Photo/Illutration The Nirayama Reverberatory Furnaces are well-preserved iron smelting facilities on the Izu Peninsula. These are the only surviving reverberatory furnaces actually used to melt cast iron in the world. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

This time I will present the longest title of this World Heritage Sites in Japan series. Ready for a mouthful?

Here it is: "Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining," and today, we visit the Nirayama Reverberatory Furnaces in Izunokuni, Shizuoka Prefecture.

Now, with the titles out of the way, what exactly are we talking about?

In the latter part of the 19th century, known as the Bakumatsu and Meiji eras, Japan rapidly left behind its feudal samurai sword-swinging days and embraced modernization.

The Meiji emperor (reigning 1867-1912) said something to the effect of, “I’m not crazy about getting colonized by Western powers, so we need to get on with the times and advance technologically.”

Consequently, Japan experienced an industrial revolution, a pioneering achievement of transferring industrialization from Western countries to a non-Western nation.

In 2015, UNESCO added 23 locations in Japan under the abovementioned category to its World Heritage registry. Others are in Fukuoka, Iwate, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Saga and Yamaguchi prefectures.

I’m going to come clean — I had to look up the meaning of reverberatory furnace. It’s a type of furnace (a hot closed space) where the material (usually metal) undergoing treatment is heated indirectly by flames directed toward a fireproof brick roof and walls.

After the Opium War of 1840 and the arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s Black Ships in 1853, Japan rightfully felt the need to strengthen its military defense capabilities.

Egawa Hidetatsu (1801-1855), a prominent governor in charge of bolstering Japanese coastal defenses, proposed creating Western-style cannons on the Izu Peninsula, where the American Navy first landed.

With engineers dispatched from Saga, the smelting plant for casting iron at Nirayama produced numerous cannons that were taken to Edo.

Egawa constructed artillery batteries off Shinagawa, near today’s Tokyo Odaiba area, and when he died, his son took over and completed the projects.

I visited Nirayama on a sunny weekday and almost had the whole industrial monument and modern museum to myself. Visitors can see and touch the 15.7-meter-high structure, and guides will explain the little nooks and crannies of the impressive, beautifully designed site.

About 2.5 kilometers away is the Egawa Residence, where we can learn about the Egawa clan, which is mighty impressive.

Hidetatsu (also known as Tarozaemon and Tanan), the 36th-generation Egawa, was not only a respected governor who designed and built the Nirayama reverberatory furnace, he was the first Japanese on record to have baked bread in 1842.

Nirayama’s industrial evolution, at its best!

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the March 17 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan," which depicts various sites of outstanding universal value across the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. 

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