South Manchuria Railway

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South Manchurian Railway
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The South Manchuria Railway Company, Ltd.
Native name
南満州鉄道株式会社
Minami-Manshū Tetsudō kabushiki gaisha
Company typePublic KK
Founded26 November 1906
FounderGovernment of Japan
Defunctafter the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945
Headquarters
Dairen, SMR Railway Zone
,

Xinjing, Manchukuo (after 1931)
Key people
Gotō Shinpei (first president)
OwnerGovernment of Japan (50%)
South Manchuria Railway
Chinese name
Hanyu Pinyin
Nánmǎnzhōu Tiědào
Japanese nameKanji南満州鉄道HiraganaみなみまんしゅうてつどうKatakanaミナミマンシュウテツドウ
Rail network of Manchukuo in 1945
Share of the South Manchuria Railway Co. Ltd., issued 1920
Schedule Page of South Manchuria Railway (Mantetsu) Train Service in May 1920
A train of the South Manchuria Railway

The South Manchuria Railway (

kyujitai: 南滿洲鐵道株式會社, Minamimanshū Tetsudō Kabushikigaisha), Mantetsu (Japanese: 満鉄, romanized: Mantetsu) or Mantie (simplified Chinese: 满铁; traditional Chinese: 滿鐵; pinyin: Mǎntiě) for short, was a large National Policy Company [ja] of the Empire of Japan whose primary function was the operation of railways on the Dalian–Fengtian (Mukden)–Changchun (called Xinjing from 1931 to 1945) corridor in northeastern China
, as well as on several branch lines.

In 1905, after Russia's defeat in the

Chosen Government Railway in Japanese-occupied Korea
.

However, it was also involved in nearly every aspect of the economic, cultural and political life of Manchuria,[1] from power generation to agricultural research, for which reason it was often referred to as "Japan's East India Company in China". Nisshō Inoue, the founder of the interwar Japanese far-right militant organization Ketsumeidan (血盟団, League of Blood), was employed by Mantetsu from 1909 to 1920.

In 1945, the

People's Republic of China in 1949. Fengtian has been called Shenyang since 1945, and the line from there to Dalian is today part of the Shenda Railway from Changchun to Dalian, whilst the Shenyang–Changchun section is now part of the Jingha Railway
; the branch lines have also been part of China Railway since then.

History

Locomotive for Asia Express
Xinjing (Changchun) Railway Station
Dining car of South Manchuria Railway
Japanese Government Railways map of Hokkaido, Chosen, Karahuto, and Manchukuo

The main line from Changchun to Port Arthur, as Luishun was called under Russian rule, was built between 1898 and 1903 by the Russians as the southern branch of their

Imperial Russia in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War
.

Following the Japanese victory over

Kuanchengzi (寬城子) in modern-day Changchun. The northernmost Japanese-controlled station was the Changchun railway station.[2][3]

Under the authorization of

Gotō Shimpei, formerly the Japanese governor of Taiwan, was appointed the first president of the company, and the headquarters was established in Tokyo before relocated to Dalian in 1907.[5]

One of the first tasks of the new company was to change the railway gauge. The rail line was originally built according to the gauge of 5 ft (1,524 mm), during the war it had been

standard gauge,[6]
presumably with an eye to connecting the system to other railways of China.

In 1907, an agreement was reached between the Japanese and Russian authorities about connecting the Japanese South Manchuria Railway with the line to the north, which remained in the hands of Russian China Far East Railway. According to the agreement, Russian gauge tracks would continue from the "Russian" Kuanchengzi Station to the "Japanese"

standard gauge) would continue from the Changchun Station to the Kuancheng Station.[3]

By the end of 1907, the company employed 9,000 Japanese and 4,000 Chinese. By 1910, those numbers had increased to 35,000 and 25,000 respectively.

Dunkirk, NY. A visiting executive from the Erie Railroad was quite impressed with the arrangement, and described South Manchurian Railway ca. 1913 as "the only railroad in the whole world that is like our American railroads (and they are, fairly speaking, the best)".[6]

Promotional postcard from the 1920s

Mantetsu quickly expanded the system inherited from Russia to staggering proportions, building

agricultural research into development of soybean farming. Land under cultivation expanded 70% in 20 years.[7]

From 1916, Mantestu began to spin off a number of subsidiary companies, including

sugar mills, electrical power plants, shale oil plants and chemical plants.[8]

On 31 July 1917, the management of the

Sangsambong in Korea. Mantetsu called this line the North Chosen Line
, and it remained under Mantetsu control until 1945.

