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.