Sarah Sieloff
It’s hard to overstate the power and significance of Japan’s bullet trains. A global symbol of the nation's technological sophistication for more than 50 years, the network of high-speed trains known as “Shinkansen” (or “new trunk line”) is both a source of national pride and a critical element in the country’s transportation infrastructure. The trains can hit 200 miles per hour on more than 1,800 miles of tracks, knitting together an archipelago that, if lined up against North America, would stretch from British Columbia to Baja, California. Since launching in 1964, the bullet trains have proved to be remarkably safe, resilient and lucrative: Not only do many of the lines turn a healthy profit, but Shinkansen technology, including the software that supports the trains’ famous punctuality, is a valuable Japanese export.
No amount of technology, however, can withstand the disruptive tide of the global pandemic, which has severely reduced travel to and within Japan. Beyond the immediate ridership and revenue hit, longer term challenges loom. Japan’s aging population is in decline: By 2065, it is projected to shrink by up to 35%, and already-low birthrates are continuing to fall as young people move away from smaller towns and rural areas and concentrate in major cities like Tokyo, where birthrates are lowest. A 2014 report issued by an independent think tank offered the dire prediction that by 2050, half of Japan’s regional cities and towns would be extinct.
Japan’s first bullet train line, between Tokyo and Osaka, opened in 1964.
Meanwhile, commuting and travel patterns shaped by the rise of the Shinkansen are in flux, thanks to the growth of remote work during the pandemic. That’s delivering a jolt to Japan’s hidebound office culture, and potentially transforming the role and purpose of the rail network that serves it. In particular, major shifts in demographics and national travel patterns might complicate the arrival of the long-awaited next generation of the rail network: the $84 billion Linear Chuo Shinkansen, which could travel at more than 300 mph.
Japan’s rail system has long been a model of resilience, able to absorb any number of dislocations and disruptions, from war to natural disasters. (Famously, some of Hiroshima’s streetcars were running within three days of the atomic bombing.) So far, the economic threat posed by the coronavirus looks less devastating to the Shinkansen than the “triple disaster” of 2011, which saw Japan rocked by an earthquake, tsunami and a subsequent nuclear crisis. But the ripple effects of the pandemic are quietly raising critical questions about the Shinkansen’s future. In a smaller and perhaps more digitally inclined Japan, is there still a need for this much speed?
Subsidies, politics and the price of privatization
The scale of the current ridership crash is indeed huge. For the quarter ending June 30, Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central), which operates the Tokaido Shinkansen, the oldest and most profitable bullet train service, reported a revenue drop of almost 73% compared to 2019. Ridership on the Tokaido Shinkansen for the period of August 7 through 17 — typically one of the busiest travel periods of the year — was down 76%. Another company, JR East, posted its first-ever loss in the first quarter of 2020 and cut Shinkansen services by 40% starting in May; the company also slashed fares by 50% through March 2021. The company is projecting its largest net loss since Japan’s railways were privatized in 1987, with estimated losses for FY2020 coming in at $3.96 billion (its FY2019 profit was $1.9 billion).
Shinkansen companies have responded to the ridership and revenue crisis by emphasizing the system’s safety, even running more trains to allow for more social distancing: “In October, we will operate 360 trains a day on average,” JR Central recently announced. Its anti-virus precautions are typical of major train companies in Japan: It replaces the air in Shinkansen cars every 6 to 8 minutes, disinfects trains and stations daily, and conductors also disinfect high-touch surfaces while making their rounds.
According to JR Hokkaido, lower ridership has not translated into service cuts. “Partly cancelled conventional and Shinkansen trains due to the Covid-19 pandemic have all resumed since July 1,” the company said in a statement. (Other JR companies did not respond to requests for comment.)
Five private companies run Japan’s Shinkansen network. Collectively known as the Japan Railways or JR Group, they emerged from the 1987 privatization of the indebted and beleaguered Japanese National Railway (JNR). Each JR passenger company owns and maintains its pre-privatization infrastructure and trains within specific geographic regions. Not all Shinkansen are profitable, but four of the post-privatization passenger rail companies were in 2019. In part, that’s because they control valuable real estate around their stations and develop it with revenue-generating shopping centers, restaurants and hotels. That said, they all benefit from some degree of public subsidies. Central and local governments, for example, contribute the majority of funding to develop new Shinkansen lines.
