One of my favorite aspects of this channel is the diversity in topics. Ironically, the historical algorithm brought me, but the silicon manufacturing/technology and company lore kept me around. Great work, sir. You are one of the last remaining bright spots on the Internet.
I'm old enough to remember when Japan imported shiploads of scrap steel - Richmond, California was near where I grew up and back in the 60s you'd see trainloads of steel getting loaded on the ships there...
The embargo of steel and iron scrap in 1940, as one of a number of economic restrictions over Imperial Japan’s continued violent occupation of China, was one of the precursors to Japan’s entry into WW2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Control_Act
when I was in engineering school (90's) Japan was the only country (and only one firm) able to forge Pressure Vessels for Nuclear Power reactors. They need to hold 150 Bar and prob 2x for fail safe (another reason for gen 4/5 reactors). There was a 7-10 year waiting period to get one of these delivered (I was told back then). Would be an interesting part of Japan steel story
@d.jensen5153 censorship(which I totally detest), constant poor quality content(akin to stuff from something like "tiktok") instead of high quality documentaries like these ones, and don't get me started on constant ad bombardment
@lsp6032 given how much I watch YT I've found premium a cost I haven't noticed, compared to the time I've not lost being forced to watch unskippable 15 second ads that don't actually start running the time down until 3 seconds in.
One of my sets of British grandparents lived in Japan in the inter-war years. As WWII loomed and steel was needed for ships, my grandfather -who worked for the Foreign Office, was certainly reporting some of what is in this video to London. If he had only watched this video it would have saved time. :)
Asianometry you nailed this video's timing. Veritisium and NIPPON STEEL is about to buy out US Largest and Oldest Steel Company U.S. Steel founded by JP Morgan.
As an American who has lived in Japan for about 10 years of my life and speaks pretty good Japanese, due to fkn Kanji, Japanese subtle secrecy and misdirection, and even in the 2020s vastly paper records, I find it amazing when people have such multi sourced histories on Japanese niche sectors in English. As a primary source researcher, its hard as fk especially when you realize the occasional misdirection that requires "re"search. I admit, I know my industry in high detail but ive hears a number of American professionals state about their specialty that they are one of a very very small number of experts and their knowledge would die with them. Japanese as a language is super diverse by region, built to allow obscurification, they actually have lifetime employment to this day allowing superior corporate secrecy compared to the ever mercenary western corporations, and their employees are all about that discrete activity as seen by the numerous precious metals importing scandals over the last 10 years. in other words, theyre crafty as fk and good about it. I love them for it, but it does make researching hard as hell.
I work at a US machine shop and we source all of our steel from Japan. I asked my coworker why and he said that they have the best quality, so take that for what it's worth.
Well your co worker is badly informed, Germany and Sweeden hold the accolade. no doubt japan is able to produce good quality steel, and are amongst the best in the world. But they are not nor have they ever been the best. Many people mis appropriate the fact that japanese sword makers fold their steel many times over relative to other manufacturesr. This is not in the search for the highest quality. It is done out of necessity due to levels of impurities in their iron ore sources. If you comparethe steel og european swords from the 1400s with a contemporanious japanese sword, the european steel is superiour and this higher level is achieved with less effort. This difference has preserved to the present day. a great deal of work has been done on different nations armour naval armour plate from WW2. Germany and the UK are the best, followed by American then the japanese. top 4 is no small achievment, especially when you factor in the defeciencies of the raw material. but the finest steel absolutely not. at least its not chinese steel that is dog shit. but if you want cutting steel, then you buy Sandvik. if you are located any where near a forestry area of the states, speak with the loggers and they will know what im on about
@@jukeseyable In term of metallurgy, Russia is actually the number one in term of quality. The US is extremely reliant on Russia for Titanium and other high-end metals. Germany, Sweden, France are the second as well as China is somewhat comparable but those metals in China are exclusive for military use not for commercial. Japan's metals have been quite crappy in recent years due to rising costs to cut down the quality of metals. Japan's metals are mostly used towards construction and automobiles. I don't like Russia but we can't deny that we rely on them for a lot of things from nuclear fuels to high-end metals.
@@zurinarctus1329 Ah ok great thanks, i stand corrected, and im happy every day can and should be a school day. Just to clarify, regarding chineses steel, here in the uk it is available in the form of tools, but from what your saying, they are able to produce better steel than ive found, and with regret on occasion bought, but, thye are for military applications able to produce better quality steel. another anecdotal comments. My wifes family has connections to the comercial ship building industry in spain. many years ago they havd signficant build tonnage been outsourced to china, but this resulted in to many quality issues, (I'm not sure if this was related to the quality of the steel been used, or just shoddy construction, but its another narative that fed into my narative of chinas inability to produce top of the line steel
@@jukeseyable China has two types of economy which Russia also shares. The visible one and invisible one. The invisible one is the military (PLA) economy that employs the highest level of materials to win wars. The visible one is the commercial, global economy where Chinese steel giants are crushing everyone with their overcapacity of mediocre metals. It's not that China is unable to produce higher quality of steel but it's not economically feasible. China's tactics involve of crushing all competitors as fast as possible, so quality control will be neglected. Once China controls the market which they do now, then their quality control will improve. In recent years, China's steel and metals have vastly outcompete in quality which Koreans and Japanese admit defeat. Recently, Nippon Steel attempts a desperate bid of buying US Steel because they fear that Chinese steel giants will crush them next, so Nippon Steel looks to exit Japan entirely and shift their operation into North America to survive. Unfortunately for Nippon Steel, they face the ugly politics of unions, so the bid will likely fail.
