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Odakyu Electric Railway Co., Ltd.
International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 68 (1997) by Norimasa Satoh, Jeffrey Covell
Odakyu Electric Railway Co., Ltd.
1-8-3 Nishi-Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160 Japan Telephone: ( + 81) 3-3349-2526 Fax: ( + 81) 3-3346-2447 Web site: http://www.odakyu-co.com
Public Company Incorporated: 1923 as Odawara Express Railway Co., Ltd. Employees: 14,062 Sales: ¥624.92 billion ($5.89 billion) (2004) Stock Exchanges: Tokyo Ticker Symbol: 9007 NAIC: 482111 Line-Haul Railroads; 236116 New Multi-Family Housing Construction (Except Operative Builders); 237990 Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction; 445110 Supermarkets and Other Grocery (Except Convenience) Stores; 452111 Department Stores (Except Discount Department Stores); 485111 Mixed Mode Transit Systems; 485310 Taxi Service; 485410 School and Employee Bus Industry; 541810 Advertising Agencies; 561510 Travel Agencies; 561599 All Other Travel Arrangement and Reservation Services; 713990 All Other Amusement and Recreation Industries; 721110 Hotels (Except Casino Hotels) and Motels; 722110 Full-Service Restaurants
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Odakyu Electric Railway Co., Ltd. is one of the major private railroad companies in Japan, responsible for carrying 13 percent of the 34.5 million rail passengers who travel throughout the Tokyo metropolitan area each day. Odakyu's railway consists of three lines that travel a total of 120.5 kilometers. The core of the company's operations is the Odakyu Line, which connects Shinjuku Station—the largest terminal in Japan, with 3.4 million passengers per day—with Fuji-Hakone National Park, which lies at the foot of Mount Fuji, and also with Shonan, Japan's most famous seaside resort. Together, the company's railways serve an average of 1.82 million passengers each day. Nearly five million people live alongside the Odakyu Line, a population Odakyu serves by developing a variety of businesses, including leasing large-scale commercial buildings, developing residential housing areas, and operating leisure facilities, retail stores, and hotels. The Odakyu Group, of which Odakyu is the core, comprises 116 companies with 27,000 employees.
Origins
Japanese society is increasingly concentrated in large cities and centered on railroad stations. The rapid growth of the Japanese economy has accelerated the trend, and there is continuing demand for space in or within easy access of a city for both residential and business purposes.
As Tsutomu Shimizu, one of Odakyu's top executives, has stated, "Just as the ancient civilizations flourished in the basins of big rivers, modern civilization develops alongside railways." Private railroad companies in Japan usually build their railroads on undeveloped and unused sites with easy access to city centers and construct supermarkets and department stores in the station buildings, thus establishing their stations as centers for distribution and commercial activities. Railroad companies acquire massive amounts of land around their stations and diversify into businesses such as real estate, construction, leisure and tourism, and information services.
Odakyu's business started to recover again in the mid-1930s, but in 1937 the Sino-Japanese War broke out and there was every sign that it would be long and hard. As part of the wartime emergency measures, the Japanese government decided that the power industry should come under the control of the state. As a result, Kinugawa Hydro-Electricity Company, the parent company of Odawara, had to close down and merge with its subsidiary to form Odakyu Electric Railway Company (Odakyu) in 1941. As the war continued and its ferocity intensified, the government took further steps to establish the land transport infrastructure. In 1944, Odakyu was merged with three other railroad companies, now known as Keio Electric Co., Ltd., Keihin Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd., and Tokyu Corporation. The new company, Tokyo Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd., was headed by Keita Grotoh, previously the third president of Odawara Express Electric Railway Company, who had had experience in many other electric railroad companies and was to become Minister of Transport and Communications. The unification of private railways in the southwestern suburbs of Tokyo was thus completed by the newly named Tokyo Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd.
The end of World War II made it possible for those railroad companies that had been forced to amalgamate during the state of emergency to become independent again, and in June 1948 they started to go their separate ways. In October 1948, the newly born Odakyu introduced a non-stop special express between Shinjuku and Odawara, and in 1950 it fulfilled its long-cherished dream by opening a new direct line to Hakone-Yumoto, one of Japan's best-known hot spa resorts. In 1957, it launched the epoch-making Romance Car SE, which set the world speed record on the narrow-gauge track. In 1960, it completed the Golden Course, a round-trip route around the Hakone area. In order to strengthen the company's grip on tourist transport, it put new strategies into practice.
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