My UNESCO WHS List: Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining

25 February, 2019

Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining

country. Japan

year of inscription. 2015

criteria. Cultural

This WHS bear testimony to the rapid industrialisation of Japan from the mid-19th century CE to the early-20th century CE, through the iron and steel, ship-building, and coal industries. It is evidence of what is regarded as the first non-Western nation to have undergone Western industrialisation, while adapting the technology to local social norms, needs, and materials. The twenty-three component sites in eight areas are spread across the prefectures of Fukuoka, Iwate, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Saga, Shizuoka, and Yamaguchi.

Controversy arose over the listing of this WHS. South Korea raised objections as Korean and Chinese labour were forced to work under harsh conditions at some of these sites in Japan’s war efforts before and during World War II (1937 – 45). While the period of the Meiji Industrial Revolution did not coincide with that of the forced labour, South Korea alleged that the two events, as part of Japan’s empire-building attempts in the early-20th century CE, were inextricably linked. Criticisms of Japanese attempt to list the WHS also came from China and North Korea for similar reasons. South Korea eventually withdrew its objections when Japan pledged to acknowledge and commemorate the use of conscripted labour in the relevant sites, and the WHS was listed in 2015; however, in 2018, UNESCO censured Japan for its unsatisfactory efforts in keeping its pledge to do so.

what. WHS visited (December 2017, June 2023)