The best book on the economic post WWII recovery that I've read is: "Planning for Change: Industrial Policy and Japanese Economic Development 1945-1990: by James Vestal. The reason for rebuilding the steel industry after 1945 was that men and capacity in the sector still survived the war, so there was something to build on. Also, steel was needed for rebuilding Japan's infrastructure. The post WWII land reform help boost agricultural production by 50% (this is talked about in several Asianometry videos). This released foreign currency that would have been spent on food imports to go to raw material imports, like Iron Ore (Japan still had some limited coal mining capacity) and chemicals that went towards phosphates (fertilizers) that further increased agricultural yields. Unmentioned, but very important, was the Bretton Woods system set up following WWII. The U.S. would advocate a free trade policy internationally and the U.S. Navy would police the seas. This meant that Japan could easily and cheaply buy raw materials such as coal and iron ore on the international market at the international market price. It also meant that Japan could sell any excess steel on the international market. Industrial policy also helped Japan modernize its industry. Industrial policy provided government guaranteed capital loans for steel and other targeted industries. This encouraged banks invest in more steel capacity - creating hyper competition inside Japan and competitiveness internationally. By the early 1960s Japan's steel making capacity was many times greater than it had been, say 1940, or 1943. (From memory, so knock on wood, Japan's capacity was 7 million tons, Britain's was 11 million, Germany and USSR were 15 million, and the U.S. was something like 150 million tons and by 1960 Japan's capacity was well over 21 million tons).
1.4435 but with lower ferrite content than most standards call for can be quite the nuisance to find. Making steel is still an art and there are many factors that play into the final product. Great stuff!
@@artemplatov1982 There are two uploads of the same documentary one is "Japan 1960" by Nuclear Vault, and the other is "Japan" by PublicResourceOrg. It's fascinating as the whole steel mill is built on ocean area recovered through dredging and landfilling.
What a coincidence! I live in beautiful Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. It was once home to one of the cores of the Japanese steel industry which conquered the world. Sadly, that industry is largely gone now. With the city year by year losing people to other cities it is sad to hear my Japanese friends say the city lost some of its identity when the steel industry shrank. However, as with anywhere else in Japan, Kitakyushu is wonderful and I highly suggest people at least visit it!
Kokura got very lucky. It was at the top of the initial target list for the atomic bomb. It was the first alternate target on the Hiroshima mission, Nagasaki being the second alternat target. Kokura was the primary target of the second mission, Nagasaki being the alternate. The weather reconnaissance plane called clear on the Kokura target, an hour ahead of the run. There was a botched rendezvous between the weapon delivery plane and a support plane that delayed the arrival at Kokura by another half hour. By that time the smoke and cloud pattern had changed direction, obscuring the target. They made three bombing passes over Kokura but couldn't get a visual on the target. The alternate, Nagasaki was the last important industrial city in the south, on the way back to base. They weren't going to take "Fat Man" back to base on Okinawa no matter what visibility over Nagasaki was.
@@JohnThacker-qi4gp My OP reply got removed. It's orchestrated by the U$ State Dept ...not coincidental . Damage control at the objection against Japanese takeover of American steel mill .
I have a cheap but well made supermarket cook's knife that is equal to my Global knife if not better because it has one piece seamless handle. A knife is only good as its sharpening stone.
NAMBU TEKKI (南部鉄器) was already famous in Edo Period. It actually has its origins in the Heian Period, so it's not a coincidence that steel production was successful in the TOHOKU region after Meiji Restoration. If you go deep into Japanese cultural history, the EMISHI swords had really good quality and impacted how Japanese samurai swords were shaped. The horse-fighting style of the EMISHI shaped weapons and tactics of the Samurai era. Before the HEIAN period, swords found in Japan are mostly 直刀・直剣 (i.e. straight-shaped blades). The curve commonly observed in later Samurai swords are influences from the EMISHI swords. The 前九年 and 後三年 Wars in the 11th century is what influenced the change in weapon styles. And you'll see this style of weapons and tactics common during the war against the Mongols in the 13th century. It's commonly understood that today's swordsmiths cannot replicate the high-quality of Japanese swords forged in the Kamakura and Muromachi Era. Even with all the advances in science and technology, we still cannot figure out why 12th-16th centuries swords were better made than today.
Today's steel is better than it was back then, but the processes are all automated, making things at a much faster pace just to stay competitive. Nuance in the manual processes of hammering and heat treating aren't readily revealed to an adversarial competitor, either. That being said, alloy steels used in many industrial processes are also guarded secrets, so what you think you may know isn't always the limit.
Interesting thing about the Yawata steel works is that the Gutehoffnungshütte company in germany build it, they loved to have barreled roofs on their buildings at that time, and even build those barreled roofs in japan. Nowadays some of their buildings in their home town of Oberhausen, germany, are still left and have the exact same roofs and steel structures as they do in Yawata. A true show of how globalized the world at that time already was to build the same structure by the same people all around the world to serve the same purpose.
