William Kinnimond Burton

William Kinnimond Burton

By Akari Soneta

Summary about my focus person

Today, we, Japanese can get clean and safe water from taps, and Japan is proud of their high quality water system. We may think it is natural thing but let’s think about the past time. Until the Meiji period, Japan’s water system was in bad condition and Japan was suffered from several serious diseases, especially cholera. This is a disease that can lead to rapid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance and death in some cases. So, Meiji government decided to invite a sanitary engineer, William Kinnimond Burton from Scotland. He worked at Tokyo Imperial University as an unofficial professor to teach sanitary engineering and developed some superior engineers. Also, he had an important role in health office at Department of the Interior to build a base of Japan’s water system. These bases are the origin of today’s public health engineering or environment engineering. We can say that he is a great person who made Japan’s water system.

Furthermore, Burton had another achievement. He was active as a photographer. His grandfather was a famous photographer in his hometown. Because of his grandfather’s hobby, Burton also had a detailed knowledge of photography. So, he used his knowledge and his skills to take photos of Japan’s various scenes. He took the photos of beautiful views such as scenes of Hakone or Mt. Fuji, Japanese costumes or daily life of Meiji period. Not only did he take pictures of these usual things, but also many photos of times when Japan was attacked by some disasters. For example, in 1891, the great earthquake called Noubi-Jishin (濃尾地震) occurred in Gifu prefecture. This disaster was really massive, and it destroyed many buildings that were built in Meiji period, so Japanese government set up the institution to research the situation after earthquake struck. Burton joined the institution and left a lot of photos.


Summary about my discussion

I prepared some discussion questions, and they were “Do you think he had done great work for Japan? Which part?”, “What kind of historical photos would you like to see?” and “If you could go to Meiji period, what kind of photos would you take?” In the first discussion question, “Do you think he had done great work for Japan? Which part?” we all agreed he had contributed to Japan a lot. The reason is he made the base of Japan’s water system and brought clean and safe water to Japan. Then, for the second question, “What kind of historical photos would you like to see?” one of us answered they want to see the photo of lower-class daily life because they would like to see another aspect of Japan. In the final question, “If you could go to Meiji period, what kind of photo would you take?” a member said that she would want to take a photo of the countryside's situation because she has seen only the scenes of developed and modernized Japan.


Reflection

When I look back on my presentation, I have some reflections. First, I didn't prepare some detailed slides, so it was little hard for my audiences to understand deeply. Also, I needed to learn more about Burton. When the audience asked me some questions about him, I couldn't say the right answers because my preparation was not enough. Finally, I didn't make so much eye contact because I’m shy. But, when I give a presentation, it is important thing to attract my audiences and to check the audiences’ understanding. So, having these reflections, I noticed that I should have more detailed slides to give more clear information for my audiences and I need to research more about my focus person to answer the questions from other students. Also, I have to make eye contact with my audiences. I hope I will be able to make presentation better with these reflections.


Reference

Japan Association of Drainage Environment (2006,1,1). The activity related with W.K. Burton. http://www.jca.apc.org/jade/barton/ba150.htm

Wikipedia(2014,5,13). William Kinnimond Burton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kinnimond_Burton

Jearr MarieMahieu (2004). The great earthquake in Japan. http://www.npobook.join-us.jp/report.vol_31/index.html

William Kinninmond Burton

By Shiomi Mano

William Kinninmond Burton is known as an engineer and a photographer. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1856. His father, John Hill Burton was a lawyer and an eminent amateur historian. His mother was the daughter of Dr Cosmo Innes who was one of Scotland’s foremost amateur photographers. Also, Burton had a relationship with Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of “Sherlock Holmes”. In 1973, he was apprenticed for five years to Messrs Brown Brothers who were Hydraulic and Mechanical Engineers of Rosebank Ironworks in Edinburgh. He left the firm in 1879 to enter partnership with his uncle in London to design water systems. In 1881, he became Resident Engineer to the London Sanitary Protection Association. 

In 1887, at the age of 31, Burton was invited to Japan as a foreign government adviser to assume the post of first professor sanitary engineering at Tokyo Imperial University. At that time, Japan was suffering from several serious epidemics, especially cholera. Cholera was regarded as powerful disease and compared to a tiger. It means a tiger is ferocious and people did not have any solutions at all.  

To solve this problem, Burton was invited to Japan. As soon as he arrived in Japan, he worked as a consulting engineer in Health and Medical Bureau. He was committed to providing plans for the sanitation systems and water supply of many towns and cities. Burton thought pure water was necessary to prevent cholera because in Hiroshima, people drank water which was not clean water from the river. Then, people got diarrhea and nausea. Therefore, he prepared plans for modern water plans for many Japanese cities like Hiroshima, Okayama, Sendai, Nagoya, and Kobe. Burton invented hand pump to get pure water. In Hiroshima, citizens had a ceremony to congratulate the accomplishment of water works. Also there is still pure water bottle with Burton’s picture on the label today in Shimonoseki city. He also gave a lecture of sanitary engineering in Tokyo Imperial University as a special teacher and inspired famous sanitary engineers in the future.

Burton was famous for the designer of Ryounkaku, the first western-style skyscraper in Japan. Ryounkaku was located in Asakusa and opened in 1890.

Ryounkaku was designed to attract working men and their families to visit Asakusa and became a landmark of Asakusa after the opening in 1890. It was a 225-foot (69m) tower, twelve stories and made from red bricks. The shape was octagonal and the two electric elevators served the first to the eight floor with a ten-person capacity each. These were invented by Ichisuke Fujioka, who is a founder of Toshiba, and were the first elevators ever installed in Japan. At the time, Ryounkaku was the tallest building in Tokyo. Ryounkaku was known widely as it appeared in the literary of contemporary authors such as Tanizaki Junichiro, Ishikawa Takuboku and Kitahara Hakushu. Although it survived the earthquake in 1884, it was seriously damaged and finally, was pulled down in The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923. 

Burton was also noted as a photographer as his grandfather was lover of photographry. He actually visited the disaster areas of Eruption of Bandai-mountain (1888) and Noubi Earthquake (1891) immediately after the earthquake and took pictures. Then, he published the photo book “The Earthquake of Japan” (1891) and “The volcano of Japan”.

In 1896, Burton visited Taiwan to develop the sanitation there. At the time, Taiwan was the territory of Japan. However, he got epidemic disease and passed away on 14 August 1899 in Tokyo of a fever. He was only 43 years old. He devoted his life to development of Japan.


References

W K Burton, Engineer extraordinaire” (December 2001), attributed December 5, 2013:
http://www.thumper.com.uk/JSS/Dec2001/page-4.htm

William Kinninmond Burton / Edinburgh South West” (January 24, 2013), attributed January 16, 2014:
http://www.edinburghsouthwest.com/william-kinninmond-burton/

Rounkaku-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia” attributed January 16, 2014: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dunkaku

W.K.Burton-Wikipedia, the encyclopedia” attributed December 5, 2013: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._K._Burton