Honma’s MIT Education and its Legacies in Japan

Honma's Schoolwork

In the fall of 1870, Honma joined MIT as a regular undergraduate student and eventually chose to major in Course I, Civil Engineering, with a focus on railroad engineering. This choice was an eminently understandable one, since railroad was critical not only to the industrialization of both United States and Japan but also in the very origins of MIT. MIT’s founder, William Barton Rogers, and his two brothers were all involved with America’s emerging railroad network as part of their training and education as scientists (Becoming MIT, 15-17).

The Honma papers include several examples of Honma’s class work at MIT, including the Institute’s famous “problem sets” in various technical fields. Perhaps the most striking example of this is “Problem 17,” dated January 11, 1874. Completed during Honma’s senior year at MIT, the first page shows a diagram of a bridge and descriptions of its various features. In the following pages, we can see both Honma’s calculations as well as corrections appended by the instructor in red ink.

Intriguingly, however, the Honma papers also include one history essay, in which Honma discusses the various causes of the American Revolution. The timing of its writing was possibly not entirely coincidental, as the centenary celebration of the Declaration of Independence was approaching. Whatever the reason for its writing, Honma’s essay hints at the holistic nature of his MIT education.

Honma’s studies at MIT culminated in his 1874 thesis, entitled "Design of an Iron Warren Girder Railroad Bridge.” The forty-one-page document includes a diagram of Honma’s design of a railroad bridge.

Problem 17, page 1

Problem 17, Honma's class work

American Revolution essay, page 1

American Revolution essay, Honma's class work

Design of an Iron Warren Girder Railroad Bridge, diagram

Design of an Iron Warren Girder Railroad Bridge, Honma's thesis

Student Insight: 
A key component of Honma’s education was learning to analyze the size and stresses of struts in a railroad bridge design. Railway bridges must meet stringent safety standards to ensure the protection of passengers, cargo, and the infrastructure itself. Analyzing the size and stresses of their components ensures that they can withstand the loads they will encounter during the bridge's lifespan, including the weight of trains, dynamic forces, wind loads, and temperature variations. In one of Honma’s MIT problem sets, he quantifies the shape of the struts in terms of cross-sectional area, length, inside, and outside diameter, and uses these metrics to estimate the weight of the struts. The weight of the bridge gives insight into how much stress the bottom components (chords) need to withstand. Honma’s solid background in this flavor of analysis was the basis for his MIT thesis. In his thesis, he applied the same size and stress calculations to a modern (for the time) Warren girder design for a railroad bridge. The Warren girder is a design where the struts form adjacent equilateral triangles...
-- Tarushii Goel, SB 2026
Usui 3rd Bridge

Usui 3rd Bridge

Photograph by MIT student Shih-Peng Huang, SB 2025

Honma's Career in Japan

In 1874, Honma returned to Japan following his graduation from MIT. Interestingly, his trip home ended with a ride on Japan’s very first railroad that linked the port city of Yokohama and Shinbashi station in Tokyo. Following several years of working for the Kyoto prefectural government as a civil engineer, Honma joined the Railway Bureau within the Japanese government’s Ministry of Public Works in 1879. The ministry was in charge of building the Imperial Government Railway (kan’ei tetsudō) throughout Japan, and Honma went on to supervise the construction of major railroads around the country.

What was perhaps his crowning work as a government railroad engineer began in 1889, when he directed the establishment of the railroad between Yokokawa (Gunma prefecture) and Karuizawa (Nagano prefecture) across the famous Usui pass, a steep mountain pass on the ancient Nakasendō highway. After several years of struggling to find a viable railroad path across the pass, the railroad was finally completed between 1891 and 1892, using bridges and tunnels on the path selected by Honma as well as the newly imported Abt rack railway system (invented by Carl Abt, a Swiss locomotive engineer). While rail service across the pass was abolished in 1997, its bridges and tunnels have been preserved as heritage sites.

Diary from Honma's Trip to Hokkaido

Diary from Honma's trip to Hokkaido, 1897

Honma resigned from the Railway Bureau in 1894 and subsequently served as the chief engineer and executive at several private railroad companies, including the Sōbu Railway, Hokuetsu Railway, and Tōbu Railway. While the Honma papers do not contain any documents from Honma’s work on the Usui pass, they do include some documents from his time in the private sector. This includes a journal that Honma recorded in August 1897 during his business trips to various parts of Japan, including the northern island of Hokkaido. While the entries are mostly prosaic and professional in nature, it is striking to see that the diary was mostly written in English, decades after Honma has returned to Japan.

Eiichiro Honma retired in 1910 and moved to Karuizawa, near the Usui pass, after suffering a series of illnesses. He passed away in Tokyo in 1927.