Alfred Kahn, an American, designed most Soviet factories in the 1930s. Stalin was building up industry while the Great Depression had left Kahn with little to do in the West. Most Soviet made weapons in WW2 were built in factories Kahn had laid out, to include the T-34 factory in Stalingrad.
A lot of the samurai sword makers turn to woodworking chisels and saws as something to make. Some of these saw makers now have a history going back centuries
The sakura / cherry blossom picture you display at 7:40 is actually from a Yawata-shi which is near Kyoto. It's a different place from the Yawata-shi in (part of Kitakyushu) in Fukuoka.
鉧 would be made from radicals of mother 母 and metal 金; 玉鋼 is “jeweled steel” aka high carbon and tensile strength. Not sure where you got “mother of steel” but now am curious!
oh I'm glad you made this video! I saw the news that Nippon Steel bought out the Pittsburgh company, but I was wondering how a Japanese company managed to do that when they're not really known for their steel
Can't wait for part 2! I wish you'd make a video on why the Japanese were so good at electronics and came to dominate that sector from the 1980s onwards.
These days I've seen in some documentaries the economic process that happened between the two east and west Germany in the 1990s Would be cool to have an video talking about what happened :)
Nitchitsu's Noguchi of early 1940s Hamhung achieved muon catalyzed fusion rocket propulsion for gilders and airships since rail transit was unfeasible for what was Imperial Japan so later Alvarez was credited for muon catalyzed fusion only after United Nations peace keepers returned from ruins so Robert K Wilcox's book portrayed Noguchi as Dr. Strangelove while Barbara Molony's book was rather equivocal.
WordPerfect was an incredible piece of software that few realized the full use of as it was often merely used as a word processor. But it could do so much more, especially with creating databases on the fly in an intuitive way. Yeah, maybe just field substitutions across multiple documents and macros but also a GUI building software that was nearly its own operating system. I'm wondering how that fits into this story.
What I find interesting about Japanese industries is that they always seem to cooperate with the government's requests, even when they don't seem to be favorable to them
It would be nice to see one about the chinese steel industry. They basically modernized in a very short period of time. With the great leap forward, millions died and so many people worked in the field, farms weren't maintained plus, they produced millions of tons of very cheap steel.
Swords were always more status symbol. Just like being good sword duelist was status symbol. In wars on big battlefields there was many other much more useful weapons.
Japan is a primary example of the false narrative of "comparative advantage" used by the West to discourage developing countries from pursuing industrialization. While comparative advantage is real, the specific advantage may vary, is not innate and can be created. So, often Western Nations will tell third world Nations that they should focus on agriculture and forget about manufacturing because they have no capital, or past experience, or natural resource. Japan, just like taiwan, singapore, and South korea, broke into the critical area of heavy industry, steel manufacturing, even though all of the prerequisite materials had to be imported and remained cost-competitive by diligently building up their capital, knowledge-based, and efficiency. While, the West will often deny it today, at the start of the industrialization of the East Asian tigers, there were predictions of dismal failure. Today, We are told that Koreans are especially intelligent, but that was not their position in 1961 at the start of the heavy chemical and industrial drive. Park Chung he said if he had listened to the experts "he would have done nothing".
Glad you're ok, good to know that Taiwan took it's earthquake proofing seriously and so few were injured, though my heart goes out to the families that were not so lucky. Thanks for your great content!
I love old Japanes customs when need to spend several generations just getting the raw material. Then, in order to use it, the grandmaster must don his traditional smock of many colors which is meant YeYungCarryThisShitForfreelol" before breaking for tea.
Until around 1980, Norh Korea had a higher per-capita GDP than South Korea and the reason was the heavy industry Japan built on the north of the peninsula - closer to the mines. The reason why the Peninsula came out divided after WWII was also the Japanese ocupation and not, as is popularly misunderstood, because of the communism/capitalism division. To learn more look for interviews and lectures by historian Bruce Cummings on UA-cam.
