Higashi ajia no naka no mantetsu (The South Manchuria Railway in East Asia)

In the past few years, Lim Chaisung has published major works on the history of railways. In this ambitious book, he takes on explaining the railway management of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR), the sprawling enterprise at the centre of East Asian railway history. However, Lim’s book is not simply an SMR case study. He also explains SMR’s involvement in the process of turning the Empire of Japan into a distinctive railway empire. As a result, this book is spurring discussions among scholars of imperial history and colonial economic history, as well as among railway historians. The following paragraphs will introduce the book’s chapters, along with a little commentary. The book’s preface, ‘Railway empire and the SMR’, begins with a discussion of the framing of prewar Japan as a railway empire. It also recounts how SMR has been portrayed as emblematic of Japan’s absorption of Western technology and as an intermediary in transferring technology to its colonies. SMR overcame its technological disadvantage against its European counterparts and is credited with exceeding the transport capacity of Japan’s domestic railways. While noting the value of viewing SMR as a case study of Japanese settler colonialism and colonial management, Lim explains how the history of SMR is important to the history of the metropole as well.