IN 1869, the Boshin War ended in victory for the British-backed Imperial Court over the Tokugawa shogunate. Distrust of foreigners remained high, but Harry Parkes, British Minister to Japan, convinced Emperor Meiji that railways would unite the kingdom, kickstart trade, and prevent rice shortages such as the one Japan was currently experiencing.
That December, the Imperial government commissioned Japan’s first full-scale commercial railway, a 20-mile stretch of 3’6” track connecting Shimbashi Station in Tokyo with Sakuragicho Station in Yokohama. Surveying began in April 1870, and though Inoue Masaru,* one of the ‘Choshu Five’ Glover had smuggled into London,* was appointed Director of Railways, responsibility for construction rested with Edmund Morel, a British civil engineer with long experience in New Zealand, Australia and latterly Borneo.
Ten tank locomotives, fifty-eight carriages and almost 300 railwaymen were brought from England, and on October 14th, 1872 the Emperor himself made the historic Opening Day trip from Tokyo to Yokohama – a 35-minute declaration of intent for the whole nation.
Inoue Masaru (Inoue is his surname) studied railway and mine engineering at University College, London. Fellow student Ito Hirobumi, at this time Assistant Vice Minister of Finance, later drafted the Meiji Constitution in the 1880s, turning to Britain rather than America for his model of constitutional government. To this day, despite almost universal Americanisation a feeling that Japan has a greater affinity with Britain persists.
Tom Glover’s ‘Choshu Five’ and the fifteen other students whom Glover smuggled out of Japan (strict controls were then in place) were not ideological westernisers. They believed that the threat posed by westernisation was severe, but also that it could be managed if Japan were united under her Emperor, and if she understood enough of western culture to pick the sweet fruits and leave the bitter.