You left at one source of iron ore for Japan in the 1930s and that was Australia... However this created a great deal of controversy in Australia in 1938 ... This is because in November 1938, the members of the waterside workers Federation of Australia refused to load pig iron onto the steamship SS Dalfram that was heading to Japan. The ship was chartered by Mitsui to supply the Japan Steel Works Ltd in Kobe, a part of a contract for 300,000 tons of pig-iron. The Japan Steel Works was producing military materials for the undeclared war in China. The Australian Council of Trade Unions in October 1937 called for a boycott of Japanese goods and an embargo on the export of iron to Japan in response to the Japanese aggression.[3][4] Trade unions and many workers argued that the pig iron would be used in bombs and munitions in the invasion of China and articulated that they may also be used against Australia..... ......The arrival of the British tramp steamer Dalfram, which berthed at No. 4 jetty in Port Kembla on 15 November 1938, ignited the dispute. When the nature of the cargo and its destination were confirmed,[12] a walk-off eventuated around 11am..... .... Attorney General Robert Menzies first threatened use of the Transport Workers Act on 28 November 1938. He accused the union of dictating foreign policy, and argued that the elected government had the sole right to decide goods to be traded and what relationships were to be established with foreign powers.... It was during the Dalfram dispute that the title "Pig Iron Bob" was coined in reference to the then Attorney General Robert Menzies. Local union official Ted Roach claimed[16] that the epithet was first used by Mrs. Gwendoline Croft, a member of the local women's relief committee.[5] It was later picked up by the Rev. Bill Hobbin, a former Methodist minister, and Stan Moran, the well-known wharfie and communist Domain orator.... ....On 21 January 1939 after 10 weeks and two days on strike the waterside workers at Port Kembla decided to load the pig iron "under protest".[2] The Lyons government policy of appeasement of Japanese military aggression and opposition to the trade union bans on trade with Japan were not entirely unanimous. External Affairs minister Billy Hughes appears to have attempted to undermine the government policy according to at least one historian, who conjectures this may have been due to Hughes' past links with the Waterside Workers' Federation, being the first President of the union in 1902. The day after the workers at Port Kembla capitulated Billy Hughes delivered a vitriolic speech attacking Japanese militarism and its threat to Australia.[18] On 24 January, Jim Healy met with Government representatives and received an unofficial assurance that no more pig-iron would be shipped to Japan, although it is debated to whether this was actually the case or that some shipments of scrap metal and pig iron were made.[2] Melbourne waterside workers refused to load scrap iron on to a German ship in May 1938.[2] The dispute brought together the Illawarra labour movement and elements of Sydney's Chinese immigrant community and contributed in a small way to the breakdown of the White Australia policy. '' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Dalfram_dispute "
We need a video about the Japanese motorcycle industry
Bart channel on YT has lots of great videos on this.
Second this
Yes please
YES
And Japanese girls.. oh yea, gimme some of that Asian you know what… 😋 😚 😛
One of my favorite aspects of this channel is the diversity in topics. Ironically, the historical algorithm brought me, but the silicon manufacturing/technology and company lore kept me around.
Great work, sir. You are one of the last remaining bright spots on the Internet.
Wikipedia had a edit war to hide Yamato sinking itself.
I'm old enough to remember when Japan imported shiploads of scrap steel - Richmond, California was near where I grew up and back in the 60s you'd see trainloads of steel getting loaded on the ships there...
Japan got preferential treatment economically ...as the American "poster boy" for "Capitalism" in Asia .
Well it worked.@@peekaboopeekaboo1165
The embargo of steel and iron scrap in 1940, as one of a number of economic restrictions over Imperial Japan’s continued violent occupation of China, was one of the precursors to Japan’s entry into WW2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Control_Act
W boomer
Scrap iron/steel is a primary input to all steelmaking - indeed it is the most recycled material of all.
as a factorio player, i can confirm that you never have enough fucking steel
Steel is easy. Chips however...
when I was in engineering school (90's) Japan was the only country (and only one firm) able to forge Pressure Vessels for Nuclear Power reactors. They need to hold 150 Bar and prob 2x for fail safe (another reason for gen 4/5 reactors). There was a 7-10 year waiting period to get one of these delivered (I was told back then). Would be an interesting part of Japan steel story
Yes, that's right. As a side note, not all nuclear reactors are pressurized.
how did they do it? did they cast it or welded it?
@@AthosRacI'm rock hard
@@NickIggler1969 hell yeah brother
@@raumfahreturschutze yum yum yum
UA-cam's contractual content enshittification has not yet shutdown the efforts from the bests.
Amen
What content enshittification is that?
@d.jensen5153 censorship(which I totally detest), constant poor quality content(akin to stuff from something like "tiktok") instead of high quality documentaries like these ones, and don't get me started on constant ad bombardment
@@lsp6032i get ads nearly every 6 watch minutes and before and near the end of videos now
@lsp6032 given how much I watch YT I've found premium a cost I haven't noticed, compared to the time I've not lost being forced to watch unskippable 15 second ads that don't actually start running the time down until 3 seconds in.
One of my sets of British grandparents lived in Japan in the inter-war years. As WWII loomed and steel was needed for ships, my grandfather -who worked for the Foreign Office, was certainly reporting some of what is in this video to London. If he had only watched this video it would have saved time. :)
Were your grandparents at the embassy in Tokyo?
The Japanese government was blocking UA-camSan during the 1930's.
Asianometry you nailed this video's timing. Veritisium and NIPPON STEEL is about to buy out US Largest and Oldest Steel Company U.S. Steel founded by JP Morgan.
they are making the same mistake NKK made
@@psychiatry-is-eugenicswhat’s that mistake?
As an American who has lived in Japan for about 10 years of my life and speaks pretty good Japanese, due to fkn Kanji, Japanese subtle secrecy and misdirection, and even in the 2020s vastly paper records, I find it amazing when people have such multi sourced histories on Japanese niche sectors in English. As a primary source researcher, its hard as fk especially when you realize the occasional misdirection that requires "re"search. I admit, I know my industry in high detail but ive hears a number of American professionals state about their specialty that they are one of a very very small number of experts and their knowledge would die with them.
Japanese as a language is super diverse by region, built to allow obscurification, they actually have lifetime employment to this day allowing superior corporate secrecy compared to the ever mercenary western corporations, and their employees are all about that discrete activity as seen by the numerous precious metals importing scandals over the last 10 years. in other words, theyre crafty as fk and good about it. I love them for it, but it does make researching hard as hell.
