Among the records of the moment the plan for the Yokosuka ironworks began to move there is a passage in which his friend Kurimoto Joun did not even know the word “dock”. The twelfth month of 1864, a street corner in Yokohama. After praising the finish of the repair of the Shōkaku Maru at some length, what Oguri brought up “as casually as that” was this.
It began with machinery going to rust
What Oguri put to him was, for the moment, the disposal of some machinery. Some years before, a complete set of steam-powered iron- and shipbuilding machinery had been presented to the shogunate by the Saga domain. The lord of that domain, Nabeshima Kansō, had probably bought it from the Netherlands meaning to build a shipyard at home; but the cost of putting it up was enormous and there was no one who could take charge of it, so in his difficulty he had presented it to the shogunate. And then Oguri went on as follows.
But the shogunate too, some years ago, meant to build a dock and an ironworks with this machinery; the men in charge were appointed and the survey was even done, and yet it was dropped, again because there was no one with the expert knowledge. To my mind, though, to leave a great quantity of machinery to rust makes nothing of old Kansō's good will.
So: might the French engineer who had repaired the Shōkaku Maru — Dorōtoru, he thought the name was — be put to a little more trouble over it? Oguri's proposal was as concrete as that. His listener, though, was in quite another position. By Kurimoto's own notes, “I had not even heard the word dock before, let alone known anything about an ironworks”.
Not knowing, and at the legation that same night
Oguri had by then looked closely at the shipyards of the eastern United States and of the British colonies. With the embassy to the United States he had walked through the navy yard at Washington and seen for himself the plant for lifting a ship out of the water to repair her bottom and her engines. To Kurimoto, who had never been to America, the very premise of the talk was unknown ground.
Kurimoto's response was quick all the same. “Well, I wonder. Why not go to the French legation this very evening and talk it over? If you like, I will go with you.” Oguri was delighted, decided at once to stay that night at Kanagawa, had rooms booked, and the two called at the legation together. On the same day that he was told a word he did not know, he had carried the matter as far as putting it to the French.
“Not a thing for the likes of us”
The minister Roches's answer was cautious: he could not say whether Dorōtoru was equal to so large a work; he would ask Admiral Jaurès. The admiral's opinion was that Dorōtoru was still young and could manage repairs but not the building of a dock, and that when Jinsorai, the first engineer officer, was back from Shanghai he would have him examine the machinery.
Jinsorai's finding disappointed Oguri.
This machinery is small and weak in horsepower; it will do small repairs to ironwork, but it is nothing like enough to build a dock and take on large work. And a great undertaking such as building a dock and turning out warships is not a thing for the likes of us at all, so for that you should engage a proper expert. This machinery, set up somewhere near Yokohama and used for small repairs, would, I think, be very convenient.
The machinery in hand was not enough; an expert would have to be engaged from abroad. The conclusion ruled out the first idea of making do with what lay to hand. That the Yokohama ironworks came to be built first, as a works for “small repairs”, with people trained there before the main works was raised at Yokosuka, starts from this one report.
Oguri presses the case
Disappointed, Oguri set about persuading Kurimoto again.
Japan has warships already, so breakdowns will happen all the time. A place to repair them is therefore indispensable. More than that, from now on we must increase our ships. Yet whether we buy second-hand ships abroad as we have done, or order new ones, if we have no place to repair them here, then once a ship breaks down it is of no use at all. To carry her abroad at every breakdown is no small matter in the cost of the passage alone. So should we not by all means call good workmen from abroad, choose a suitable place at a port nearby, and settle on building a dock?
This is not high-spirited argument but a matter of cost. A ship once bought will certainly break; once broken it needs a place to be mended; without a place to mend it the ship that was bought cannot be used — pressing it in that order shows Oguri's character as a man of accounts. Kurimoto was moved by it.
The passage tends to be told as a joke about a man who did not know a word, but what the record conveys is rather the opposite. He admitted that he did not know, went with Oguri to the legation the same day, and thereafter became the strongest supporter of the plan and carried the negotiations with France forward with him. The division of work between the two begins with this conversation in the twelfth month.
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987 (from Kurimoto Joun's notes)
→ The man who saw the Washington Navy Yard ／ Why France was chosen ／ The Yokohama ironworks, built first ／ Kurimoto Joun, the man