Engineer
Kondoh’s Collection Lives On
 |
Engineer Kondoh Seichii
probably in his mid-30s. |
Peter J. Rimmer explains how his
fascination with the Japanese
transport system led to the
acquisition of the Kondoh Seiichi
Collection
I
had never heard of the engineer Kondoh Seiichi (the Japanese
practice of putting the family name first is followed here)
until I arrived in Japan during August 1978
to undertake a study of Japan’s seaports. However,
I did meet his third son, Kondoh Rinnosuke, who was then working
at the International Association of Ports and Harbors
(IAPH) in Tokyo. Since that first meeting,
Rinnosuke and I have been close friends.
As
my interest in Japan’s transport history
deepened, I recognised the importance
of the planning experience gained by
the Japanese in Manchukuo (Manchuria)
before the Pacific war in reshaping Japan’s
wartime and postwar transport systems, and
questioned Rinnosuke accordingly. During a
subsequent visit to Japan in the early 1980s I
asked Rinnosuke about the proposed building
of a tunnel under the Tsushima Strait, which
would have linked Japan’s largest island of
Honshu with the then colony of Kankoku
(Korea). From behind a row of books in his
office, Kondoh produced a volume with a
diagram of the tunnel. More importantly,
there was another map that not only showed
the tunnel but also revealed that it was
a component of an orbital railway linking
Japan through Sakhalin to Manchukuo and
then returning via Kankoku, with an offshoot
to Shanghai.
The
book was part of a collection made by Rinnosuke’s father,
Kondoh Seiichi, throughout his interesting and prestigious
career with Japan National Railways. Clearly
an accomplished man, after retirement
Kondoh Seiichi maintained an interest in
academic matters, particularly mathematics. He
was invited to lecture on thermal engines at a technical school
(now Shibaura Kôgyô Daigaku)
from 1964 to 1978, coached his third son and my friend Rinnosuke
in
quadratic equations, wrote technical papers
and played the violin.
Following
Kondoh Seiichi’s death at the
age of 80, in March 1982, his second wife
invited the Railway Engineering Research
Institute (Tetsudô Gijutsû Kenkyû Shô)
to
look at the dossiers. They took a few items
for their records and left the remainder
for disposal. As there was also a smaller
amount of material on aviation, a similar
opportunity was afforded the Airport
Affairs Research Group (Kukô Mondai
Chôsa-Kai), a private consortium of experts
on airport affairs which, in the 1980s,
included consultants and architects. The
group took several items, and Kondoh
Rinnosuke retained some as keepsakes.
Very
occasionally, Rinnosuke made reference to the minutes of the
Shinkansen Group, and the wall map of the Greater
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (Daitôa
Kyôeiken), which was to be politically and
economically integrated under Japanese
leadership and free of Western domination.
Otherwise, the books remained hidden
behind the front row in his shelves so as not to embarrass or
offend visitors from
East Asia about the Co-Prosperity Sphere
who might be sensitive about Japan’s past
colonial ambitions. As there was little
support for a foreign academic wishing to
formally investigate transport planning in
prewar and wartime imperial Japan and
its colonies; only when I visited Kondoh in
Tokyo was I able to discuss the books hidden
in his bookcase.
When
Kondoh himself retired from IAPH in 2003, I suggested that
he should give the material to me and, in turn, I would present
it to Asian Collections at the National Library
of Australia for safekeeping. This suggestion
was motivated by the fact that I have given
most of my Japanese language material to
the Asian Collections and continue to make
extensive use of both the facilities and the
services of its staff.
The
Kondoh Seiichi Collection material dates from 1900 to 1956,
and some of the books are bound in traditional Japanese style
using string (watoji). Much of the material
kept by Rinnosuke in memory of his father
is stamped ‘Top Secret’, ‘Military Secret’ or‘Secret’.
This was common practice before and during the Pacific war when
anything
prepared by government officials was not for
circulation among the general public.
 |
Photograph of railwaymen
taken in April 1935 in front of
locomotive C51200. Engineer
Kondoh Seiichi is seated on far
right of the front row |
The
oldest item in the collection is the railway regulations, issued
by National Railways in 1900, which outlines
the laws governing railway
operations and was presumably
given to all new recruits into the
service. Surprisingly, the second
item is the SOLAS (Safety of
Life at Sea) Convention which
was initially adopted in 1914 in
response to the Titanic disaster. This
book is dated 1925 and must have been the first version of
the international convention, as the
second version was not adopted
until 1929. Presumably, the book
was in Kondoh’s possession
because National Railways
operated several important ferry
services, including the Aomori–Hakodate train ferry
(Seikan Renrakusen) between Honshu and
Hokkaido.
Reflecting
Kondoh’s eclectic
transport interests, the third item,
dated 1929, was about the existing
situation of air transportation
in Europe and America, a verbatim record
of a speech made by Nishino Keinosuke,
President of Japan Air Transport Company
Limited, the forerunner of Japan Airlines. The
Airport Affairs Research Group reproduced
this item in April 1983 at the same time
as it reproduced the List of World Records
of Aviation of 1931 (also among Kondoh’s
papers). Apparently, the engineer was also a
collector of information on national railways
outside Japan. There is material on the tariff
regulations of public railways in Indochina
published in 1933, and data on railways of
the United States for the years 1938 to 1939. The
plans of traffic systems in the United States, supplemented by
those from Europe, were used by the government to develop an
integrated transport system when Japan was
on a Pacific war footing and already at war
with China.