I work at a US machine shop and we source all of our steel from Japan. I asked my coworker why and he said that they have the best quality, so take that for what it's worth.
Well your co worker is badly informed, Germany and Sweeden hold the accolade. no doubt japan is able to produce good quality steel, and are amongst the best in the world. But they are not nor have they ever been the best. Many people mis appropriate the fact that japanese sword makers fold their steel many times over relative to other manufacturesr. This is not in the search for the highest quality. It is done out of necessity due to levels of impurities in their iron ore sources. If you comparethe steel og european swords from the 1400s with a contemporanious japanese sword, the european steel is superiour and this higher level is achieved with less effort. This difference has preserved to the present day. a great deal of work has been done on different nations armour naval armour plate from WW2. Germany and the UK are the best, followed by American then the japanese. top 4 is no small achievment, especially when you factor in the defeciencies of the raw material. but the finest steel absolutely not. at least its not chinese steel that is dog shit. but if you want cutting steel, then you buy Sandvik. if you are located any where near a forestry area of the states, speak with the loggers and they will know what im on about
@@jukeseyable In term of metallurgy, Russia is actually the number one in term of quality. The US is extremely reliant on Russia for Titanium and other high-end metals. Germany, Sweden, France are the second as well as China is somewhat comparable but those metals in China are exclusive for military use not for commercial. Japan's metals have been quite crappy in recent years due to rising costs to cut down the quality of metals. Japan's metals are mostly used towards construction and automobiles. I don't like Russia but we can't deny that we rely on them for a lot of things from nuclear fuels to high-end metals.
@@zurinarctus1329 Ah ok great thanks, i stand corrected, and im happy every day can and should be a school day. Just to clarify, regarding chineses steel, here in the uk it is available in the form of tools, but from what your saying, they are able to produce better steel than ive found, and with regret on occasion bought, but, thye are for military applications able to produce better quality steel. another anecdotal comments. My wifes family has connections to the comercial ship building industry in spain. many years ago they havd signficant build tonnage been outsourced to china, but this resulted in to many quality issues, (I'm not sure if this was related to the quality of the steel been used, or just shoddy construction, but its another narative that fed into my narative of chinas inability to produce top of the line steel
@@jukeseyable China has two types of economy which Russia also shares. The visible one and invisible one. The invisible one is the military (PLA) economy that employs the highest level of materials to win wars. The visible one is the commercial, global economy where Chinese steel giants are crushing everyone with their overcapacity of mediocre metals. It's not that China is unable to produce higher quality of steel but it's not economically feasible. China's tactics involve of crushing all competitors as fast as possible, so quality control will be neglected. Once China controls the market which they do now, then their quality control will improve. In recent years, China's steel and metals have vastly outcompete in quality which Koreans and Japanese admit defeat. Recently, Nippon Steel attempts a desperate bid of buying US Steel because they fear that Chinese steel giants will crush them next, so Nippon Steel looks to exit Japan entirely and shift their operation into North America to survive. Unfortunately for Nippon Steel, they face the ugly politics of unions, so the bid will likely fail.
Asianometry is a bad ass dude !!! Keep it up, great channel just keeps growing slowly !
Please make a documentary about how ocean liners were assembled in the 1910s and 1920s.
I think it'll be riveting!
😂
The best book on the economic post WWII recovery that I've read is: "Planning for Change: Industrial Policy and Japanese Economic Development 1945-1990: by James Vestal. The reason for rebuilding the steel industry after 1945 was that men and capacity in the sector still survived the war, so there was something to build on. Also, steel was needed for rebuilding Japan's infrastructure.
The post WWII land reform help boost agricultural production by 50% (this is talked about in several Asianometry videos). This released foreign currency that would have been spent on food imports to go to raw material imports, like Iron Ore (Japan still had some limited coal mining capacity) and chemicals that went towards phosphates (fertilizers) that further increased agricultural yields.
Unmentioned, but very important, was the Bretton Woods system set up following WWII. The U.S. would advocate a free trade policy internationally and the U.S. Navy would police the seas. This meant that Japan could easily and cheaply buy raw materials such as coal and iron ore on the international market at the international market price. It also meant that Japan could sell any excess steel on the international market. Industrial policy also helped Japan modernize its industry. Industrial policy provided government guaranteed capital loans for steel and other targeted industries. This encouraged banks invest in more steel capacity - creating hyper competition inside Japan and competitiveness internationally. By the early 1960s Japan's steel making capacity was many times greater than it had been, say 1940, or 1943. (From memory, so knock on wood, Japan's capacity was 7 million tons, Britain's was 11 million, Germany and USSR were 15 million, and the U.S. was something like 150 million tons and by 1960 Japan's capacity was well over 21 million tons).
1.4435 but with lower ferrite content than most standards call for can be quite the nuisance to find.
Making steel is still an art and there are many factors that play into the final product.
Great stuff!
It will be great to see part 2
Interesting, informative and well done. Thank you for all the work and then sharing.
I have been looking for years on a video about early Japanese industries, this video is so informative my appetite has been quenched
I can't wait to see your video on part two of this. I don't know what else to say I really want to see it lol!
