The Engineering Culture of the Japanese National Railways around World War II : Reexamining the Historical Narrative of Research on the Vibration of Rolling Stocks

Abstract

After World War II, many former military engineers found employment at the Japanese National Railways, especially the Railway Technical Research Institute, and made significant contributions to the postwar development of railway technology. In particular, a contribution by a group of former Navy engineers led by Tadashi Matsudaira to the solution of vibration problems of rolling stocks has been dealt with repeatedly in historical narratives. According to those conventional narratives, Matsudaira and others successfully applied advanced theoretical expertise that he had acquired through wartime aeronautical research to the vibration problems, which had troubled empiricist railway engineers. This article reexamines how former aeronautical engineers and conventional railway engineers tackled the vibration problems. It argues that what actually characterized the research style of conventional railway engineers was conservatism, which did not encourage the fruit of academically oriented research to turn into actual changes in the design of rolling stocks. On the other hand, Matsudaira and other former Navy engineers had the research style characterized by practical orientation and creativity, which became a catalyst for change at the Japanese National Railways. This article thus compares the two different engineering cultures, examining engineers' practices and approaches as well as their social environments and social values. The changes in the engineering culture of the Japanese National Railways shown in this article implies the importance of discussing the continuities and discontinuities in other scenes of technological development from the prewar period to the postwar period.