This is a detailed and carefully documented study of the development of Japanese railways and their relationship with the state, the first to appear in English. The railways symbolised economic modernity for the Meiji regime and were welcomed as potential instruments of development policy. At the same time they raised many of the difficulties of the period: the fear of foreign penetration; a lack of capital for large social overhead projects; and the need of government and its bureaucracies to mediate with emerging business interests...[T]his is a major work and deserves to be read by all those interested in this exciting period in Japan's modern history.
-- Terry Gourvish Asian Affairs

In a quest to elucidate the historical context of recent Japanese economic development, the Council of East Asian Studies at Harvard initiated a monograph series on the history of Japanese business and industry. Steven Ericson has succeeded in fulfilling this remit with a robust analysis of the politics and tensions between the state and private enterprise in the early development of the Japanese railroad industry. Not content with the hitherto deterministic literature on railroad development, which tends to present the Japanese railroad nationalization of 1906-07 as the result of a coherent long-run policy, Ericson perceives 'an account of trial and error, of policy changes and reversals, of consensus reached only after extended conflict and debate.' This view is pursued throughout this well-written and well-presented book...Sound of the Whistle is the result of extensive study of material in the Japan Railway Archive, the transporatation Museum Archive, the 14-volume Centennial History of the Japanese National Railways, and a host of other Japanese secondary material: there are an impressive 33 pages of bibliography. Ericson should be congratulated on producing from this a worth and interesting contribution to our understanding of Japanese economic and industrial development.
-- David Boughey Asia Pacific Business Review