As a welder, I'm extremely excited for this episode!
I used to live in Kokura in Kitakyushu, and the story about "Nagasaki could have been us" was commonly told.
There is a great half hour documentary on UA-cam from 1960 of the construction of the Yawata Iron and Steel Works.
Link?? Can't find it
@@artemplatov1982 There are two uploads of the same documentary one is "Japan 1960" by Nuclear Vault, and the other is "Japan" by PublicResourceOrg. It's fascinating as the whole steel mill is built on ocean area recovered through dredging and landfilling.
@@gregorymalchuk272
Environmental Protection or Ecological Preservation ...😁
@@artemplatov1982 ua-cam.com/video/onqhgCqVARw/v-deo.html
Just watched it! What a gem. Just amazing! The organization, the physical grunt, the machines. Big engineering just cannot be beat!
Good documentary. Looking forward to part two.
What a coincidence! I live in beautiful Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. It was once home to one of the cores of the Japanese steel industry which conquered the world. Sadly, that industry is largely gone now. With the city year by year losing people to other cities it is sad to hear my Japanese friends say the city lost some of its identity when the steel industry shrank. However, as with anywhere else in Japan, Kitakyushu is wonderful and I highly suggest people at least visit it!
Kokura got very lucky. It was at the top of the initial target list for the atomic bomb. It was the first alternate target on the Hiroshima mission, Nagasaki being the second alternat target. Kokura was the primary target of the second mission, Nagasaki being the alternate. The weather reconnaissance plane called clear on the Kokura target, an hour ahead of the run. There was a botched rendezvous between the weapon delivery plane and a support plane that delayed the arrival at Kokura by another half hour. By that time the smoke and cloud pattern had changed direction, obscuring the target. They made three bombing passes over Kokura but couldn't get a visual on the target. The alternate, Nagasaki was the last important industrial city in the south, on the way back to base. They weren't going to take "Fat Man" back to base on Okinawa no matter what visibility over Nagasaki was.
Wow, Veritasium also published a video on japanese steel recently. Always nice to have multiple videos on some topic in short succession.
Either he got dereked or he made this video because of the Veritasium one.
@@falsemcnuggethope more like nippon steel has been in the news alot the last couple months because of their proposed acquisition of US Steel
Orchestrated by the U$ State Dept ...to make Japan the good guys in regards to the American steel mill .
I don't tire of videos about the steel process 🍻 It's my bread and butter
@@JohnThacker-qi4gp
My OP reply got removed.
It's orchestrated by the U$ State Dept ...not coincidental .
Damage control at the objection against Japanese takeover of American steel mill .
This was very good, this was great. It really gives the average person an idea of how things were run in a country trying to catch up
Love Japanese steel, have a set of Japanese knives in my kitchen and they cut better than anything I’ve ever used
I have a cheap but well made supermarket cook's knife that is equal to my Global knife if not better because it has one piece seamless handle. A knife is only good as its sharpening stone.
I HAVE EXAM AND I AM WATCHING THIS
your brain is trying to protect you from boredom and painful things. best to power through it
I know how you feel, I have a 200 word essay due in 2 weeks
@@YouzACoopa all the best brother
NAMBU TEKKI (南部鉄器) was already famous in Edo Period. It actually has its origins in the Heian Period, so it's not a coincidence that steel production was successful in the TOHOKU region after Meiji Restoration.
If you go deep into Japanese cultural history, the EMISHI swords had really good quality and impacted how Japanese samurai swords were shaped. The horse-fighting style of the EMISHI shaped weapons and tactics of the Samurai era. Before the HEIAN period, swords found in Japan are mostly 直刀・直剣 (i.e. straight-shaped blades). The curve commonly observed in later Samurai swords are influences from the EMISHI swords. The 前九年 and 後三年 Wars in the 11th century is what influenced the change in weapon styles. And you'll see this style of weapons and tactics common during the war against the Mongols in the 13th century.
It's commonly understood that today's swordsmiths cannot replicate the high-quality of Japanese swords forged in the Kamakura and Muromachi Era. Even with all the advances in science and technology, we still cannot figure out why 12th-16th centuries swords were better made than today.
Today's steel is better than it was back then, but the processes are all automated, making things at a much faster pace just to stay competitive. Nuance in the manual processes of hammering and heat treating aren't readily revealed to an adversarial competitor, either. That being said, alloy steels used in many industrial processes are also guarded secrets, so what you think you may know isn't always the limit.
I don't know what is this but I haven't gotten a video from this channel in some time and so I'm watching this
Interesting thing about the Yawata steel works is that the Gutehoffnungshütte company in germany build it, they loved to have barreled roofs on their buildings at that time, and even build those barreled roofs in japan. Nowadays some of their buildings in their home town of Oberhausen, germany, are still left and have the exact same roofs and steel structures as they do in Yawata. A true show of how globalized the world at that time already was to build the same structure by the same people all around the world to serve the same purpose.
Nice pfp
@@Nelo390 thanks
Alfred Kahn, an American, designed most Soviet factories in the 1930s. Stalin was building up industry while the Great Depression had left Kahn with little to do in the West. Most Soviet made weapons in WW2 were built in factories Kahn had laid out, to include the T-34 factory in Stalingrad.
