History of Railways in Japan

Steam reached Japan by sea. In 1853 the Russian envoy Yevfimy Putyatin demonstrated a working model steam locomotive at Nagasaki, and in 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry's second American expedition presented the Tokugawa shogunate with a roughly quarter-scale working model that officials rode around a circular track. Japanese engineers studied these machines closely: working from a Dutch technical manual and what he had seen of Putyatin's engine, the inventor Tanaka Hisashige — later a founder of the firm that became Toshiba — built Japan's first domestically made model steam locomotive for the Saga Domain in the mid-1850s.

The first full-size locomotive to actually run on Japanese soil arrived a decade later. In 1865 the Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover ran an imported British locomotive nicknamed the "Iron Duke" on a short stretch of track in the Ōura district of Nagasaki — a private spectacle rather than a public service, but the first time steam traction moved under its own power in Japan.

A public railway followed quickly once the new Meiji government made modernisation a priority. Engineered by foreign experts led by the Briton Edmund Morel and worked by British locomotives, Japan's first railway opened on 14 October 1872 between Shimbashi in Tokyo and Yokohama. It was built to a 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) narrow gauge — a cost-driven choice that still defines most of the national network today, and the reason 14 October is now marked as Railway Day.

Expansion came fast. A second line linked Osaka and Kobe in 1874 and reached Kyoto by 1877. Much of the trunk network was then laid by private companies, led by Nippon Railway, founded in 1881 as Japan's first private railway, which pushed a main line north from Ueno toward Aomori. The Tōkaidō Main Line, the spine of the country between Tokyo and Kobe, was completed in 1889, and in 1893 the Class 860 became the first steam locomotive built in Japan.

The state soon reasserted control. Under the Railway Nationalisation Act of 1906–07 the government bought up seventeen major private railways, consolidating the trunk lines into a single national system. Electric traction had meanwhile arrived — Japan's first electric railway, a streetcar line, began running in Kyoto in 1895 — and in 1927 Tokyo's Ginza Line opened as the first underground railway in Asia.

In 1949 the state railways were reorganised as Japanese National Railways (JNR), a public corporation. Its defining achievement came on 1 October 1964, when the Tōkaidō Shinkansen opened between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, days before the Tokyo Olympics — the world's first purpose-built high-speed railway, running on standard gauge at speeds no train had carried passengers at before.

Mounting debts finally broke up the national operator: in 1987 JNR was privatised and split into the seven companies of the Japan Railways (JR) Group that still run most of the country's trunk and high-speed services. The next chapter is already being built — the Chūō Shinkansen, a superconducting maglev intended to link Tokyo and Nagoya, and eventually Osaka, at over 500 km/h.

• 1853Russian envoy Putyatin demonstrates a model steam locomotive at Nagasaki.
• 1854Perry's expedition presents the shogunate with a working quarter-scale model locomotive.
• 1855Tanaka Hisashige builds Japan's first domestically made model steam locomotive (Saga Domain).
• 1865Thomas Glover runs the imported "Iron Duke" at Ōura, Nagasaki — the first locomotive to run in Japan.
• 1872Japan's first public railway opens, Shimbashi–Yokohama (14 October), British-engineered, 1,067 mm gauge.
• 1874Osaka–Kobe line opens.
• 1877The line reaches Kyoto.
• 1881Nippon Railway founded — Japan's first private railway.
• 1889Tōkaidō Main Line completed between Tokyo and Kobe.
• 1893Class 860, the first steam locomotive built in Japan.
• 1895Japan's first electric railway (streetcar) opens in Kyoto.
• 1906–07Railway Nationalisation Act: 17 private railways brought under state control.
• 1927Tokyo's Ginza Line opens — the first subway in Asia.
• 1949Japanese National Railways (JNR) established as a public corporation.
• 1964Tōkaidō Shinkansen opens (1 October) — the world's first high-speed railway.
• 1987JNR privatised and split into the seven companies of the JR Group.
• PresentThe Chūō Shinkansen, a superconducting maglev to Nagoya (later Osaka), is under construction.