Railway Archives

Railway Archives: The Founding Records of Japan's Modern Transportation Revolution

Tucked inside the climate-controlled archives of The Railway Museum in Saitama lies a treasure that, at first glance, seems modest — ninety-one bound volumes of yellowed paper, brushed with formal Meiji-era handwriting. Yet these unassuming books hold something extraordinary: the original administrative records of Japan's first national railway, written between 1870 and 1893. Designated an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government in 2003, the Tetsudō Komonjo (Railway Archives) is the foundational paper trail of how a country in the midst of dramatic modernization built, by hand and by foot, the iron network that would carry it into the twentieth century. For visitors curious about how nations transform themselves, these volumes offer a rare and deeply human window into that process.

The Story Behind the Volumes

In March 1870, only two years after the Meiji Restoration overturned centuries of feudal rule, the new Japanese government created a small office called the Tetsudō-gakari (Railway Section) within the Ministries of Civil Affairs and Finance. It was a tiny administrative seed planted in fertile soil. Within a generation, that seed would grow into a railway agency overseeing tracks that crossed mountains, tunnels that pierced volcanic rock, and stations that became the centerpieces of cities. The Railway Archives are the official records of this transformation, from that first humble office through its successors — the Railway Bureau (Tetsudō-ryō), the Ministry of Public Works railway division, the Railway Bureau under the Cabinet, and finally the Railway Agency (Tetsudōchō), which was abolished in 1893.

The ninety-one surviving volumes are divided into four groups corresponding to those agency changes. The earliest set, the Tetsudō-ryō Jimubo, documents the foundational years from 1870 to 1877 in thirty-four volumes. The Kōbushō Kiroku covers the years when the Ministry of Public Works oversaw the railways, in thirty-nine volumes. A further set of records belongs to the Railway Bureau period from 1885 to 1890, and eleven volumes survive from the brief Railway Agency era that followed. Several volumes were lost to the fires of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, and the entire collection was evacuated to a track maintenance depot in Ōtsuki during the Second World War to protect it from air raids. That so much survives at all is, in itself, a small miracle.

Why These Documents Matter

When the Agency for Cultural Affairs designated the Railway Archives an Important Cultural Property on May 29, 2003, it recognized something more than antiquarian charm. These records are the primary administrative evidence of how a non-Western country, with no prior tradition of railway engineering, navigated the practical work of importing, adapting, and ultimately mastering one of the nineteenth century's most transformative technologies. They show, in granular detail, the budgets approved, the land negotiated, the British equipment purchased, the regulations drafted, the uniforms designed, the wages set — every administrative thread that, woven together, became a national rail network.

For historians of modernization, of empire, of technology transfer, and of bureaucratic administration, these volumes are simply irreplaceable. There is no other source that captures, with this kind of completeness, the first quarter-century of Japanese railway policy from the perspective of those who actually shaped it. The documents are also written in a transitional bureaucratic Japanese that bridges Edo-period official prose and modern administrative writing, making them valuable for linguists and palaeographers as well.

What the Pages Contain

Open these archives and you find a remarkable variety of human concerns. There are surveying reports for the Shimbashi-Yokohama line that opened in 1872 and the Osaka-Kobe line that followed in 1874. There are land purchase negotiations with farmers and shrine officials whose fields and groves would soon be cut by steel rails. There are detailed shipping manifests for the British locomotives, rails, signals, and tools that arrived at Yokohama Harbor in wooden crates. There are the very first railway operational regulations, the Tetsudō-ryō Kisha Un'yu Kitei, which laid down the rules of how Japanese trains would run.

Other pages are surprisingly intimate. There are sketches for the uniforms of Japan's earliest railway employees, drafts of timetables and ticket prices, and personnel records of the British engineers and the young Japanese trainees who would inherit their work. Among the most historically rich materials are documents tied to the Imperial Saloon Car No. 1, which made its debut on the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe line opening, and records of the Tokyo Horse Tramway, the direct ancestor of Tokyo's later streetcar system. The Hankai Railway records — predecessor of today's Nankai Electric Railway, the oldest surviving private rail company in Japan — are also preserved here, along with extensive files on the Nippon Railway Company, the largest private railway operator before nationalization.

How to Experience Them at the Railway Museum

The Railway Archives themselves, being fragile primary source documents, are not on permanent open display, and selected volumes are typically shown only during special exhibitions or rotated as part of the History Station's curated displays. However, simply visiting the Railway Museum allows you to encounter the world that these archives describe in three dimensions. Locomotive No. 1, the British-built tank engine imported in 1872 for the Shimbashi-Yokohama line — itself an Important Cultural Property — stands proudly in the Rolling Stock Station. The Imperial Saloon Car No. 1, also designated as a national treasure of railway heritage, is preserved here. The reconstructed atmosphere of the original Shimbashi Station gives visitors a sense of what those first passengers actually saw, smelled, and heard.

The History Station, in particular, contextualizes the archives by tracing the chronology of Japanese railways through artifacts, photographs, and interactive displays. For travelers who want a deeper understanding before or after their visit, the museum's library and archive division — home to the Railway Archives and roughly 670,000 other railway-related materials — offers reference services to researchers by appointment. Even without seeing every volume, walking the museum's halls with the knowledge that these foundational records are quietly held within the same building lends every exhibit a richer historical resonance.

Around the Museum: Making a Day of It

The Railway Museum sits in Ōmiya, a district of Saitama City often called Japan's "railway town" because of its long history as a hub for both train operations and rolling stock maintenance. The museum is a one-minute walk from Tetsudō-Hakubutsukan Station on the New Shuttle line, itself just a three-minute ride from Ōmiya Station — a major hub on the JR network and the southernmost terminus of several Shinkansen lines.

Within walking distance of Ōmiya Station are several attractions worth combining with your museum visit. Hikawa Shrine, the head shrine of more than 280 Hikawa shrines in eastern Japan and the source of the place name "Ōmiya" (literally "great shrine"), boasts a two-kilometer cedar-lined approach considered one of the most majestic in the Kantō region. The Ōmiya Bonsai Village, founded in 1925, is a quiet enclave of nurseries and the world's first public museum dedicated to the art of bonsai. For travelers continuing on, Ōmiya is less than half an hour from central Tokyo by train, making the Railway Museum an easy and memorable half-day trip.