The Shinkansen: From Dream to Essential Daily Service

When the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, hailed as a “dream super express,” debuted in 1964, it linked Tokyo and Shin-Osaka stations in just four hours. This speed would hardly be regarded as “super express” today, but it was a revolutionary reduction in travel time from the six and a half hours it had previously taken to get from Tokyo to Osaka. A year later, in 1965, the originally planned travel time of three hours and ten minutes was achieved, making it possible, at a push, to make a day trip between the two cities.

A further significant advance was seen in March 1992 with the start of the Nozomi service. At approximately twenty minutes faster than the Hikari, it shortened the travel time between the two cities to two hours and thirty minutes. That was enough time to enjoy a bentō and a short doze, lulled by the gentle vibration of the train, before arriving in Osaka.

Initially, the Nozomi service only ran two round trips a day, but following the opening of the shinkansen platforms at Shinagawa Station in 2003, the number of Nozomi trains increased considerably, surpassing those for the Hikari service. The shinkansen currently takes two hours and twenty-one minutes between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka and runs at a maximum speed of 285 kilometers an hour. It is now possible for a maximum of 12 trains an hour to operate, around one every five minutes, and they depart as frequently as trains on conventional lines.

Counting Kodama, Hikari, and Nozomi, 372 shinkansen services run per day, carrying 432,000 passengers in total. The average delay, even including those unavoidably caused by natural disasters, is 1.6 minutes per train. The dream super express has become an essential part of everyday life.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)