Koko KATO
Mitsubishi Nagasaki shipyard is an epoch-making shipyard which played a crucial role in Japanese industrialization and modernization in the late-19th century: it acted as a forerunner to lead Japan from a small Asian Nation to a World Economic Power. The shipyard, which built Japan’s first steel steamship in 1890, is still privately owned by Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., and is still in active production, completing its largest-ever container ship in 2008. Core historic features of the Nagasaki Shipyard are now a key component of a serial nomination on Japan’s World Heritage Tentative List, prepared to be entitled Emergence of Industrial Japan: Kyushu Yamaguchi.
From 1639, during 2 centuries of isolation, the Shogun banned the Japanese people from building large ships to sail offshore, from producing armaments, and forbade contact with Western nations except with Holland, from a tiny island trading post called Dejima in Nagasaki. However, Britain’s victory over China in the Opium War in 1842 created a sense of crisis amongst the powerful local feudal princes in the South-West of Japan, geographically close to the Chinese continent. They hurriedly sought to adopt western science and military technology indirectly from a Dutch book in Dejima. When the Shogun lifted the ban of building large ships, a reaction to the pressure from US Admiral Perry’s ‘Black Ship’ gunboat policy to open the nation in 1853, there was no appropriate technology in Japan to build large sea-going vessels, nor for modern armaments to defend itself.
The history of Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard can be traced back to its foundation, during the isolation period in 1857, as the first smelting and machinery factory in Japan: Nagasaki Yotetsu Foundry. It was built by Dutch naval officers at the request of the Tokugawa shogunate during its transition policy from isolation to opening, pressured by Admiral Perry. Nagasaki Ironworks (Nagasaki Seitetsushu) was added to the foundry in 1861, being taken over by the new government of Meiji in 1868 after the Meiji Restoration. Mitsubishi heavy industry purchased Kosuge Slip Dock, imported by a ‘Satsuma Student’ and Scottish arms dealer Thomas B. Glover, to learn about western ship structure from the repair of Western steamships.
Although the Meiji government engaged in industrial development at Nagasaki Shipyard, the greatest phase of development, innovation and achievement – which continues today – fell to one of Japan’s earliest and leading zaibatsu: Mitsubishi, whose history parallels that of modern Japan. In 1884 Mitsubishi leased Nagasaki ironworks and shipyard from the government, and bought it in 1887. In 1887 Nagasaki Shipyard completed its first iron steamship Yugao–Maru, in 1890 Japan’s first steel steamship Chikugogawa-Maru, and in 1898 Japan’s first modern large ship Hitachi-Maru (6,172 tons, 3,847 HP, 14 knots), financed by the state’s Shipbuilding Encourangement Law. The completion of the Hitachi-Maru signifies the complete transfer of technology, whereby Japan, which had been able to make only wooden Japanese-style ships, caught up with the best of Western shipbuilding technology. Japanese naval officers were sent to the UK in 1890 and under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 – the first ever equal alliance between a Western and non-Western nation – the UK helped educate Japanese naval engineers and architects in more sophisticated ship, and military battleship, technology.
Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard has great pride in its history of being a beacon of Japanese modernization. It still preserves Kosuge Slipdock and still uses the historic 1905 Dock No.3 and the Scottish 150-ton hammerhead crane of 1909.
As a part of the serial nomination entitled Emergence of Industrial Japan: Kyushu Yamaguchi, the Mitsubishi site is of the highest significance but has legal challenges under Japanese cultural property law. Mitsubishi is a blue-chip company eager to cooperate with the government national policy of city planning and has a proud and distinguished preservation history of its historic facilities. However, under the current cultural heritage law, historic monument status could prejudice the day-to-day operation of the industry. So, it is with great pleasure to discuss about Mitsubishi issues of preservation and conservation such as
1. Operational industrial site – unprecedented in terms of scale
2. Privately owned – duties of dividends to investors in this publicly listed company
Therefore, in the lead-up to our aspiration for Emergence of Industrial Japan: Kyushu-Yamaguchi as a World Heritage Site, we have some challenging issues to resolve in our efforts to recognise Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard’s rightful contribution to the Outstanding Universal Value of the series.