A Shinkansen passes by the Shimbashi station in Tokyo.
Such close connections between governments and rail operators are not unique to Japan. In the European Union, successive reforms over the past 30 years have liberalized the rail sector, leading to differing degrees of subsidy, infrastructure ownership and market dominance across member states. The U.S.’s Amtrak is a quasi-public corporation that receives federal, state and local subsidies; it owns its own trains but only 30% of the tracks they travel on.
While the privatization of JNR has reduced political interference in rail operations, Shinkansen routes and access to stations have continued to serve as political footballs, leading to allegations of “political stations” (“seiji eki”) and “political lines” (“seiji sen”) since before the first Shinkansen service in 1964. Central government direction, for example, is the reason the Hokuriku Shinkansen runs through Nagano, and arrived ahead of the 1998 Winter Olympics. In other instances, new Shinkansen services have undermined previous public investments, as in the case of new and already economically marginal rural airports — also a product of political maneuvering — that are rendered moot when Shinkansen service arrives nearby.
A growing urban-rural divide
Christopher Hood, a high-speed rail expert and the author of Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan, suggests one future scenario might emerge from the pandemic, if it continues long enough: Urban commuters who have packed into the giant Tokyo metropolitan region might be convinced to move to smaller cities and towns, where land prices are lower and homes are larger. Smaller cities might incentivize such a move, for example, by offering subsidies to encourage Shinkansen commuting. Reducing the concentration of population in the capital has been a Japanese government priority since at least the 1970s. But there are significant barriers to convincing people to leave the greater Tokyo area.
“‘Inaka’ is almost a swear word,” says Hood, referring to the Japanese term for “countryside.” A lack of economic opportunities makes rural Japan a tough sell for urbanites, in addition to infrastructure deficits like a lack of universal high-speed internet. Although several rural prefectures consistently top Tokyo in national primary school test scores, many parents remain convinced that the best hope for their children’s education — and their own economic survival — lies in Japan’s cities.
As regional train service fades, rural Japan has been seeking alternatives.
Now the pandemic is magnifying anxieties about rural mobility. The Shinkansen has in many ways become the backbone of Japan’s rail system: As it expanded, rail companies shut down loss-making conventional lines, often reducing service and increasing costs for people whose trips are not between urban hubs. At the same time, cities and towns outside the Tokyo megalopolitan belt see Shinkansen stations as economic lifelines that promise access for tourists, and they lobby hard to bring these stations to their jurisdictions.
The results are not always as transformational as these municipalities might hope. Fernando Ortiz-Moya is a researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, a Japanese environmental think tank. He conducted a recent study of Imabetsu town in northern Aomori Prefecture, which demonstrates some of the difficulties in using a Shinkansen station to generate economic development outcomes. With a population of 2,500, Imabetsu is the smallest municipality to boast a bullet train station. But the service has delivered a mixed impact. “As Shinkansen service increases in rural areas, we see regional service decline,” says Ortiz-Moya. “And because the Shinkansen makes day trips possible, hotels also suffer.”
Even without Shinkansen, as populations in rural Japan continue to shrink, many regional railway services are struggling to break even. “Where there is an opportunity to close down a line, these railway companies are taking it, and if the pandemic allows them to do that quicker because the demand falls away, then they may take that opportunity,” says Hood, “That’s good for the railway lines, but not for people, especially in an aging society.”
JR Hokkaido is emblematic of this challenge, and receives regular public subsidies. Its service area spans Japan’s largest and northernmost prefecture, where low population densities, harsh winters and high maintenance costs (its system includes the world’s longest underwater tunnel) led to a $168 million loss for the fiscal year ending March 2019. Last year, JR Hokkaido raised fares for the first time in 23 years. Like other rail companies around Japan, it has also reduced service on unprofitable lines. Cities like Yubari, a former coal mining center of about 8,000 that declared bankruptcy in 2006, have suffered as a result.
End of the line: An abandoned railway track in Iwaki, Japan. As rural areas lose population, service on conventional rail lines has been reduced.
A 2020 report from the World Economic Forum spotlights the structural challenges that decreased population density raises for transportation providers in smaller Japanese cities and towns. In one region of western Honshu, for example, 60% of rail lines report that revenues cover less than 50% of costs. These smaller local rail companies don’t have access to the supplementary lines of income that the JR companies generate from their valuable real estate holdings in major cities — in the case of JR Kyushu, those densely built developments account for about 60% of revenue.
