State industries in Japan

A small paper I wrote for a university course at TU Berlin.
Here the whole paper (8 pages) and here an introduction/abstract:

The railway network is a good example of “Large technical system”, defined by the American historian of technology Thomas Hughes as a system that involves both technical objects (technologies) and social practices (techniques). The objects are rails, locomotives, raw materials, while practices are management, economic models, regulations, political decision and social uses. The two aspects affect each other.
Modern time is the age of the affirmation of organizations and nation-states, both characterized by the need to access and control key assets for the aim of self conservation and/or functioning as shown in many theories of organization. With this mindset we briefly examine the history of railroads of Japan, as a good example of the reciprocal influences played by technologies and society, especially in the policy of state-guided industry. These manufactures strongly depend on the value given by the decision makers to what a key asset is, therefore ideology plays a great role in it and sometimes is expressed as a clear political form. Meanwhile technological constraints limit and/or enhance this political visions and its expression.