Company assets rose from 163 million yen in 1908 to over a billion yen in 1930. Mantetsu was by far the largest corporation in Japan, and also its most profitable, averaging rates of return from 25 to 45 percent per year.[7] During the 1920s, Mantetsu provided for over a quarter of the Japanese government's tax revenues.[9]

Over 75% of Mantetsu's income was generated by its freight business, with the key to profitability coming from soybean exports, both to Japan proper and to Europe. Soybean production increased exponentially with increasing demand for soy oil, and for soy meal for use in

animal feed. By 1927, half of the world's supply of soybean was from Manchuria and the efforts by Mantetsu to expand production and to ship to export ports was a classic example of an extractive colonial economy dependent on a single product.[9]

In 1931, the

Mukden Incident occurred, where the Japanese military faked an attack on the railway by Chinese partisans as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.[10][11][12]

Advertisement in 1937

Mantetsu was also charged with a government-like role in managing the rail transportation system after the formation of

public parks, and creative modern architecture far in advance of what could be found in Japan itself. These things were possible due to Mantetsu's tremendous profitability, and its political power to seize property and silence opposition and dissent at will through its political connections to the military and totalitarian national leadership.[14]

In 1934, Mantetsu inaugurated the "Asia Express", a high speed train from Dalian to the Manchukuo capital of Xinjing (Changchun). Reaching a top speed of 134 km/h (83 mph), the "Asia Express" was the fastest scheduled train in Asia at the time.

Changchun remained the break of gauge point between the Russian and standard gauges in the 1930s,[15] until the Chinese Eastern railway itself was bought by Manchukuo and converted to the standard gauge in the mid-1930s.

In 1936, the company owned 466 locomotives, 554 coaches and 8134 goods wagons.[16]

In 1945, the

People's Republic of China government later merged the northern half of the South Manchuria Railway's mainline (the Renkyō Line) with other railway lines to form the present Beijing–Harbin railway
.

Railway dining car service

In conjunction with magazine advertising by Japan Tourist Bureau (JTB), the railway attempted to create a unique food culture in Manchukuo. They offered a variety of special cuisine such as Yamato beef steak,

sorghum vulgare (kaoliang) confectionery in dining cars along the line and in the railway-operated Yamato Hotel. There was little uptake in the cuisine however after the fall of Manchukuo.[17]

Network

Mantetsu presidents

Headquarters of South Manchuria Railway, Dalian
Cover Page of South Manchuria Railway (Mantetsu) Train Service Timetable in May 1920
Name From To
1
Shinpei Goto
 13 November 1906 14 July 1908
2
Yoshikoto Nakamura
 19 December 1908 18 December 1913
3 Ryutaro Nomura 19 December 1913 15 July 1914
4 Yujiro Nakamura 15 July 1914 31 July 1917
5 Shimbei Kunisawa 31 July 1917 12 April 1919
6 Ryutaro Nomura 12 April 1919 31 May 1921
7
Senkichiro Hayakawa
 31 May 1921 14 October 1922
8 Takeji Kawamura 24 October 1922 22 June 1924
9 Banichiro Yasuhiro 22 June 1924 19 July 1927
10
Jōtaro Yamamoto
 19 July 1927 14 August 1929
11 Mitsugu Sengoku 14 August 1929 13 June 1931
12
Yasuya Uchida
 13 June 1931 6 July 1932
13 Hakutaro Hayashi 26 July 1932 2 August 1935
14 Yōsuke Matsuoka 2 August 1935 24 March 1939
15 Takuichi Ohmura 24 March 1939 14 July 1943
16 Naoto Kobiyama 14 July 1943 11 April 1945
17 Motoki Yamazaki 5 May 1945 30 September 1945

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Kinney, Henry W., Manchuria Today, Dairen, December 1930
  2. ^ "Changchun II- Le chemin de fer de Changchun" [Changchun II- The Changchun Railway]. CCTV (in French). 28 June 2005.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-113-11167-8
    .
  4. ^ Young, Japan's Total Empire, pp 25
  5. ^ a b Coox, Nomonhan pp.6
  6. ^ a b Luis Jackson, Industrial Commissioner of the Erie Railroad. "Rambles in Japan and China". In Railway and Locomotive Engineering, vol. 26 (March 1913), pp. 91-92
  7. ^ a b Coox, Nomonhan pp.21
  8. ^ Young, Japan's Total Empire, pp32
  9. ^ a b Young, Japan's Total Empire, pp 31-32
  10. ISBN 978-0-521-22357-7
  11. ISBN 978-0-674-01941-6
    ; Harvard University Press
  12. ISBN 978-0-520-04557-6
  13. ^ Coox, Nomonhan, pp 1078
  14. ^ Young, Japan's Total Empire, pp.250
  15. ^ Yesterday and To-day, The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 8 (April 1, 1932.)
  16. ^ World Survey of Foreign Railways. Transportation Division, Bureau of foreign and domestic commerce, Washington D.C. 1936. p. 98.
  17. ISSN 2436-0678
    . Retrieved October 7, 2021.

Further reading

External links

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