PEOPLE

――Could you tell us more in details?

The phrase "iron is the nation" originated in the so-called Blood and Iron speech delivered by Minister President Bismarck of Prussia in 1862 to the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives in order to achieve the unification of German territories: "The nation will be redeemed by iron and blood. Repeated discussions in the Diet will produce nothing. Unification will be achieved through blood and iron, in other words, through force of arms.” Although these words may suggest that iron = military might = military = nation, the modernization of a nation, or the establishment of a modern state, is closely intertwined with the advancement of iron manufacturing technology and its products.

At the end of the 18th century, wrought iron (puddled iron) appeared in England. Wrought iron brought about an epoch-making event in machine building, construction, and civil engineering, and was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. Thus, from the end of the 18th century through the majority of the 19th century, Great Britain prospered as a great empire.

In the late 19th century, the converter process and open-hearth process were developed, ushering in the era of molten steel. Molten steel enabled the mass production of homogeneous steel. The converter process was invented by an Englishman named Bessemer in 1856. At that time, converters were suitable for the manufacture of railway rails, and moreover, the United States had abundant iron ore suitable for producing molten steel in Bessemer converter. During this period of western exploration, the Bessemer converters provided the large quantity of rails needed for the construction of the transcontinental railway, eventually eliminating the frontier and contributing greatly to the creation of national unity in the vast United States.

In 1877, an Englishman named S.G. Thomas (SIdney Gilchrist Thomas) succeeded in manufacturing a basic converter and open-hearth Furnace. This made it possible to remove phosphorous from the steelmaking process and to produce molten steel in large quantities using the abundant iron ore (Minette ore) from Belgium, Luxembourg and the Franco-German border region (the Ruhr area and the Saarland). Germany quickly caught up with Britain in terms of molten steel production and gained the upper hand. Steel products made from molten steel had better mechanical properties and durability than that made from wrought iron, and the iron and steel consumption per km of railway construction was halved. The improvement of logistics, as represented by the railway network, above all gave the country a sense of unity and increased the size of the market, leading to a spiral expansion of the national economy. In Europe, it was the emerging Germany and Belgium that enjoyed this effect. The advent of the basic converter and open-hearth furnace may have been an improvement-level event in terms of technology, but it is no exaggeration to say that it was a textbook case of innovation as defined by Schumpeter in the sense that it changed the balance of power in the European world. As a result of the development of basic converter and open hearth, which made it possible to remove phosphorous, wrought iron was limited to chains, rivets and other materials and forced off the stage.

　Iron and steel making required coal, railway and ship transport required steel for its production and infrastructure, transport consumed large quantities of coal, and coal mining required both steel and the development of a transport network of ships and railways. These industrial linkages were complementary, and the creation of such complementary relationships was a condition for the realization of national modernization.

――Was that so? So, the modernization of a nation cannot be separated from the progress of iron and steel making, logistics such as railways and ships, and coal mining.

I believe that the phrase "iron is the nation" has a different meaning in Japan, a country far removed from the West, where iron and steel production has advanced.

In Japan, the Imperial Kamaishi Steel Works aimed to produce wrought iron and its products, while the Imperial Yawata Steel Works aimed to produce molten steel and steel products, which are steel products. In Western countries, the accumulation of iron and steel manufacturing operations made it possible to break down the three steps required to produce steel products—iron making, steel making and rolling—and commercialize each process separately, whereas in Japan, an underdeveloped country, it was impossible to produce pig iron using blast furnaces, molten steel using converters and open-hearth furnaces, and various rolling mills to manufacture steel products for different uses unless they were set up all at once to achieve the final goal of steel production. This required huge amounts of money, training of human resources and risk-taking, making it impossible to commercialize at the private level.

In addition, the initial policy was to procure all iron ore domestically, but as a result, the Daye iron ore from Hubei Province in China was chosen as the main ore. Negotiations with the Hubei provincial government, the provision of funds for mining the ore, and preventing the use of Western capital for Chinese iron ore required the full backing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance, so not only did we have to build the steelworks, but we also had to utilize government functions for its operation. To give some specific details, the Imperial Yawata Steel Works initially planned to use iron ore from Akadani Mine in Niigata Prefecture and Kamaishi Mine in Iwate Prefecture as raw materials, but the Chinese side proposed to sell ore from the Daye Iron Mine on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River near Wuhan in exchange for Japanese coal. The proposal was sensitively responded to by Masunosuke Odagiri, the Shanghai consul who was said to be Jutaro Komura’s right-hand man. Just at that time, a German mining engineer wrote in a German journal: "There is a large amount of iron ore in Daye, China. We ought to use this iron ore to build a steel mill with German capital. In order to seize the Oriental market, it would be good to invest money in China now and build a steel mill in Shanghai or thereabouts." When Japan learnt of this, it decided to secure iron ore from Daye, as such a move would blow up the project of the Imperial Steel Works that it was now trying to build. Thanks to the quick work of Consul Odagiri, a contract for the purchase of Daye iron ore was concluded in 1899. The contract included the very important clause that the Qing would not sell Daye ore to foreign-capitalized steel mills within Qing China.

――So, the iron and steel industry had to have state involved in order for it to work?

Yes. The Imperial Yawata Steel Works belonged to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. There has been a lot of historical research on the relationship with other state institutions, such as the division of labour with the naval arsenal, but as far as I know, there has not been much in-depth research on the relationship between other ministries and the Imperial Yawata Steel Works. The Ministry of the Navy, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Railways, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Education were big consumers, and they had the full backing of the Ministry of Finance in terms of funding, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others in terms of procuring raw materials from overseas and understanding the steel situation. However, I do not think there are explicit studies on the details.

――Although, it seems that people today could learn from history.

For example, the CO2 problem. As is well known, the steel industry is said to be in danger because of the CO2 problem. The other day, there was an article in the newspaper about Nippon Steel Corporation introducing technological reforms to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 and aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050.

The ironmaking method prior to the blast furnace process reduced iron ore in solid form, which emitted carbon dioxide, but in principle the scale of emissions was quite small. The principles of this ancient ironmaking process are still used in small-scale ironmaking today as the direct reduction process, and attention is now being paid to the possibility of its advancement. In fact, if one traces the history of iron and steel making methods, one will find that it is a history that involved many trials and errors.

In a way, there is a sense of bodies lay in heaps (it is a Japanese metaphor implying a project went wrong and caused damage to many people involved), but I have some hope that some things will come out of there and return to life. Moreover, although it may sound like howling wolves (also a Japanese metaphor for cowards making empty threats and blaming others behind their backs) , I believe that there should also be discussions on CO2 reduction from the perspectives of 'the history of the universe and the birth of the siderophile element,' 'life forms on Earth and iron,' and 'iron as a magnetic substance and modern civilization.'