A role of imported steamships and their main engines at the beginning of modern industry in Japan is scrutinized and examined in this paper.
Before the first arrival of steamship to Japan in the year 1853, some of Japanese artisans had endeavoured to make up a side-lever engine only in dependence on a translation of a Dutch textbook. They successfully built up a steamship and it operated well in 1854, but these trials were suspended and many western steamships were imported, because it was so difficult to make up complicated marine engines such as an oscillating engine without machine-tools and related industry. In addition, there was no time to prepare for the foreign pressure. But the importation of steamships played a great part for the progress of Japanese marine engineering.
At that time, in Europe the marine engine had been in the era of innovation, for example, the spread of oscillating engine or double-cylinder engine etc., and also the change from paddle wheel to screw in propeller. Steamships equipped new-type engines were imported successively, and Japan could keep up with the times. In 1862, excellent engineers went abroad for study and joined in construction of an ordered ship in the Netherlands, thus they could learn in practice. Using the imported ships, Japanese engineers grew accustomed to operation and repair of new machines. There was a rather good understanding of the necessity of dockyards for repair and such shipyards made a contribution to the development of marine engine in Japan.
