The Barbarian books department

In the mid-1800s, the world was in an era of rapid change. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, bringing new technologies and scientific advancements, as well as great social and political unrest. The ‘Revolutions of 1848’ had swept across Europe, and further afield, European powers were expanding their power and exerting pressure in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

In Japan, many watched in horror as the British used gunboat diplomacy and modern weapons to quickly defeat their closest neighbour, China, in the First Opium War. More worryingly, in 1854, US Commodore Matthew C Perry sailed warships into Tokyo Bay, coercing the Japanese government into signing the Treaty of Kanagawa, which effectively ended Japan’s period of international isolation and opened Japan’s ports to traffic with Western powers.

Now, I’ve just condensed a lot of history into two paragraphs – there are many other factors at play and other events that I haven’t mentioned. But for expediency, I’ll sum up and say that in this period, Japan’s government was quickly realising that it could no longer isolate itself from the rest of the world and stay independent, and that it needed to modernise its industrial, scientific and military capacities, and it needed to do so quickly.

So, how did Japan go about doing this? In this article, I’m going to compress the complicated process of Japanese industrialisation and reform in the latter half of the 19th century into several paragraphs and explain how it was managed through a proto-content operations strategy at a national level. And if I haven’t lost you by that point, I’ll then explain what lessons we can learn and apply to modern content operations strategy.

A short history of the ‘Barbarian’ books department

A couple of years after Commodore Perry’s naval incursion into Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate set up the ‘Bansho Shirabesho’, which roughly translates to ‘Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books’, which focused primarily on translating Dutch military, scientific and technical documents into Japanese. Over the next 30 or so years, the department changed its name and scope of work several times:

• 1862 – is renamed Yōsho Shirabesho (‘Institute for Research on Western Books’), and expands its focus to include English, French and German technical translations.
• 1863 – 1871 – is renamed Kaiseijo (School of Foreign Studies) and serves as a proto-university. It begins offering students courses in engineering, mathematics and medicine. Also, the department starts employing foreign experts as advisors. The department continued to run after the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
•  1871 – 1876 – is renamed Kaisei Gakkō (Establishing School) and had its remit changed in several ways. Firstly, this department expanded into a more formalised higher education institution. Secondly, it began producing textbooks for the newly implemented Japanese school system, and thirdly, translators from the Kaisei Gakkō began working directly with government branches, such as Defence, Industry, and Agriculture.
• 1877 – Reformed into the University of Tokyo, Japan’s first university. The translation department, which was still translating Western texts, worked within university departments, such as the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Engineering.

So, despite being created during a tumultuous time in Japanese history, the Bansho Shirabesho not only survived the Boshin War, the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, but thrived. It saw its scope of work increase from the translation of selected Dutch texts to the creation of a national school syllabus and the formation of Japan’s first University. So, what did the Bansho Shirabesho and its later incarnations do that was so important?

The Content Operations Department?

Looking back at Bansho Shirabesho and its work, we can see that a small government translation department gradually evolved into a sort of national content operations department. By the late 1870s, it wasn’t just concerned with translating selected texts, but also with making sure that the wider Japanese population had access to technical and educational content and providing the means of disseminating this information.

If we look at the three basic elements of content operations, we can see that the Bansho Shirabesho and its successor departments actually involved themselves in all three:

• Processes – This department specialised in acquiring and translating scientific and technical documentation that was deemed important to the Japanese government. It coined new terminology, such as Japanese words for oxygen and hydrogen, which are still in use today. It provided technical documentation to and integrated itself within government agencies, so that the information it produced could be easily accessed and understood by those who needed it.
• People – The Bansho Shirabesho and its successors ensured the right people were in place to support translations. It sent members of its department abroad, for months or years at a time, to study at different Western institutions and bring back knowledge and practical experience of how to apply it. When necessary, it employed outside expertise to advise on both subject matter and the translation process.
• Technology – Later iterations of the Bansho Shirabesho established their own publishing house, which would become the Tokyo University Press, ensuring that translated works could be easily published and disseminated not only to the government but also to the general public.

So, did this department succeed in its mission? Well, for the third time in this article, I’ll oversimplify a complex and complicated answer and say, on the whole, yes. During this period, Japan successfully modernised many parts of its government and society, creating a modern military, education system, industrial concerns and economic policies based on contemporary Western models.

This included, but is in no way limited to:

• Launching a new currency in 1871
• Formalising and making elementary education compulsory in 1872  
• Establishing a telegraph system, a postal network and national railways throughout the 1870s
• Founding the National Bank of Japan and related financial legislation in 1882
• Creating new industries, such as copper refining, steel production, cotton spinning, and silk reeling, using new industrial methods during the 1870s and 1880s

While it can be debated whether modernisation was good or bad for Japanese society, the efforts of the Bansho Shirabesho definitely aided this process. These new industries and institutions needed a supply of workers, engineers, politicians, financiers and bureaucrats who had to be trained in how to perform their roles. The Bansho Shirabesho and its successors ensured that they were, by translating, creating, and disseminating information in many forms to those who needed it. It can be summed up by an article in the Times newspaper, commenting on Japan’s efforts, published on the 26^th of December, 1894, ‘With passionate effort the Japanese have ransacked the Western world for its treasures of knowledge, and have vigorously applied what they have learned’.

So, what can we learn from the Bansho Shirabesho?

Now, most of us reading this article will never have to take a nation-state through a rapid industrialisation process. But some of you reading will be responsible for taking organisations through periods of rapid change, or releasing ground-breaking new products that need supporting information, or need to inform a network of partner organisations about new developments. What this example shows us is that a good content operations strategy, where you ensure that the right people use the right processes and technology to get information when and where it is needed, can help you achieve fantastic things.

This example shows us that with a good content operations strategy, you can:

1. Quickly educate and inform a large number of people about new concepts.
2. Break down information silos and get groups of people working together harmoniously.
3. Quickly find new ways of talking about new processes, technology or concepts, and ensure that this is quickly adopted across large organisations or groups of people.
4. Aid the successful adoption of new technologies, new concepts and new ways of working.

Need help with modern content operations?

So, while the historical circumstances that affected the creation of the original Bansho Shirabesho in the 1850s are unlikely to repeat themselves for modern technical writers, the way in which this government department gathered, translated and disseminated large amounts of technical content shows us how a good content operations strategy can help transform large organisations, aid the adoption of new technologies and ensure the right people get the right information at the right time. Getting the right mix of processes, people and technology will ensure that your content operations strategy succeeds, and can help you achieve your goals.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my article, which tries to offer a different perspective on an interesting part of Japanese history. If you’d like to find out more, I’d recommend reading ‘Japan Story: In search of a Nation’ by Christopher Harding, or ‘The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War’ by SCM Paine, as I used both books for reference in this article, and they both give an in-depth look at the very unique period of history that covers Japan in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

And if you feel inspired to start your own grand content operations strategy or would like to pick my brains about technical writing in history, feel free to get in touch with us here. We’d be happy to hear from you.