Japanese Shinkansen: Catalyst for the renaissance of rail, The

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2003 by Smith, Roderick A

In order to put the Shinkansen into historical context, this article describes briefly the history of the development of Japanese railways up to 1964, before discussing the events leading up to the birth of the Shinkansen. A description of the many developments of the Shinkansen and the expansion of the network follows, leading to a discussion of the impact of the Shinkansen on Japanese society. The article concludes with some remarks on the current status and future prospects of the high-speed railway in Japan and elsewhere.

Development of Japanese railways up to 1964

The industrial revolution arrived in Japan with the new dawn of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Japan emerged from 200 years of almost complete isolation from the rest of the world, with a rudimentary transport system which relied on man or horse power over a primitive network of roads and tracks. Thirty kilometres a day was considered to be good progress. It is necessary to remember that Japan is a very densely forested, mountainous country; even today only slightly more than 20 per cent of the land area is considered habitable. Furthermore, the country extends over some 2,000 km, from the northern island of Hokkaido, with a sub-arctic climate, to the subtropical island of Kyushu in the south (see Figure 1 for the geographical layout of Japan). The Meiji government recognised that the only way to compete with and to protect itself from the West was to enthusiastically import technologies: the telegraph came in 1869, the Nagasaki-Shanghai submarine cable connected Japan with the outside world in 1872 and the telephone arrived in 1877.2

Work on the first railway, connecting Shinagawa (in Tokyo) with Yokohama, a rapidly developing international port, started in 1870.3 The technology was entirely British: it is said that the emperor Meiji, on the formal opening of the line on 14 October 1872, rode in a coach built in Birmingham, its Fox bogies from Leeds ran over rails rolled in Sheffield and the interior contained cushions of Lancashire cotton trimmed with Nottingham lace. The line, which had been built by the Englishman Edmund Morel, was operated by British drivers and fuelled by Welsh coal.4 Morel, reputedly because of his earlier experience of railway construction across similar mountainous terrain in New Zealand, built the railway to the economic narrow gauge of 3 ft 6 in. (1,067 mm), a gauge which is still used today on the so-called conventional lines (i.e. non-Shinkansen lines) in Japan. The Tokyo to Yokohama line was only 29 km long. By 1877 Japan had a total of merely fifty miles (80 km), compared with 16,000 km in France and nearly 24,000 km in Britain.

After these small and late beginnings, the railway slowly spread to the outlying areas of Japan. The island of Hokkaido adopted American railway technology, and on this northern outpost coal became the most important freight. The trunk lines spread from the Tokyo centre, whilst the main route, the approximately 500 km long Tokaido, was completed in 1889, linking Tokyo and Yokohama, via Nagoya and Kyoto, with Osaka and the port of Kobe. The region along this route has grown to occupy an ever more dominant role in the country's government, financial, manufacturing and cultural life and has taken the name the 'Tokaido route' from the ancient track connecting these centres of the heartland of Japan.

Although the earliest railways were state-promoted and state-owned, privately managed lines played an important role in the expansion of the network. In 1906 the government, recognising the strategic military importance of the railways, nationalised the private main lines, and the newly created Japanese Imperial Railway then had a network of just over 7,000 km. Some local lines remained in private ownership and others were built later to serve the rapidly expanding urban areas, particularly around Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka in the 1920s and 1930s. These lines remain in private hands today and in terms of volume movement and revenue per kilometre of track are amongst the most successful railways in the world.

The early decades of the twentieth century saw a continuing expansion of the railway network without serious competition from the automobile until as late as the 1960s. Some limited electric traction was introduced as early as 1895, but its use was largely confined to urban railways (the subway in Tokyo first operated in 1927) until much later. Although limited numbers of diesel trains were operated, indigenous coal was Japan's main power source and steam traction was dominant well into the early 1970s. One interesting technical feature which is often overlooked was the introduction of automatic couplers on all freight wagons in 1926. Well in advance of similar moves in Europe, this change increased both efficiency and safety, the latter having become the hallmark of Japanese railway operations in the last few decades.

The Tsubame ('Swallow') expresses, introduced in 1930, reduced the time from Tokyo to Kobe to nine hours - a significant reduction from the twenty hours required in 1889 and fifteen in 1903. Infrastructure improvements included the completion of double track over the Tokaido route in 1913 and the opening of the 7.8 km long Tanna tunnel in 1934, which shortened the route by omitting a detour round the mountains between Atami and Numazu. Throughout this period, more and more traffic was carried along this vital artery. The need for expansion of capacity was recognised, and work actually started on a new standard-gauge (4 ft 8 1/2 in. or 1,435 mm) line in 1940. A key part of the motivation behind this new line was to link Tokyo with the western part of Japan, which, in turn, linked up with Japanese-held territory in China and Korea. It was planned that fast electric trains, already nicknamed dangan ressha (Bullet Trains), would speed along this line towards Kyushu and perhaps even through an undersea tunnel to the Asian mainland via the Korean peninsula. Although the undersea Kanmon tunnel was completed between Honshu and Kyushu in 1942, thus directly linking two of Japan's four main islands for the first time, the Pacific war had started in 1941 and it was to be some time before the railway network could be further expanded.