Rail transport in Japan is a major means of passenger transport, especially for mass and high-speed travel between major cities and for commuter transport in metropolitan areas.
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Six Japan Railways Group (JR) companies, state owned until 1987, provide passenger service to most parts of Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū; the seventh JR company carries freight. Many private rail companies rank among the top corporations in the country. Regional governments, and companies funded jointly by regional governments and private companies, also provide rail service.
There are 27,268 km of rail crisscrossing the country. JR (a group of companies formed after privatization of JNR) controlled 20,135 km of these lines as of March 31, 1996, with the remaining 7,133 km in the hands of private enterprise local railway companies. Japan's railways carried 22.24 billion passengers (395.9 billion passenger-kilometres) in fiscal 2006.[1] In comparison, Germany has over 40,000 km of railways, but carries only 2.2 billion passengers per year.[2]
Fukuoka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama have subway systems. However, unlike Europe, the vast majority of passenger traffic is on suburban commuter trains that criss-cross metropolitan areas. In addition, many cities have streetcar and monorail networks.
Japan pioneered the high-speed "bullet train" or "shinkansen", which now links Japan's largest cities at speeds of up to 300 km/h (186 mph). However, other trains running on the conventional line or "zairaisen" remain relatively slow, operating at fastest 160 km/h and mostly under 130 km/h.
Japan's railways carried 51.9 million tons (23.2 billion tonne-kilometres) of goods in fiscal 2006.[1] The share of railways in the national logistics is as small as 0.84% (2005).[3]
Railroads were long the most important means of passenger and freight transportation in Japan, ever since they were established in the late nineteenth century. Government policy promoted railways due to lack of fossil fuels and nearly complete dependence on imports. Rural land near large cities was acquired cheaply by private railways companies as early as the late nineteenth century, and then became the backbone for urban transport, suburban cities formed around train stations radiating out from metropolitan areas, similar to suburban growth around highways in other nations. Despite this planning, growing affluence made road transportation usage rival rail since the 1960s. The relative share of railroads in total passenger kilometers fell from 66.7 percent in 1965 to 42 percent in 1978, and to 29.8 percent in 1990. By contrast, automobiles and domestic airlines were carrying ever-larger shares of the passenger traffic in 1990, however railways still accounted for the largest percentage by far in the OECD. However, in the largest metropolitan areas in Japan: Tokyo (including Chiba, Saitama, Tokyo, and Kanagawa Prefectures), Osaka (including Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyōgo Prefectures), and Nagoya, railroad passenger share is much higher at 43.5% [as of 2001]. Private automobiles in Greater Tokyo still account for less than 20% of daily trips as walking, bicycling and buses remain extremely popular as well.
The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group, is a group of successors of the government-owned Japanese National Railways. The JR Group lies at the heart of Japan's railway network, operating almost all intercity rail service and a large proportion of commuter rail service.
The six passenger operating companies of the JR Group are separated by region, but many operate long-distance train service beyond their regional boundaries. The six companies are: Hokkaido Railway Company, East Japan Railway Company, Central Japan Railway Company, West Japan Railway Company, Shikoku Railway Company, and Kyushu Railway Company.
Freight service belongs to Japan Freight Railway Company or JR Freight which operates all freight network previously owned by JNR.
The following 16 companies are classified as the major private railways and are operating 2,870.1 kilometers of railways. In one year period from April 2009, a total of 9.46 billion passengers (118 billion passenger kilometers) traveled on these major railways.[4]
Other railway operators include
In the legal sense, there are two types (with several subcategories) of rail transportation systems in Japan: railway (鉄道 tetsudō) and tram (軌道 kidō). Every public rail transportation system under the governmental regulation in Japan is classified either of railway or tramway. In principle, trams lay tracks on the road and railways do not, but the choice may seem rather arbitrary in cases. For example, Osaka Municipal Subway is a tram system while subways in other cities are railways.[5]
Railways and trams are respectively regulated by the Railway Business Act (鉄道事業法 Tetsudō Jigyō Hō, Act No. 92 of 1986) and the Tram Act (軌道法 Kidō Hō, Act No. 76 of 1921).
Under the Railway Business Act, operations of "railways" (in the legal meaning) are divided into three categories: Category 1, Category 2 and Category 3.[6] They are defined by the Act as follows[7]:
Most railway operations in Japan are Category 1. Examples of Category 2 railway businesses include most operations of the Japan Freight Railway Company (JR Freight) and the JR Tōzai Line operation of the West Japan Railway Company (JR West). Examples of Category 3 railway businesses include the Kōbe Rapid Transit Railway company and the government of Aomori Prefecture with regards to the Aoimori Railway.
