Naval Engineering College, Yokosuka, 1910.

Naval Engineering College, Yokosuka, c. 1910. Construction of a French-manged naval arsenal at Yokosuka commenced in 1865 under the Tokugawa bakufu and was completed on the eve of the Meiji Restoration, complemented by technical schools to train Japan’s new modern naval engineers. A naval academy was formally established at Yokosuka in 1874 before being renamed ‘Naval Engineering School’ in 1881.

“When we discuss the all-important aspect of technology in the modernization of Japan, reference to the Dutch or the British connection is usually in order.

“… But there was also a French connection in modern Japan, though perhaps on a more limited scale. One of the most important links between France and Japan was found at Yokosuka, a city located about 60 kilometers south of Tokyo and now well known as the site of a United States Navy base.

“Before the Pacific War, the Yokosuka base housed a large arsenal as well as the technological center of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The origin of the arsenal extends back to the Yokosuka Dockyard, founded at the end of the Tokugawa era and designed and constructed by French naval engineers.

“… An important feature of the dockyard in its early years was its school, where prospective engineers were instructed in basic mathematics and science as well as engineering subjects. Graduates from this school went on to form an important group of modern naval engineers who were instrumental in the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy.”

– Introducing a French Technological System: The Origin and Early History of the Yokosuka Dockyard, by Takehiko Hashimoto, East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, No. 16 (1999)

Naval Engineering College, Yokosuka, 1939, with a commemorative stamp.