The Industrial Heritage in Japan

Abstract

Although Japan had begun to learn Western technology from the mid-sixteenth century, it was immediately before the Meiji Restoration in 1868 that the imminent necessity of industrialization was realized by a few farsighted leaders of some feudal clans. Thereafter, her industrialization made rapid progress down to the time of World War II, when much industrial equipment was lost in the massive air-raids.

The loss of her pre-war plants was further aggravated by the extensive renewal of old-fashioned buildings and machines, carried out during the period of her economic growth in the 1960s. This paper attemps to describe how the surviving industrial monuments from several representative sections of industry are preserved either on site or in museums, and how their study has recently been taken up in Japan.