The rail system of Japan consists of the following (as of 2005)[8]:
The national railway network was started and has been expanded with the narrow 1,067 mm gauge. Railways with broader gauge are limited to those built not intending to provide through freight and passenger transport with the existing national network. Shinkansen uses the standard gauge.
Electrification systems used by the JR group are 1500V DC and 20kV AC for conventional lines and 25kV AC for Shinkansen. Electrification with 600V DC and 750V DC are also seen in private lines. Frequency of AC power supply is 50 Hz in Eastern Japan and 60 Hz in Western Japan.
Rail transport in Japan is usually for a fee. In principle a fare is pre-charged and a ticket is issued in exchange for a payment of fare. A ticket is inspected at a manned or automated gate in the station where a travel starts and is collected at the station where the travel ends.
A ticket required for a travel by railway is called a fare ticket (乗車券 jōshaken), the price of which is fare (運賃 unchin). The fare ticket is valid regardless of number of transfers. Long-distance travellers are allowed unlimited number of stopovers (途中下車 tochū-gesha) along the route subject to the duration of the validity of the fare ticket. In addition, a ride on a specific train and/or coach may require a surcharge ticket (料金券 ryōkinken).
Except for very short railways and some tram systems with a flat fare, fare varies by distances or number of zones travelled. The pricing based on the time of travel (peak or off-peak) is not common in Japan. Children fare (小児運賃 shōni-unchin) for children between 6 and 12 is half of adult fare. Recent development in the fare collection system is the stored-value card systems shared by multiple operators in large cities, such as Suica and PiTaPa, by which passengers can avoid consultation with complicated fare tables and lineups for ticket machines before each train ride.
There are many types of surcharges. For example, in JR, surcharges include:
An unusual feature of Japanese surcharges, compared with other train systems, is that they often require a separate ticket. Thus, if riding the shinkansen, for instance, rather than purchasing a single shinkansen ticket, one purchases two tickets: a fare ticket (乗車券) for the distance traveled, and an additional shinkansen ticket (新幹線特急券 shinkansen tokkyūken, shinkansen special express ticket) to allow one to ride the shinkansen for that distance, rather than ordinary trains. Since express trains are not separated by special gates from ordinary trains, express service requires manual inspection of tickets by a conductor, and express tickets can be purchased from the conductor. In short, the fare ticket allows access to the train platforms at entrance and exit, where it is inspected by the gate or attendant at the station, while the express ticket allows one to ride an express train over the interval and is inspected by a conductor on the train.
Suburban or intercity railway lines usually set several types of trains (列車種別 ressha shubetsu) with different stop patterns.
A train that stops at every station is called a local train (普通列車/各駅停車 futsū-ressha/kakueki-teisha). Only a fare ticket is required to ride local trains. Trains faster than local trains are classified as Rapid (快速 kaisoku), Express (急行 kyūkō), Limited Express (特急 tokkyū), etc. and may require surcharges depending on company policies. Limited Express is faster than Express. Railways with many types of trains use prefixes like "semi-", "rapid-", "section-", or "commuter-". For example, the Tōbu Isesaki Line has Local, Section Semi-Express, Semi-Express, Section Express, Express, Rapid, Section Rapid, and Limited Express.
Train operators usually name long distance trains (Kintetsu is a rare exception of this practice). The process of ticket reservation utilizes the train names instead of the train numbers. Train numbers are almost exclusive for professional use.
All the railway and tram lines in Japan are named by the operators. In principle (with some exceptions), a section of railway has only one name. Line names are shown on a ticket to indicate the route of the ticket. Passengers refer the railway by the name of line (e.g. "Tōyoko Line") or the name of operator (e.g. "Hanshin").
The line names may come from a name of destination or a city along the line (e.g. the "Takasaki Line" goes to Takasaki, Gunma); a name of region (e.g. the "Tōhoku Main Line" goes through the Tōhoku region); an abbreviation of provinces or cities (e.g. the "Gonō Line" connects Goshogawara and Noshiro); or a course of the line (e.g. the Tōzai Line means the East-West Line).
A line was a unit of the restructuring of the Japanese National Railways in 1980s. The railway business was evaluated line-by-line so that too unprofitable lines were abolished. This left some unnamed branch of trunk lines, which would be abolished if they had own line names, alive.
Since the operation route of the railway may have been changed but the historic line names may have not changed, the operation route can be named with the word "line" but differently from the original line names. The examples include the Keihin-Tōhoku Line and the Shōnan-Shinjuku Line.
In addition to its extensive railroads, Japan has an impressive number of subway systems. The largest is the Tokyo subway, where the network in 1989 consists of 211 kilometers of track serving 205 stations. Two subway systems serve the capital: one run by the Tokyo Metro (named Teito Rapid Transit Authority until 2004), with nine lines (the oldest, Ginza line was built in 1927), and the other operated by the Tokyo metropolitan government's Transportation Bureau (Toei), with four lines. Outlying and suburban areas are served by seven private railroad companies, whose lines intersect at major stations with the subway system. More than sixty additional kilometers of subway were under construction in 1990 by the two companies.
