A History of Japanese Railways, 1872-1999

Journal of Transport History, The,  Sep 2001  by Bagwell, Philip

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Eiichi Aoki, Mitsuhido Imashiro, Shinichi Kato and Yasuo Wakuda, A History of Japanese Railways, 1872-1999, East Japan Railway Culture Foundation (2000), 256 pp., 55.00.

This is an exceedingly well produced account of the chequered but impressive growth of Japanese railways. All four authors are key members of the Railway History Society of Japan. One of their number, Mitsuhido Imashiro, was joint author of The Privatisation of Japanese National Railways, reviewed in March 2000. The book is lavishly illustrated, with ten pages in colour. Included in the main text are thirty-eight 'thumbnail' sketches of the leading personalities (all men) who played a part in the progress of the system. Many maps help the reader to see where the network was densest and to follow the growth of the Shinkansen (high-speed) lines; forty-two appendices include statistical tables and diagrams showing the evolution of technical features of locomotives, wagons and carriages. It is the first complete history of Japanese railways written in English.

The authors distinguish four main periods: (1) from the opening of the first line from Tokyo to Yokohama in 1872 to the end of the Russo-Japanese war in 1906, (2) from nationalisation in 1906-07 to the end of World War II, (3) from General MacArthur's order to the Japanese Prime Minister of July 1948 and the subsequent creation of the Japanese National Railways to 1987, (4) privatisation from 1987 to 1999.

In the formative period after 1872 the Japanese government hired 300 foreign nationals (most of them British) as civil engineers, general managers, locomotive builders and drivers. Among them were Henry and Richard Francis Trevithick, grandsons of the English locomotive pioneer. Some of the early lines were privately built and run, others were government-owned and run. The Railway Construction Act of 1892 was a compromise. It stipulated government ownership but railways serving a local community could remain in private hands. It was up to local industrialists, with the aid of their banks, to promote and run such lines. From 1903 to 1905 the silk producers in the hills north-west of Tokyo waged a successful campaign for the railway to be extended to their district. Once the line was open the production of raw silk increased dramatically. Developments such as these gave Japan a mixed railway economy through the period covered by the book, with government railways running the trunk lines and privately owned companies acting as feeders.

In the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese war of 1905-06 the government-owned railways on the routes to the ports were very busy, but not too busy to frame a railway nationalisation policy with three main aims: to simplify train services by unifying ownership of the track, to cut freight rates and fares, and to standardise railway material and economise on operational assets. The proposals were embodied in the Railway Nationalisation Act of 1906. Within the next two years the seventeen most important private companies were bought by the Railway Agency (later the Ministry of Railways) at an exceptionally high price. However, many of the smaller concerns, mainly serving the rural areas, remained under private control. This division of labour remained for eighty years until full privatisation in 1987.

Not long after the end of World War 11 General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander, instructed the Prime Minister, Hiroshi Ahida, to prohibit all strikes by public servants, reject collective bargaining and reorganise the railways and all major government enterprises into public corporations. On 1 June 1949 the Japanese National Railways took the place of the Railway Board of the Ministry of Transport. The JNR was not a truly independent body, since it had no power to control fares or its staff's wages, but it was a beneficiary of the years of prosperity when the demand for passenger and freight transport was at its peak.

On balance the publicly owned part of the railway industry had a good record of engineering innovation. As early as 1919 it decided to replace screw couplings on its 41,661 freight wagons with American-type automatic couplers which were safer, especially on narrow-gauge lines. For operational reasons the change had to be effected at night. On Honshu, the largest of the four islands, the work was done in one night, on 17 July 1925, all wagons having by then been allocated the new equipment. The authors claim it as 'a notable event in world rail history'.

Outside Japan the best-known event in the country's railway history is the opening of the Shinkansen line on I October 1964, covering the 515 km between Tokyo and Osaka at 210 km hr in just over three hours. The Shinkansen was a forerunner of high-speed railways throughout the world. Influential in its success were Shinji Sago, the president of JNR, and Hideo Shima, vice-president of engineering. They insisted, against much opposition from conservative railwaymen, that what the inter-city link needed was new standard-gauge dedicated track. Advanced safety systems, including cab signalling and automatic train control, were installed. The success of the Tokyo-- Osaka Shinkansen line led to pressure in the Diet for rapid extension and tunnels through natural obstacles. It took sixteen years to build the 53.85 km tunnel linking Hokkaido with Honshu. By comparison the Channel tunnel, the second longest in the world, is 49 km in length.