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Masaki NAKABAYASHI, Umi o wataru kikansha: Kindai nihon no tetsudō hatten to gurōbaruka (Trading Locomotives: The First Globalization and the Development of Japan’s Railways, 1869–1914), Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 21, Issue 1, Winter 2018, Pages 158–160, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyx046
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People related to the railway industry in Japan, in particular railway operators such as Central Japan Railway Company and policymakers, tend to consider the Japanese railway industry to be the most advanced in the world, at least in terms of ‘technology’. Their icon is the high-speed railway system called the bullet train, or Shinkansen. The manufacturers that actually produce trains, such as Hitachi, Nippon Sharyo, and Tokyu Cars, adjust to the local markets and supply trains for traditional operators such as Caltrain of California or the metro of Philadelphia. There is a symptomatic fluctuation between complacency and genuine appreciation.
This book handles not contemporary Japan, but rather, Japan of the early 20th century ago when it began to introduce a large number of modern locomotives from the UK, Germany, and the US. It focuses on how suppliers responded (or failed to respond) to the Japanese market and how Japanese engineers and companies acquired techniques and organizational knowledge to operate modern railway networks during what is called the first age of globalization. From the detailed descriptions, on the one hand the author attempts to gain lessons for emerging economies that are likewise trying to assimilate the knowledge and skills imported from advanced economies, and on the other hand, to identify the lessons for advanced economies adjusting to the dynamism of emerging economies in the integrated world market. One century ago, Japan was the most successful learner of advanced technologies, skills, and organizational knowledge; the US rose as the dominant power among the advanced economies, followed by Germany, and the once dominant UK became the greatest loser in the railway industry during the first age of globalization.
