China and Korea had traditional eunuchs (court official) for a long time. I do not know why Japanese court did not adopt eunch. I guess that Mikados did not have absolute power or authority to govern like China and Korea till Edo era. Korean court abolished eunch in 1894. Fu gyoku sho exlied eunchs from the Forbidden Court in 1924.

China, Korea and Japan are bureaucratic nations now. Bureaucrats have governing power in the nations. Korea and Japan impose a writing test to be a bureaucrats. The test originates Chinese old kakyo. Meiji Government adopted it.

As for bronze ware, people in Japan did not use. Lords used them as symbols of authority. People in Japan began to use iron tool from wooden tool in drastic manner. While China had a splendid bronze culture for a long time.

Archery

A pike trooper	Horse archer

Goryeo (Korai) and Yuan (Gen) Dynasty planned to conquer Japan in 1266. Both kings sent diplomatic documents Japan in Chinese. Samurai of Kamakura could not read Chinese, maybe. Diplomatic advisers of Kamakura government were priests. Therefore tatara developed everywhere because samurai needed a lot of iron weapon. Mongol style Korai army landed Kyushu in 1274. Samurai used a long bow made by bamboo. While Korean used shorter bows than Japanese ones. The painting shows an enemy trooper who had a pike. All the samurai were horse archers. That was an archery war. Samurai did not charge like Western knights with a lance in Kamakura era. Samurai felt dignity skillful in horse archery. Unique Prince Moriyoshi (1308-1335) wore a long bow, who wanted to be Shogun. Shogun Ashikaga Yoshihisa (1465-1489) wore a long bow of Shigetou. Ieyasu was called the most excellent archer in Tokaido with hornor even the age of guns.
Goryeo(Korai)
Yuan(Gen)
Genkou

Ashinaka

The picture shows the mongol soldiers wore boots naturally. Did Kamakura bushi also wear boots? We watch a drama on TV that a bushi armed a rifle and wore a kind of sandals ( thongs ) in the end of Edo era. The illustrated handscroll of the Tale of the Heiji Civil War (J. Heiji monogatari) depicts the Hogen Insurrection (1156). The warriors wore ones like sandals and boots. A site titled 'hakimono ni tuite' shows an interesting picture. A knight on a horse wore boots. A pike trooper wore sandals ( thongs ), when Mongol invasion. The thongs were called Ashinaka. It shows a good proof that Japan is mixture of the north Asian and the south Pacific Asian originated culture. Saigyo (1118-1190), a famous poet was a bushi, who wore a shoes.
Hakimono ni tuite
Saigyo

Geta

IJA soldiers troubled a long march because their military shoes were poor. So they wore US army boots from bodies of enemy. I show you modern US army boots in deserts. North Vietnamese people endured logistics for a long time in Vietnam War and they wore sandals ( thongs ) made of rubber from a used car wheel tire. Some sites show such sandals, but they are not thongs. But a report writes local Vietnamese women wear thong sandals. I love thong sandals made of sponge rubber on beach in summer.
Kappa ashi
Gomu zouri

I hear that Korean people disliked Japanese thong till the end of the Pacific War. It was a symbol of Japanese governance. We call it geta. A girl throws a geta in a festival in the photo. The geta is Kitarou's tool or weapon in manga of "Gege no kitarou".

Export sword to China
After falling Yuan, Japanese-Ming commerce was official trade, Japan exported a lot of sulfer and steel swords, 3,050 in 1432, 13,000 in 1434, 9,900 in 1451, 30,000 in 1467, 7,000 in 1476, 38,610 in 1486. Chinese officials were surprised at huge export from Japan. The swords might be made in Nara. Naturally sulfer was material of powder. Japan imported a lot of copper coin and books. The commerce brought up merchants. People of Kyoto could not live with out money. Money spread little by little. Japan could export other handcraft Japanese fans, paintings and drawings in Ashikaga era.
Kubota p.144-145

Iron for guns
Primitive arquebus ejecting stone bullet propagated in 15th century. Western type of arquebus having excellent fire mechanism propagated in 16th century. the arquebus were copied at once and made a lot in Kunitomo, Negoro and Sakai. As samurai favored arquebus with their conflicts, iron was short. So western merchants imported steel from India to Japan by their ships^[3]. The steel seems to be Wootz steel. So the iron was called Nanban-tetsu meanning Western iron.

