Preface
Nearly 50 years ago, my passion for Japan was fired when I stayed in a farmhouse near Ōami (now Ōamishirasato City) in Chiba Prefecture and jogged through sloping hills, and what were, in those days, majestic scenes of rice ripening in paddy fields. Over subsequent years, as the farmlands disappeared under Tōkyō’s urban sprawl, my research, teaching and consultancy took me frequently to Japan where I received appointments at three universities. In my spare time, I either travelled extensively across Japan (in addition to my research) or read books on Japanese history, literature and poetry, including visiting historical sites following in the footsteps of the famous haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). To more fully understand these walking pilgrimages that Bashō undertook I studied Tokugawa history and the main characters behind military, political and economic change during the Edō period (1603–1867).
The genesis of the idea to convert this accumulated Japanese experience into a book on the history of transport and the changes to institutions and organisations was prompted when Emeritus Professor Malcolm Tull, Murdoch University, Australia, drew my attention to the theory of the new institutional economics (NIE) applied to port administration and governance. Malcolm organised an international conference on maritime history held in Perth, Australia, in 2016, so I applied concepts of institutions and organisations to trace the history of port development in the Ōsaka region from ancient times to the beginning of the Meiji restoration (Black and Lee, 2016), extending the narrative to the present (Black, 2021). Using a similar research methodology, chapters on other transport modes and integrated land-use and transport developments were added.
In compiling this manuscript, no one source of funding has been received: instead, grants and support over the years have come from diverse sources. In terms of acknowledging these sources, that, in addition to the specifics of the research projects that I cite in this Preface, I thank the following: The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (two Long-term Fellowships); The Center for North East Asian Studies at Tōhoku University, Sendai (two Visiting Professorships); The Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University (Visiting Professor); Faculty of Engineering, Saitama University (Visiting Professor); the United Nations Development Program on Managing Rapidly Growing Asian Cities; the East Asia Society for Transportation Studies International Collaborative Activity (EASTS-ICA); the Economic Intelligence Unit of The Economist on an institutional analysis of public-private partnerships (PPP) and economic infrastructure in Japan; the UNSW Sydney special studies program for research into international airports and the environment; and Urban Research and Planning (URaP) International, North Strathfield, NSW, Australia, for funding research into: land-use developments at major railway stations in Japan; on tsunami evacuation modelling in Miyagi, Iwate and Kagawa Prefectures; and with social capital funding in Takamatsu, Shikōku. An appointment at Southern Cross University in 2017–2018 as an Adjunct Professor to advise Professor Scott Smith, Dean of Engineering, Science and the Environment on academic links with Japan has given me support to complete aspects of my research through funding from the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan to mentor Australian engineering students in Japan.
In addition, some of the research findings are the result of collaborative efforts with colleagues in Japan and elsewhere over many years. My Japanese friends have translated material from Japanese into English: Dr Masaki Arioka; Ms Michiko Arioka; Dr Ji Myong Lee; and Dr Kaori Shimasaki. Competitive funding (with Professor Danang Parakesit, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia) under the Australian-Indonesian Governance Reform Program (AIGRP), administered through the Crawford School at the Australian National University, allowed me to visit Tōkyō and discuss financing for metro systems and transit-oriented developments. The Planning Research Centre at Sydney University (Professor Ed Blakely, Professor John Renne, Dr Santos Bista), in association with Jackson Teece Architects (Mr David Chesterman, Mr Carlos Frias and Ms Nadira Yapa), undertook a transport-oriented development study for the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority (now Transport for NSW), where, in Japan, the following people provided valuable information: Dr Masafumi Ota, Manager, Project Coordinating Secretariat, Planning and Administration Division, Railway Headquarters, Tōkyū Corporation, Tōkyō; Mr Dongkun Oh, Assistant Manager, Residential Realty Division, Residential (Development) Headquarters, Tōkyū Corporation, Tōkyō.
