Historical Research for Planning and Construction of MISUMI Port

Abstract

The port of Misumi is one of the oldest Japanese modern ports, built by the initiative of Meiji goverment. In spite of its historical importance on the chronological level, the appreciations by historians are rather divergent: a beautiful masonry work realized thanks to the marriage of the traditional and Western techniques, the badly selected site for which commercial activities stagnate with the passing of years, etc. In order to validly define the historical value of this realization, this paper analyzies the archives, inedite or not, and clarifies the process and the ideas of the planning and constrauction of this port.