Edmund Morel

Edmund Morel

By Takahiro Sakaguchi

Edmund Morel was the memorable British man in Japan. In 1840 he was born in London. He studied applied chemistry and became the civil engineer taught by Mr. Clerk who was the master of the civil engineer. In 1870, he was invited by Japanese government to establish the railway in Japan. He was famous as the first foreign engineer in Japan. In that time only Ookuma Shigenobu and Ito Hirobumi supported his work, but his effort for making the railway impressed Japanese engineers. Also, he invited Japanese engineers to his house to teach them how to construct the railway. Unfortunately, he fell sick and died while the railway was not complete. In 1872, the railroad between Yokohama to Shinagawa was opened. This was Japan’s first railway. After using the train, Japan developed innovatively and speedily. Nowadays, more than 80% of Japanese people use train in a day.

My three discussion questions were “How would you feel if you saw the train for the first time? ”, “What country would you want to go if you had the knowledge of train engineer? ” and “What would you think if there was no train in Japan?”. First question was easily answered - that it makes us surprised and excited - because my classmates think it was the innovation of Japanese society and economy. For the second question, most classmates thought Asian countries because they thought Asian countries had not developed and there were no trains when Morel came to Japan. For the third question they answered that it might be hard to commute to KUIS [our university – Ed] and it would take a lot of time to arrive somewhere we wanted to go.

I feel that through the presentation and discussion it can be understood that history is connected to our current life. If Edmund hadn't come to Japan, Japan would not have been developed like the comfortable life. Unfortunately, some presentations were a little bit hard to understand. The person who has the presentation needs to take care of the classmates and how to understand it for every classmate equally. It makes the discussion better. Also, making discussion question is sometimes difficult for me because other students didn’t understand discussion question even I made a nice discussion question. It made me frustrated.

Finally, Morel made Japan develop more speedily and innovatively by making the railway. Time is changing, skill also is changing.

Reference

Edmund Morel, Yokohama Association for International communications and Exchanges, 1999, regards from http://www.city.yokohama.jp/me/yoke/theyoke/no.91/morel.html