Damn, a video about Japan just as I prepare for my flight home from Japan
3:57 really dropped the ball in not editing Friends star Matthew Perry's face on that photo
Argentina’s steel was only viable due to massive tariffs. Perón wanted to play market via autarky.
13:07 "for some unknown reason" lol
A lot of the samurai sword makers turn to woodworking chisels and saws as something to make. Some of these saw makers now have a history going back centuries
The sakura / cherry blossom picture you display at 7:40 is actually from a Yawata-shi which is near Kyoto. It's a different place from the Yawata-shi in (part of Kitakyushu) in Fukuoka.
Magnificent education video on the Japanese steel industry. Thank you 🙏
excited for part 2!
Look forward to part 2
Wake up babe Asianometry just dropped a new video
I'm surprised the video doesn't talk about Japans steel plants in Manchuria
Big oversight on his part
鉧 would be made from radicals of mother 母 and metal 金; 玉鋼 is “jeweled steel” aka high carbon and tensile strength. Not sure where you got “mother of steel” but now am curious!
oh I'm glad you made this video! I saw the news that Nippon Steel bought out the Pittsburgh company, but I was wondering how a Japanese company managed to do that when they're not really known for their steel
Can't wait for part 2! I wish you'd make a video on why the Japanese were so good at electronics and came to dominate that sector from the 1980s onwards.
You have a very impressive channel, est regards from Peru
Please, do a video about swiss pharmaceutical industry.
Greetings from Brazil.
When mathew perry came to Japan in th3 1850s i heard he became great friends with the locals
13:15 What happened???
From the iron sands swords to the Yamato, amazing.
The Chinese overlords don't like me watching this....yay for VPN
Lol, I highly doubt your Chinese or in china, and the Chinese have already won the steel game, so they don't care if you watch or not.
This is a win. Inform yourself. History should be accessible.
Steel suppression of Japan by the West is similar to semi-conductor/chips/EV/5G suppression of China now. Interesting.
These days I've seen in some documentaries the economic process that happened between the two east and west Germany in the 1990s
Would be cool to have an video talking about what happened :)
If only they had known what treasures are hidden in the frozen grounds of Sibiria....
Looking forward to part 2
Matthew Perry was a busy guy
He got a lot done what with all his Friends in the Navy.
a magisterial program again...
pls do the same for the japanese chemical industry.
Japan got preferential treatment economically post-WW2 from the U$A ...
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165yeah deserved
@@hermanwillem7057
Not really ...
U$A needed a client state in East Asia to do it's bidding .
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165 whatever the reason holds no weight to outcome
Nitchitsu's Noguchi of early 1940s Hamhung achieved muon catalyzed fusion rocket propulsion for gilders and airships since rail transit was unfeasible for what was Imperial Japan so later Alvarez was credited for muon catalyzed fusion only after United Nations peace keepers returned from ruins so Robert K Wilcox's book portrayed Noguchi as Dr. Strangelove while Barbara Molony's book was rather equivocal.
Could you do the same video about other interesting steel producing countries, for example Austria.
Can't wait for the followup!
Wow! Great video but the audio doesn’t tears in attention much
Probably should have mentioned the Showa Steel Works in Manchuko.
Don't they make a lot of forks? Seen a lot of Showa forks.
@@amerigo88 The motorcycle fork brand? Showa was the name of the Japanese emperor's reign when the steel works were built.
Tell me more about this tamogochi steel
This is an awesome video! If possible, May you look into the historic ties between Japan, or Asia as a whole and Africa?
veritasium has a video on the original smelting process, would recommend
Veritasium - isn't he the galah that claimed wires don't carry electric current, and other wacky science?
I cant wait for part 2, the transformation to the modern steel industry, and maybe their recent controversy
We need a video about the Pig Iron Birthday Party industry.
This channel sounds insane with oye como va playing. Takes lil mans narrative to the next level!!!
Next video: The origin of Japanese anime industry
Great presentation.
I had a shop teacher that hated Japanese steel with passion.
WordPerfect was an incredible piece of software that few realized the full use of as it was often merely used as a word processor. But it could do so much more, especially with creating databases on the fly in an intuitive way. Yeah, maybe just field substitutions across multiple documents and macros but also a GUI building software that was nearly its own operating system. I'm wondering how that fits into this story.
What I find interesting about Japanese industries is that they always seem to cooperate with the government's requests, even when they don't seem to be favorable to them
It would be nice to see one about the chinese steel industry. They basically modernized in a very short period of time. With the great leap forward, millions died and so many people worked in the field, farms weren't maintained plus, they produced millions of tons of very cheap steel.
Swords were always more status symbol. Just like being good sword duelist was status symbol. In wars on big battlefields there was many other much more useful weapons.
We can always talk about bicycles!
Modern steel making actually has a lot of scrap steel/iron as an input. Big recycling industry.
dependence upon sand for iron explains their iron shortage
Australia has a lot of red dirt in its deserts. The colour comes from the high iron content.