Kato Kiyomasa ordered his samurai to arm with a gun each, when Hideyoshi's Korea invasion in 16th century. He invaded Manchuria at first in history of Japan in 1592. That was an age of gun.
Katou Kiyomasa

Edo bakufu allowed to import western books about science, technology, etc in 1720 officially. Western knowledge of anatomy excited some medics. Coming Russians in Hokkaido and knowing Qing defeat by UK sea power, some intellectuals of western hans began to learn western knowledge. The HMS Phaeton incident took a few hans' serious conserns in Kyusyu in 1808. The Phaeton entered Nagasaki without official permission on 15 August 1808. She cheated Japanese coast guards while putting up a flag of Netherlands. Was a hired American pilot on board? Netherlands had hired American merchant ships to trade with Japan and Java in 18th century. It seems to me that the procedure of entering Nagasaki was complicated. Troops of Nabeshima han guarded Nagasaki then. But obsolete guns in Nagasaki showed no power against a British warship. The Phaeton went out on 17 August. A Nagasaki bugyo, a chief official in Nagasaki killed himself for the responsibilty of the incident on the day. He was buried in a tomb of a Buddism temple. But people of Nagasaki honored him who died with unavenged grievances and calmed his soul in Suwa Shrine later.
1700-1799
Phaeton jiken
Nagasaki nyukou tetuzuki
Nagasaki bugyo

Though Nabeshima, Kumamoto, and Satsuma Han wanted powerful guns. But they could not cast guns by traditional tatara iron.

Nabeshima Naomasa decide to build a reverberatory furnace for the iron by themselves only knowledge from books. It spent almost 40 years and a lot of money. Only Nabeshima han suceeded in 1850. Because,

• Nabeshima Naomasa was very eager to learn western technology and science
  
• Arita-yaki was useful for making bricks enduring high temperature
  
• Skills of conventional crafts could make wooden machines powered by water wheels

Nabeshima Han made modern breech-loading guns. The artillery skill of Nabeshima crushed Shogun's Densyutai which was an infantry troop trained by French military advisers in the Boshin War.
Syuseikan kanren shisetsu
Nabeshima Naomasa

Guns equipped IJN warships in WWII did not seem short except small 25mm guns, though IJA troubled short of field or anti tank guns. I did not know when powers made gun material with Nickel. Nickel steel of Japan contains 1.5, 3.0 or 5% Ni. Nickel is rare material.^[8]

Battle cruisers

Japan Iron & Steel Co. productioned rolled steel at the peak in 1943.^[9] The wikipedia showed the production of the company in quarter year. I showed the data by graph. The production decreased in Q1 of 1943 strangely. The volume of the year reached 9 million ton. Wikipedia does not show the data now. I ignore the erased data.

Rolled steel product and usage, Ships: for merchant

^{1945; January through March}

Year	kton	Normalized in 1938	Industrial facilities	Ships	Navy	Aircraft [%]
1931	1602	32.9%	-	-	-	-
1932	2010	41.2%	-	-	-	-
1933	2616	53.7%	-	-	-	-
1934	3114	63.9%	-	-	-	-
1935	3745	76.8%	-	-	-	-
1936	4272	87.0%	-	-	-	6
1937	4680	96.0%	33%	5%	10%	3
1938	4876	100.0%	19%	6%	11%	4
1939	4676	95.9%	18%	5%	11%	4
1940	4532	92.9%	17%	5%	13%	5
1941	4153	85.2%	11%	7%	18%	8
1942	4052	83.1%	11%	12%	19%	8
1943	4149	85.1%	10%	19%	19%	8
1944	2632	54.0%	6%	38%	18%	12
1945	257	-	2%	43%	15%	9