As regional train service fades, rural Japan has been seeking alternatives. Autonomous vehicles have been proposed as one mobility option for the future, and some communities have begun testing self-driving shuttles. Other solutions may be simpler, as in community-operated car and driver pools. Following the 2011 tsunami, some rail lines in northeastern Japan were replaced by buses. But the commercial viability of these services — and who will subsidize them if needed — remains unclear.
A faster future, now in question
For decades, Japan has been racing to develop maglev trains, which use magnetic levitation technology to float frictionlessly along a charged guideway. Faster Shinkansen would drop travel times between major cities, allowing the rail companies to better compete with air travel. Japan National Railways built a maglev test track in the 1970s, and the newly privatized JR Central resurrected the project in 1990.
In 2011, maglev crept closer to commercial reality when the government approved construction for the Linear Chuo Shinkansen, a line connecting Tokyo and Nagoya, with an extension to Osaka. The new project was a priority for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — in 2016, the Abe Government poured $27 billion into the project to move its final completion date forward eight years to 2037. In late June, however, JR Central pushed back the projected 2027 start date for the system’s first leg, citing opposition from farmers over the impact that construction could have. While the delays can’t be blamed on Covid, Abe’s resignation earlier this month could cloud the prospects of the expensive project.
JR Central’s maglev train returns to the station after setting a new world speed record in a test run at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Track in 2015, clocking more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) an hour.
Some have argued that the train’s environmental costs could outweigh its benefits. “Given the amount of concrete that’s needed to build that line, it’s not as if there’s no negative environmental impact,” says Hood. Energy use is another concern, as the Linear Shinkansen is forecast to consume between four and five times as much power as current models, at a time when Japan’s reliance on coal is growing.
But the Linear Chuo Shinkansen also has many supporters who point out that the service can cut down on air travel and improve resilience to earthquakes by serving as an alternative to Japan’s main rail artery, the Tokaido Shinkansen. Because it would travel mostly underground, the Linear Shinkansen would also be more resilient to heavy rainfall, already a problem for the existing above-ground system, and anticipated to intensify with climate change.
In addition, maglev technology could be highly sought internationally. “This has huge export potential,” says Hood. “If we are moving to a world where there are going to be fewer planes for whatever reason … then the potential for JR Central to export that knowledge to create a network of Linear Shinkansen across the world would be huge.”
Hood also expects the Shinkansen system itself to survive the current crisis, with revenues rebounding by spring 2021. “Unless Covid drags on for several years, we will see some sort of reversion to the pre-Covid norm,” he says. “Numbers may be down on their peak, but there won’t be a doomsday scenario for the Shinkansen.”
Passengers prepare to embark an JR East bullet train in Tokyo in August. 2020. Ridership on the Shinkansen network has continued to lag nationwide as the pandemic continues.
Instead, what we may see is a new role and identity for the Shinkansen in a post-pandemic Japan, in which high-speed rail helps facilitate the greater embrace of telework. A government survey in June showed that 35% of people nationally had teleworked as a result of the pandemic, and 55% in Tokyo reported engaging in some level of teleworking. Of the 35% nationally who had worked remotely, 25% reported being at least somewhat more interested in moving out of major cities.
After all, working from home in Tokyo’s infamously tiny apartments poses significant challenges. The idea of a “workcation” has been gaining ground in Japan for several years, and some shrinking towns and cities are leveraging this trend to attract repeat workcationers, with the hope of eventually converting them into at least part-time residents.
If the pandemic continues long enough, and if Japan’s hinterland municipalities sweeten the deal with incentives like housing subsidies, such a Shinkansen-sped shift out of Tokyo could be possible, Hood says. The trains might expand the megacity’s already vast commuter shed into a national one.
Are today’s pandemic-driven service reductions and revenue losses a sign of the ghost of Shinkansen yet to come? As Japan’s national population shrinks, depopulation in its periphery will most likely continue. Absent significant and sustained immigration, this presents a structural challenge, and the JR Companies acknowledge as much in their annual reports. One can imagine a future in which some regional conventional rail services are severely reduced, and bullet train service to certain areas is curtailed or even dropped entirely, even as service between major urban areas improves. Population decline will continue to force changes in the nation’s transportation network. Whether and how the pandemic compounds these longer-term trends remains to be seen.
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