Graphic Illuminations: Blueprints and the Transfer of Aviation Knowledge to Japan

• In Event: Transfers of Knowledge in Japan’s Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Ferrocyanide, better known as Prussian blue, arrived in Japan in the 1820s. Almost overnight Prussian blue became one of the dominant colors of Japanese woodblock prints. One hundred years later the same pigment revolutionized Japanese aeronautical engineering.
This presentation explores the role of blueprints in the transfer of aviation knowledge to Japan. Blueprints are ferrocyanide-based copies of technical drawings. They allow the inexpensive yet accurate reproduction of technical designs which made them the perfect medium for communication and knowledge transfer among engineers.
Based on the close analysis of original aeronautical blueprints that came to Japan between 1920 and 1945, I argue that these reproductions cut across language barriers and effectively conveyed the advanced knowledge of a mature technology.
I will further contend that imported blueprints played a crucial role in the training of Japanese aeronautical engineers. Blueprints use a highly symbolic language that is only fully intelligible to the initiated. Therefore, a look at the acquisition, adoption, and dissemination of aeronautical blueprints in Japan allows us to follow and reconstruct the important transition of the Japanese aircraft industry from licensed production to a fully autonomous design.
The brilliant blue of a Hokusai woodblock print never fails to enlighten its beholder. This paper wants to convey a sense of the equally illuminating power of the blueprint. In the words of Tanegashima Tokiyasu, one of the first Japanese aeronautical engineers to see the top-secret blueprint of a German jet engine: “When I saw it, within a moment I could understand it all.”

Author

• Juergen P. Melzer, Yamanashi Gakuin University