Kobelco, kubota
Japan is a primary example of the false narrative of "comparative advantage" used by the West to discourage developing countries from pursuing industrialization. While comparative advantage is real, the specific advantage may vary, is not innate and can be created. So, often Western Nations will tell third world Nations that they should focus on agriculture and forget about manufacturing because they have no capital, or past experience, or natural resource. Japan, just like taiwan, singapore, and South korea, broke into the critical area of heavy industry, steel manufacturing, even though all of the prerequisite materials had to be imported and remained cost-competitive by diligently building up their capital, knowledge-based, and efficiency. While, the West will often deny it today, at the start of the industrialization of the East Asian tigers, there were predictions of dismal failure. Today, We are told that Koreans are especially intelligent, but that was not their position in 1961 at the start of the heavy chemical and industrial drive. Park Chung he said if he had listened to the experts "he would have done nothing".
The Pig Iron on his hib- Marty Roppins
Dividend is not a cost 11:50
Glad you're ok, good to know that Taiwan took it's earthquake proofing seriously and so few were injured, though my heart goes out to the families that were not so lucky. Thanks for your great content!
super interesting thank you sir
I love old Japanes customs when need to spend several generations just getting the raw material. Then, in order to use it, the grandmaster must don his traditional smock of many colors which is meant YeYungCarryThisShitForfreelol" before breaking for tea.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do The Origins of the Korean Steel and also the Heavy-Chemical Industry Drive.
Thanks for this 🤓👍
Is that Hatori Hanso steel?
You should do a video on the history of Nintendo
I think I'm turning Japanese
You really think so?😊
Until around 1980, Norh Korea had a higher per-capita GDP than South Korea and the reason was the heavy industry Japan built on the north of the peninsula - closer to the mines. The reason why the Peninsula came out divided after WWII was also the Japanese ocupation and not, as is popularly misunderstood, because of the communism/capitalism division. To learn more look for interviews and lectures by historian Bruce Cummings on UA-cam.
Steel is always the first step for an industrializing nation.
🌟🌟🌟Japanese entrepreneurial iniciatives is centuries old🌟🌟🌟🌟
You left at one source of iron ore for Japan in the 1930s and that was Australia... However this created a great deal of controversy in Australia in 1938 ... This is because in November 1938, the members of the waterside workers Federation of Australia refused to load pig iron onto the steamship SS Dalfram that was heading to Japan. The ship was chartered by Mitsui to supply the Japan Steel Works Ltd in Kobe, a part of a contract for 300,000 tons of pig-iron. The Japan Steel Works was producing military materials for the undeclared war in China.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions in October 1937 called for a boycott of Japanese goods and an embargo on the export of iron to Japan in response to the Japanese aggression.[3][4] Trade unions and many workers argued that the pig iron would be used in bombs and munitions in the invasion of China and articulated that they may also be used against Australia.....
......The arrival of the British tramp steamer Dalfram, which berthed at No. 4 jetty in Port Kembla on 15 November 1938, ignited the dispute. When the nature of the cargo and its destination were confirmed,[12] a walk-off eventuated around 11am.....
.... Attorney General Robert Menzies first threatened use of the Transport Workers Act on 28 November 1938. He accused the union of dictating foreign policy, and argued that the elected government had the sole right to decide goods to be traded and what relationships were to be established with foreign powers....
It was during the Dalfram dispute that the title "Pig Iron Bob" was coined in reference to the then Attorney General Robert Menzies. Local union official Ted Roach claimed[16] that the epithet was first used by Mrs. Gwendoline Croft, a member of the local women's relief committee.[5] It was later picked up by the Rev. Bill Hobbin, a former Methodist minister, and Stan Moran, the well-known wharfie and communist Domain orator....
....On 21 January 1939 after 10 weeks and two days on strike the waterside workers at Port Kembla decided to load the pig iron "under protest".[2]
The Lyons government policy of appeasement of Japanese military aggression and opposition to the trade union bans on trade with Japan were not entirely unanimous. External Affairs minister Billy Hughes appears to have attempted to undermine the government policy according to at least one historian, who conjectures this may have been due to Hughes' past links with the Waterside Workers' Federation, being the first President of the union in 1902. The day after the workers at Port Kembla capitulated Billy Hughes delivered a vitriolic speech attacking Japanese militarism and its threat to Australia.[18]
On 24 January, Jim Healy met with Government representatives and received an unofficial assurance that no more pig-iron would be shipped to Japan, although it is debated to whether this was actually the case or that some shipments of scrap metal and pig iron were made.[2]
Melbourne waterside workers refused to load scrap iron on to a German ship in May 1938.[2]
The dispute brought together the Illawarra labour movement and elements of Sydney's Chinese immigrant community and contributed in a small way to the breakdown of the White Australia policy.
'' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Dalfram_dispute "
Matthew Perry? Chandler?
I'd love to hear a little more about your opionions with regard to Blue Eye Samurai
Steak knifes?
@1:31 I am not the only one hearing 'Tatara Women Work Song' from 'Princess Mononoke' am I?
It's a more fitting reference than Blue Eyed Samurai, for sure.
Danke.
Pre-War Japan was economically a laggard but a powerful military.
Yahata steel works since the new Japanese pronunciation, which complicates everything
Surprised to hear you wrongly pronounced Hubei as Hebei, where Han Ye Ping was. Han-Hanyang, Ye-Daye, Ping-Pingxiang. FYI.