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Recently I was requested to submit an article for the New Year edition of the 2015 Concrete Committee Newsletter. It sounded like a request about commemorative comment from the chairpersons including myself. On 21st November last year we celebrated the centenary of founding Japan Society of Civil Engineers, as part of which the commemorative publication "100 Years of Japan Society of Civil Engineers" was published. Naturally the Concrete Committee has played a great role in this 100 year history of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, so naturally I expected that this publication would cover its work in detail, and sure enough I found that it is described in a total of 21 pages from page 756 to 777. From this document I immediately saw that the Concrete Committee was established in 1928, the 2nd committee after the Editorial Committee on Journal of JSCE. The first chairperson was Professor Soji Okawado who served from 1928 to 1938, who was followed by Tokujiro Yoshida who served for 21 years, and the 3rd chairperson was Masatane Kokubu who served for 20 years. At that time it became established that the Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Tokyo became the chairperson.
When the 4th chairperson, Dr. Yoshiro Higuchi (Professor, the University of Tokyo) succeeded Professor Kokubu, he proposed the establishment of rules regarding the chairperson. These rules included appointment of the chairperson by a majority of votes of the committee members, that one term of office be 2 years, and that the maximum length in office be 2 terms or 4 years. Elections would be held in December and the elected chairperson would commence their term of office in April the following year. Chairpersons appointed under these rules were Professor Kiyoshi Okada of Kyoto University, and Professor Kazusuke Kobayashi of the University of Tokyo. I was appointed next as the 7th chairperson, and served for 2 terms, 4 years. I was succeeded by Professor Okamura of the University of Tokyo, and all succeeding chairpersons to this day have served 2 terms.
Initially I was not a member of the Concrete Committee, but became a committee member on the 1st September 1960. Thereafter my role changed many times, and my connection to the Concrete Committee ceased at the end of March 2013 when I was a consultant to the committee. Hence my association with the committee lasted some 52 years and 4 months. On that 1st September I was asked by Professor Kokubu to become the Secretary General of the Fly Ash Research Sub-committee of the Concrete Committee (Chairperson Tokujiro Yoshida). At that time I was only a first year master's degree student in graduate school and did not understand anything about JSCE, but as this was an order from my supervisor I turned up at Doboku Kaikan in Yotsuya. However, it was on that day that Professor Yoshida passed away, and Chairperson Kokubu was absent due to arrangements for the funeral, and under the direction of his deputy Dr. Miura (Railway Technical Research Institute) the committee meeting was completed. However I clearly remember the calculation equations for carbonation depth from Dr. Miura and other matters from that meeting. At that time fly ash was used as an admixture in mass concrete in civil engineering such as in dams, but it was not used at all in the building field because when it is used carbonation is fast, and there were intense debates on the effect of fly ash exchanged between Professor Yoshida and Professor Hamada of the Department of Architecture, the University of Tokyo. To resolve this issue test specimens were produced in which reinforcement was placed with 20, 30, and 50 mm cover, and the concrete composition was changed by varying the unit quantity of cement, the slump, and the fly ash replacement rate, and after long term exposure the depth of carbonation and the state of corrosion of the reinforcement was measured. It was planned that the measurements be taken after 2, 5, 10, and 20 years. For this reason it was necessary that young committee members participate in the work, so Mr. Tsukayama who at that time was with Nihon Cement, Mr. Toki of Onoda Cement, and I were selected. The one who actually carried out this work was me only, and with the assistance of my 2 successors produced the report. When the committee meeting was finished the trains were stopped due to strong winds and heavy rain, and I remember waiting at Yotsuya Station for the train service to be restored.
Thereafter I carried out many things, but while serving I put much energy into the publication of the "Concrete Library" and publication of the "Concrete Engineering Series". In the case of the former I was involved either directly or indirectly in the publication of about 30 of the total of 143 volumes published, or about 20%, and in the case of the latter the decision to publish it was taken while I was chairperson. The major work of the Concrete Committee is maintaining the Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures, but as the revision work is an extensive undertaking, we endeavored to publish recommendations and guidelines established in the interim in the Concrete Library. Also it was decided to publish the Engineering Series to preserve the documents and results of those committee reports whose content was not approved by the Concrete Committee.
This series has now reached No.105. In the future I would like to see the Concrete Committee evaluate their experiences and achievements to date, and to connect this path, and if there are achievements that are further evaluated with a new perspective, they should be positively undertaken.
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