抄録
The Meiji government started constructing a new country by hiring engineers from European countries. But soon trained Japanese engineers replaced them. This paper analyzes the characteristics and roles of these Japanese engineers in Meiji era, by looking at their social and educational backgrounds. At the beginning of Meiji era, a major group of the engineers were artisans and the people who received short term and practical training. They built railways and harbors and conducted waterworks by themselves. They gained a status equal to those of new graduates of college or university. But the workers and contractors of projects usually did not get a good public recogniton, though some of them had good civil engineering skills. After the middle of Meiji era,, graduates of colleges and universities took the managerial positions and became the supervisors of almost all civil engineering projects. This did not mean that the projects needed more higher level of technologies. The engineers who actually supported civil engineering projects were artisans and gishu or middle class engineering officers, who were mostly the graduates of short term training schools. Some graduates of foreign countries and constructors actually contributed to construction engineering, but did not receive fair recognition especially after a bureaucratic system was established. This was a major factor why Japan stayed far behind in the advancement of construction engineering.