Steel production

^1945:Jan-Mar

Year	kton
1937	5,858
1938	4,557
1939	5,098
1940	4,306
1941	4,527
1942	3,806
1943	4,290
1944	3,109
1945	469

Japan increased Iron production after WWI much. But the production was much less than 2 powers of US and UK.
Kennedy p.257

Technology that make rolled steel for warships developed well just before the Pacific War.^[7] Domestic steel and rolled steel productions decreased, as follows.^[4] The peak of rolled steel was in 1938. How did Japanese leaders decide to war against US in spite of decreasing steel production? Nippon Steel production increased till 1944. Another site also shows increase of pig iron production.^[5] One more antohter data shows that steel production ability increased from 5,210 kton in 1937 to 11,700 kton in 1944.^[6] Morimoto showed that Japan productioned steel of 6.85 million ton in 1940.^[10 I think that both tables of steel production and rolled steel product and usage of Japan were not true.

Japanese economy had fallen because of expenditure of war in China. Merchant ships are built of 70 % of rolled steel material. Japan should build a lot of merchant ships at first, if Japan wanted to be independent from UK and US merchant ships. Japan made desperate effort to build ships for shortage of freighters sunk by enemy submarines last 2 years. Japan could not transport resources across the Sea of China in safe, though Japan captured and occupied resources in China and Dutch East India. How stupid.

Steel product change of Japan [kt]

Year	1935	1945	1955	1965	1970	1971	1972
Steel	4,700	1,270	9,410	41,160	93,320	88,560	96,900

Russia continued to increase product of iron till the end of WWII, but failed to compete with US during the cold war.

Steel product of nuke club [kt]

China	US	Russia	India	France	UK	Total
489,660	108,226	72,387	53,080	19,250	14,317	785,433

Japan exceeded US in 1980, learning mass prodcution of steel from US. The cold war helped Japan develop ironically. China exceeded Japan in 1996. In the nations of socialistic economy, interestingly Russia was exceeded by China in 1991. Now China makes iron 4 folds of Japan.
Mishima, p95
Oushy tekko kyoudou-tai
Syuyoukoku sokou seisan

Steel product of non-nuke nations [kt]

^{Joint Communiqué between Japan and Ukraine}

Japan	Korea	Germany	Ukraine	Brazil	Italy	Turkey	Taiwan	Spain	Mexico	Canada	Total
120,203	51,517	48,550	42,830	33,782	31,547	25,754	20,908	18,999	17,563	15,512	427,165

However, US invented nuke in WWII. The nuke changed the world completely. India developed nuke knowlede only, I think. All the nations have no nukes cannot challange nuke club. UK is a middle class nation without nuke. UK will never give up nuke possesition in future. Steel production of major 11 non-nuke nations is 54% of all the nuke club.

Aggregate market value

Nation	trillion $	trillion yen	Share[%]
USA	18.52	2130	31.7
Japan	4.70	540	8.0
UK	3.99	458	6.8
China	3.37	387	5.8
France	2.85	327	4.9
HongKong	2.58	297	4.4
Total			61.6

Growth ratios of Japan were only 1% and 2% in 1941 and 1942. GNP of Japan sharply increased, when Japan began Japanese-Chinese war at 1936. However, the peak of GNP was in 1939. This shows Japan had no extra power war against US.
Morimoto, p378-382

Money may be the power of nations now. US is the super power of money with nuke. The table shows aggregate market value at end of Sep 2007.

[1] Kubota, p62-63
[2] Kubota, p121
[3] Kubota, p160
[4] Hinkoku, p100, p102
[5] Sangyou
[6] Tekkou Seisan Setsubi no vintage Henka
[7] Soukou kouhan no kikai-teki seishitsu
[8] Mishima, p121
[9] Japan Iron &; Steel Co.
[10] Morimoto, Hinkoku kyouhei, p25

aboutMe
© 2007-2011 Enoki Sensor All Rights Reserved