Nationalization of Railways The Japanese and British Cases

Takeshi YUZAWA

doi:10.5029/jrbh1984.16.7

Nationalization of Railways

The Japanese and British Cases

Takeshi YUZAWA

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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2000 Volume 16 Pages 7-30

DOI https://doi.org/10.5029/jrbh1984.16.7

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Published: March 15, 2000 Received: - Available on J-STAGE: June 28, 2010 Accepted: - Advance online publication: - Revised: -
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Date of correction: June 28, 2010 Reason for correction: - Correction: CITATION Details: Right : 1Robert E.Carlson,The Liverpool and Manchester Railway1821-1831(1969),pp.109,159.
2Ibid.,p.234.
3Terry R.Gourvish,British Railways1948-73,pp.13-14.
4A.Gerschenkron,“Social Attitudes,Entrepreneurship and Economic Development,”Exploration in Entrepreneurial History4,no.1,1953.
5Final Report of Commission on Trade Depression,1886.
6The Railway News,10March1906.
7The Railway News,25May1907.
8Emil Davies,The Case for Railway Nationalisation(London:Collins'Clear-Type Press,1913).
9E.A.Pratt,The Case against Railway Nationalisation(London:Collins'Clear-Type Press,1913),chapter 10.
10This point should be seen as too unrealistic,because there were plenty of complaints from traders and customers,and Sir George S.Gibb,former general manager of the North-Eastern Railway,frankly admitted at the Royal Economic Society in November1908that“the first[reason]I will name,though it may not be the most influential,is the existence of a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the present state of railway administration.”The Railway News,24November 1908.
11The Railway News,27March1909.
12Gerald Crompton,“Good business for the nation:The railway nationalization issue,1921-1947,”The Journal of Transport History,ser.,vol.20,no.2,September1999,pp.141-42.
13Nihon Kotsu Kyokai,ed.,Tetsudo senjinroku[Biographies of railway pioneers in Japan](Nihon Teishajo Kabushikigaisha,1972),pp.392-95;Yoshihiko Morita,“Edmund Morel,a British Engineer in Japan,”in Britain and Japan:Biographical Portraits,ed.Ian Nish,vol.2(Japan Library,1997),pp.48ff.
14“British Manufactures and Japanese Railway Development,”The Times,21April1896.
15“British Manufactures and Japanese Railway Development,”The Times,21April1896.Japanese technology at the end of the nineteenth century was capable of manufacturing locomotives at a Kobe factory,and the performance of these locomotives was not inferior to that of locomotives imported from overseas.
16Inoue Masaru,Shishaku Inoue Masaru-kun shoden[A short biography of Viscount Inoue Masaru](Tokyo,1913),pp.41-43;Yumiyo Yamamoto,“Inoue Masaru:‘Father’of the Japanese Railways,”in Britain and Japan:Biographical Portraits,ed.Ian Nish,vol.2(Japan Library,1997),pp.21ff.It wouia be an interesting topic to make clear the reason why Inoue was keen on nationalization while he spent time in England,where there were no railways run by private companies.Was he influenced by any local arguments for nationalization?
17Takeshi Yuzawa,“The Transfer of Railway Technologies from Britain to Japan,with Special Reference to Locomotive Manufacture,”pp.205-206.
18Tetsudo jiho[Railway times],7July1909.
19E.Pratt,The Case against Railway Nationalisation,p.59.
20Ibid.,p.39.
21Toshiharu Watarai,Nationalization of Railways in Japan(AMS Press,1968[1915]).I agree with his argument because,as far as I have been able to check in the Tetsudo jiho(The Railway Times),I could not find serious articles complaining about the deficit of transportation during the Russo-Japanese War.
22Tatsujiro Ishikawa and Mitsuhide Imashiro,The Privatization of Japanese National Railways,p.10.
23Tetsudo jiho,24February1906.Nakahashi later became director of the Railway Bureau,a minister of education,and a minister of commerce and industry.
24Ibid.
25Idem,17February1906.
26Idem,17February1906.
27Idem,3March1906.
28Idem,12February1906.
29Yoshinobu Oikawa,“Sangyo kakumei-ki no tetsudio mondai to Tokyo keizai zasshi[Railway problems and Tokyo Economic Journal during the Industrial Revolution],in Taguchi Ukichi to Tokyo keizai zasshi[Ukichi Taguchi and Tokyo Economic Journal],ed.Shiro Sugihara and Kazunobu Okada(Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha,1995),pp.237-69.
30Watarai,Nationalization.of Railways in Japan,p.61;Tetsudo jilro,17March1906.Among the newspapers,support for nationalization came from the Kokumin,Yomiuri,Chugai shogyo,and jinmin denpo newspapers.
31Tetsudo jiho,1January1909to10February1909.
32Idem,17and24March1906.
33Tadashi Uda,“Tetsudo kokuyuka”[Railway nationalization],in Nihon,no kigyo to kokka[Business and state in Japan],ed.H.Morikawa(Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha,1976).A recent magnificent work is Steven J.Ericson's The Sound of the Whistle:Railroads and the State in Meiji japan(Council on East Asian Studies,Harvard University,1996).
34Tetsudo jiho,28July1906.
35Masao Noda et al.,eds.,Nihon no tetsudo-seiritsu to tenkai(Japanese railways:Their establishment and development](Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha,1986),pp.114-21,dictionary.
36Noda et al.,Nihon no tetsudo,pp.133-34.
37Kenneth D.Brown,Britain and Japan:A Comparative Economic and Social History since1900 (Manchester University Press,1998),p.15.
38It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze the1921Act more precisely in regard to the reason why British railways were not nationalized at that time.The author intends to undertake a comparison later between the management and organization of Japanese and British railways between the two world wars.

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