Engineers.
An officer enters for a kika-no (engineer) by competitive examination identical with that for those of military rank already described.
Those who pass are sent to Yokosuka, where they spend four years training in the technique of their profession. After that they join ships, having equivalent rank with, but after, the military branch, according to the table on a later page.
Engineers in the Japanese Navy have power to punish their own men, being executive in their own department. They are not, however, granted military titles.
Doctors.
A doctor (quini) is now a civilian who has a fancy for the sea-service. Like engineers, doctors have equivalent rank with, but after, the corresponding military branch, and are eligible for pensions after twenty years’ service.
Paymasters.
A paymaster (shukei) is also a civilian, entered as doctors are, and serving under the same conditions.
Constructors.
The constructor (losin-sokun) enters by competitive examination much as executive and engineers do. After passing he is attached to a dockyard, and then sent abroad, usually to England, to learn more than he can acquire in Japanese dockyards, where only small ships are built as yet. A constructor has equivalent rank with the executive, just like the other non-military branches. All these branches at times use for themselves a military title; thus, taï-i-kikano (lieutenant-engineer) or taï-i-losin-sokun (lieutenant-constructor); but the military branch being, naturally enough, jealous of their titles, the prefix is non-official, and never applied to civil branches by the executive. Of the civil branches, constructors most often get the military title, and in the dockyards are always addressed by the employés as taï-i, houk-cho, or kan-cho, without the word constructor at all. In the British Navy, of course, constructors are almost as entirely civil a profession as Admiralty clerks, and are absolutely unknown to naval officers afloat; but in the Japanese Navy the tie is closer, and every officer knows them.