There are a number of other metro systems in other Japanese cities, including the Fukuoka City Subway, Kobe Municipal Subway, Kyoto Municipal Subway, Osaka Municipal Subway, Nagoya Subway, Sapporo Subway, Sendai Subway and Yokohama Subway.
While metro systems in Japanese cities are usually operated by the city government and therefore tend to limit their networks within the city border, there are many cases of through services of subway trains onto suburban railway lines and vice-versa. One of the reasons of this trend is the sharp increase of ridership on the railways in the rapid growth of postwar economy that could not be handled by small original railway terminals in the city center.
Automated guideway transit (rubber-tired motor cars running on concrete guideways) has also developed in Japan. Cities with such intermediate capacity transit systems include Hiroshima, Kobe, Osaka, Saitama and Tokyo.
Some cities operate streetcar systems, including Hiroshima, Matsuyama, Nagasaki, Tokyo (one line only) and Toyohashi. All of these cities are also well served by public and private railroads; also, there are private tramways not included above.
Japanese railways are among the most punctual in the world. The average delay on the Tokaido Shinkansen in fiscal 2006 was only 0.3 minutes.[9] When trains are delayed for as little as five minutes, the conductor makes an announcement apologizing for the delay and the railway company may provide a "delay certificate" (遅延証明書), as no one would expect a train to be this late. Japanese passengers rely heavily on rail transit and take it for granted that trains operate on time. When trains are delayed for an hour or more, it may even appear in the newspaper.[10] However, some argue that railway staff are under too much pressure from the public. These stringent standards are considered contributors to the cause of serious accidents such as the Amagasaki rail crash in 2005.[11]
One of the most widely publicized crimes committed on trains is chikan or groping, taking advantage of overcrowded cars and a reluctance for people to ask for help, or to jump to the aid of another. Typically, the victim is female and the perpetrator male. A recent trend for railway companies to promote their lines is to service female-only cars on some trains (typically during morning rush-hours and late night trains, and often the front or back car) and is quickly becoming a standard practice, especially among Tokyo's busy commuter lines.
The Japanese language has a number of expressions for unlawfully riding trains without paying the full fare. One is Satsuma-no-kami. It is a reference to Taira Satsuma-no-kami Tadanori, a member of the Taira clan who is mentioned in the Tale of the Heike. His name, Tadanori, is pronounced the same as words meaning "riding for free."
Another expression is kiseru jōsha. This refers to a kiseru, a smoking pipe that has a long hollow section made of bamboo between the bowl (where the smoke enters) and the mouthpiece (where it leaves) made of metal. Based on an association of metal and money, kiseru jōsha is the practice of using one ticket to enter the train system and a different ticket to exit, with a long unpaid segment in the middle – purchasing two separate tickets, covering just the initial and final segments of the journey (corresponding to the bowl and mouthpiece), rather than one ticket for the whole length.
Other notable crimes staged in railway facilities in Japan include the assassination of the Prime Minister Hara Takashi in Tokyo Station in 1921, the deliberate train wreck at Mitaka Station in 1949 and the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
Trains are also used as a means to commit suicide. Its relative popularity is partly due to its practical ease, and to avoid causing a nuisance to one's family, though families are often charged or sued by the railway companies to compensate for the trouble caused by the accident. A typical suicide may cause delays between one and a few hours on one or more lines. The costs to the surviving families by the railway companies' "delay fee" is often in the 100 million yen range.[12] Recently, railway companies have begun implementing measures to discourage and prevent train suicides. This includes use of blue LED lights in stations, which officials hope will calm potential jumpers.[13] And in the future, suicide prevention barriers will be installed at multiple stations in an effort to keep people contained on the platform until the train arrives.[14]
An important aspect of the romance of the rails in Japan is the ekiben, the station bento lunchbox. The first pre-packed station lunchboxes originated at Utsunomiya Station in 1885 and became an instant success.[15] Many stations (eki) around the country soon began to make special bento featuring local specialties such as seafood, meat or vegetables. Including generous portions of rice, the ekiben was a complete meal. It was often served in a wooden box; nowadays cardboard and plastics have become popular, although wooden chopsticks still accompany the ekiben. The Central Committee of the Japanese Association of Railroad Station Concessionaires (社団法人日本鉄道構内営業中央会) is a prominent trade organization promoting ekiben.
Japanese books and television feature rail transportation in various contexts. Examples include travelogues visiting rustic routes or unusual trains or murder mysteries on sleeper trains.
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