was a

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated i ...

and purveyor to Japan's military during the

Meiji Period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. He established Kamaishi Mine Tanaka Ironworks (''Kamaishi Kōzan Tanaka Seitetsusho'') in 1887, which was Japan's first modern private ironworks and remained the only one in the country until 1901, when the state-run ironworks was built again. A few years earlier, in 1874, Japan's Ministry of Industries (''Kōbushō'') had decided to build a modern furnace at

Kamaishi is a city located on the Sanriku rias coast in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 32,609, and a population density of 74 persons per km2, in 16,230 households. The total area of the city is Geography Kamaishi is ...

. It appointed

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

engineers who went on to build a large-scale mill (with a railway system to carry the product and

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

) utilizing two imported 25-ton furnaces. Local experts had advised a more modest method of learn-by-doing and gradual scale-up. The government, which never questioned the superiority of Western technology, overrode these objections and proceeded to construct the plant and operation started in 1890. However, within 196 days the plant had to be shut down and the government gave up- mainly due to the poor quality of coke made from Japanese

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

. Tanaka entered the steel business by taking over this loss-making government-run enterprise. He reverted to the earlier advise of building with smaller furnaces (5-6 ton), adapting the technology to local conditions, and then scaling up. Building on local knowledge, he adapted foreign technology through a process of trial and error – it took his people 22 months and 49 trial operations before they could finally produce iron. There was also help from Kageyoshi Noro. By 1894, Tanaka was in a position not only to repair but also redesign

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

-made furnaces and succeeded in restarting them using coke as fuel. Tanaka Chōbei owned mines all over Japan, as well as the Jinguashi mine in northern Taiwan. His ironworks in Kamaishi produced the majority of Japan's domestic pig iron in 1894.

Honors

* Medal of Honor with Yellow Ribbon (23 May 1887)

References

People of the Meiji era Steel companies of Japan {{Japan-business-bio-stub