The
most intriguing material is the minutes of the meetings of
the Railway Trunk Line Research Group; its deliberations
can be seen to lead to the construction of
the Shinkansen (Bullet Train). On 20 July
1939, Transport Minister Maeda requested
the group to inquire into the future
prospects of the combined Tokaido (Tokyo–Osaka)
and San’yo (Osaka–Shiminoseki)
trunk lines, running 972 kilometres on an
international standard gauge track (1435 mm or 4 feet 8½ inches).
By 27 October 1939, 12 meetings had been held with the minutes
emphasising that the Shinkansen had been
in the making since 1910. They also reveal
that Japanese railwaymen resented the fact
that the government reneged on its 1910
decision to adopt a standard international
gauge line. Instead, in 1918, the government
adopted the narrow gauge so that railways
reached every corner of the country. This
reversal of policy not only placed severe
technical restrictions on National Railways’ engineers
but also precluded the possibility of travelling from Paris
and London on a
single train ticket purchased at any railway
station in Japan.
The
dream of adopting the international standard gauge was renewed
in 1939. Despite
the imminent prospect of further military disputes, National
Railways decided to connect to the railways developed by
the Japanese colonial administration on the
Korean Peninsula using the standard gauge. The plan
was to construct an undersea tunnel between Japan’s Kyushu Island and Kankoku. By the early 1940s, test boring for the Kyushu-Tsushima sector was a budget item. Using the Japanese islands of Iki and Tsushima as staging posts, the overall length of the tunnel system was expected to be between 200 and 230 kilometres. The length of the undersea portion alone was expected to exceed 50 kilometres. However, the ambitious plan was abandoned when Japan was defeated in the Pacific war. As Japan built up its tunnelling skills with the completion, in 1947, of a 17-kilometre undersea tunnel between Shiminoseki, on the western tip of the island of Honshu, and Moji, in Kyushu, it is not surprising that the plan for linking Japan and Korea resurfaced again in the 1980s. However, the prevailing political circumstances meant that no further action was taken. Had the tunnel been completed, it would have been comparable to the 54-kilometre Seikan Undersea Tunnel, connecting Aomori on Honshu Island with Hakodate on Hokkaido Island, that was constructed between 1963 and 1988.
 |
Japan’s
1940 plan for an orbital
railway
Courtesy of Henshu Iinkai |
The
proposed 1940s link through Korea would have connected Japan
to the developing transport networks of Manchuria
and occupied China, often known as Nichi–Man–Shi
(Japan–Manchuria–China),
which was conceived as a test-bed for national self sufficiency
(autakie) theories fashioned in
the other fascist states of Germany and Italy.
Indeed,
there are three envelopes in the Kondoh Collection with material
on railways in China. The first, marked ‘The
China North Transport Company Ltd’,
contains an organisation chart and a railway
development plan for Peking (Beijing). The
latter is remarkable for its environmental
considerations as high priority is given
to preserving the beauty of the Old City. Documents
in the second envelope, marked ‘China Central Railway
Ltd’,
include details on the operation of the super express between
Shanghai and Nanjing in 1940, together
with a table of locomotive ratings and a
timetable. In the third envelope, pencilled
in blue ‘Manchukuo Railways’, there is a rail
allocation plan, a manning scale, maps and
other ephemera. The Japanese Government
had provided half the capital for the South
Manchurian Railway Company to run railway
systems in China. These systems were
critical to the Japanese war effort as, unlike
shipping and road transport, the railways
did not need scarce fuel oil and gasoline
but used local coal. After 1938, the National
Railways contributed steam locomotives to
support China’s railway systems that had
been commandeered for use by the Japanese
military forces (kyoshutsu). Substantial
structural changes were required to the
undercarriage so that the engines could run
on the wider standard gauge in China. Their
number included 16 C51 series locomotives,
which were used to pull express trains
between Shanghai and Nanjing. Stretching
the C51 engines to run in China offended
railway purists because, according to
Imamura Kyoshi, it made the elegant engines ‘look like toads’.
The
remaining material comprises information on transportation
systems in both the Soviet Union in 1940 and
South-East Asia in 1942—the latter being
available only in an ‘Industries Edition’. Presumably,
information on other national railway systems was required
in laying out the railway network to deliver the troops
and the material to underpin the Great
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere centred
on Japan. A document reporting progress
on transportation in the sphere is dated
March 1942. The report underlines that
the sphere not only incorporates North-
East Asia but also South-East Asia, a then
prized reservoir of raw materials such as
tin and rubber. Japan’s expansionist policy
was opposed by both the United States
and the Soviet Union. In August 1942, the
Council on the Construction of Greater
East Asia, the Japanese Government’s
advisory committee, submitted a report
on ‘Basic Policy for Transportation in
Greater East Asia’, which covered both
North-East and South-East Asia. However,
this critical report on how Japan was
mobilising for total war is not included
in the Kondoh Collection.
The
documents on the Co-Prosperity Sphere, prepared during the
Pacific war, contain little material written in English.
Presumably, this was because English was
deemed to be an adversary language. Contrarily,
German was rather freely used and quoted in documents. Not
surprisingly, the collection of documents included the
national land planning and freight tariff
policy, which referred to a case study
of the Schulingen local area within the
German national railways system (Deutsche
Bundesbahn). The final item was a pamphlet
entitled A Glimpse of the NW Route,
operated by the South Manchurian Railway
Company from Lü-shun (Port Arthur) to
Changchun, via Lü-ta (Dairen/Dalian) and
Mukden (Shenyang), over a distance of 1128
kilometres. The pamphlet was published
in June 1944, only two months before the
Pacific war was brought to an end.
Peter
J. Rimmer is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Pacific and
Asian History, Australian National University, and Hanjin
Shipping Chair Professor of Global Logistics,
Asia Pacific School of Logistics, Inha
University, Incheon, Korea
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