The propositions of institutions and organisations as a conceptual framework for the history of transport in Japan were tested at the Oxford School of the Environment, Transport Studies Unit during a research seminar held in February 2017 (Black, 2017). I am indebted to Professor Tim Schwanen, Director, for hosting me in 2017, and also to his academic colleagues, Emeritus Professor David Banister and Dr Geoff Dudley, for providing advice on possible conceptual frameworks, and to Dr Heuishil Chang for her research into aspects of contemporary Japanese society. Reginald Fisk, former policy advisor to the NSW Minister for Roads, Duncan Gay, has provided invaluable advice on the general workings of institutions—parliament, government and the bureaucracy. The research on canals was greatly assisted by Tsuyoshi Shimasaki (Minato Museum, Tōyama).
There are so many people to thank, but five Japanese research colleagues must be acknowledged at the outset. First, my oldest academic colleague is Emeritus Professor Kazuaki Miyamoto, now advising Pacific Consultants International, Tōkyō, who kindly wrote the Preface to this book. Secondly, my oldest Japanese research collaborator is Dr Chiaki Kuranami, Padeco, Tōkyō, a doctoral student of mine from the late 1970s, who invited me to stay in his parents’ farmhouse in Chiba Prefecture in 1983. It was in that year when I first met Professor Hideo Nakamura (Tōkyō University)—the leading transport academic at the time—with whom I shared an appointment on the World Conference on Transport Research Society International Steering Committee. Fourthly, Professor Yoshisugu Hayashi (formerly Nagoya University) and now a Senior Research Professor at Chūbu University, and his graduate students at Nagoya University, all have provided a source of intellectual stimulation on urban development and transport issues in Japan. Of more importance in the final checking of this manuscript is the gift that Professor Hayashi gave me: Japan—An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Kodansha, 1993). He said that I knew more about the history of Japan than he did and added that everything I needed to know was in that encyclopedia. His modest admission about the first point was incorrect, but he was certainly right about the latter statement. Fifthly, Dr Masaki Arioka, whom I met when he was the Kumagai Gumi Director of the Sydney Harbor Tunnel construction project and I was undertaking an independent review of the tunnel traffic forecasts for the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment. He is a founder member of the Tōkyō-based NPO Strategic Lifecycle Infrastructure Management (SLIM)—an NPO that I joined to assist with the debris management study following the March 2011 Northeast Japan earthquake and tsunami. Many of Dr Arioka’s senior engineering colleagues, such as Emeritus Professor Katsuhiko Kuroda at Kōbe University (on ports), have accompanied me on fieldtrips and given me insights into many of the construction projects on which they were involved.
Finally, none of this research would have been possible without the continued support of my wife, Professor Deborah Black. She not only pursued a full-time career as a senior academic at UNSW Sydney, and then as Deputy Dean Student Life in the Medical Faculty at the University of Sydney, but she also brought up our children during the periods of my absence in Japan.
On 31 December 2020, my mother, Betty Black, would have been 100 years old, so, in her memory, I dedicate this book to her with affection. She greatly supported me, and encouraged my school and university education, all at the expense of her educational opportunity in the mid-1950s by declining an offer from her then employer to enroll in optometry at London University. When she worked as an executive assistant at Odhams Press, London, prior to the Second World War, she dealt with communications with Japanese publishers so it could be said there has been a family Japanese connection for over 80 years.
References
Black, J. (2017) “Hakanai (儚い): The Transformation of Transport Organisations in Japan from Archaic Times—Searching for Conceptual Frameworks”, Seminar, Transport Studies Unit, Oxford School of the Environment, Oxford University, 14 February 2017, http://www.tsu.ox.ac.uk/events/170214.html
Black, J., and Jimyoung Lee (2016) “Osaka Ports from Ancient Times to the Meiji Restoration: Institutions and Organisations”, in Old Worlds, New Worlds? Emerging Themes in Maritime History, 7th IMEHA International Congress 27 June to 1 July 2016. Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, 57.
Black, J. A. (2021) “Ports and Intermodal Transport—Institutions and Organisations: The Setō Inland Sea, Japan, from Archaic Times to the Present”, World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, 10 (3), 269–303.