one of those stages.

Meiji Technocrats: The Choshu Five Who Built Modern Japan

Hiroki Kashihara (Author)

Chuokoron-Shinsha

288 pages, 880 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of writing.