| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this study is to shed new light on the formative process of Japanese Railway Industry, with special focus on training, congregating, and organizing of engineers. During the four years, I have researched data on railway engineers, and gathered material for the database of railway workers on Meiji-Era. As a result, my database's number was more than 10,000, and content was solider.
Major findings are as follows :
1. In the early Meiji-Era, the yatoi (hired foreigners), most of them were from Britain, carried the Government-Railway on there shoulders. But in 1880s, the Government-Railway added to the numbers of those of their human resources who were capable of taking on task of running the railway. Especially, civil engineers, which were organized by student overseas such as Inoue Masaru, devolved from a setup that relied on hired foreigners.
2. In 1890s to 1900s, new groups of engineers, which core member graduated from Imperial University, appeared in big railways, like a Japan Railway Co., Kyushu Railway Co., Sanyo Railway Co. and the Government-Railway. On the other hand, in short railways, engineer's group did not appear, because those engineers were easy to remove.
3. About the railway nationalization, we found out that many managers of private railways did not move to the Government-Railway, but engineers moved to it. So, railway nationalization played an active role in diffusion of many capable managers from railway to the other industries.
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