Progress of Electric Railways in Japan

In 2001, railways in Japan carried 21.79 billion passengers (25.1% of all passenger transport) or 384.5 billion passenger-km (27% of all passenger transport). Rail freight totalled 59 million tonnes (1.0% of all freight transport) or 22.2 billion tonnekm (3.8% of total), clearly indicating that Japanese railway operators are almost exclusively passenger companies. Following the 1987 privatization and division of Japanese National Railways (JNR), railways in Japan are now composed of the six passenger operators and JR Freight in the JR group plus as other public and private railway operators. Table 1 to 4 show that Japanese railways are principally passenger railways and the majority of l ines use EMUs, with companies in the JR group using both DC and AC electrification methods and other private railway companies using DC electrification only. Today’s operations by the JRs started with transport in the large cities and then progressed to electrification of main lines between major cities and the opening of shinkansen high-speed railway links; the other private and public rai lway companies handle transport in and around the larger cities. Moreover, the low numbers of locomotives is due to the better suitability of EMUs for passenger and high-density operations in the major cities. Electrification technologies in Japan started with tramway operations and then developed into DC electrification of city operations. The major changeover point occurred in 1955 on the JNR Senzan Line when it was converted to singlephase AC using the commercial electricity supp ly. Subsequen t ma in l i ne electrification saw widespread adoption of AC, which was also adopted at the 1964 opening of the Tokaido Shinkansen. This article describes the development of electrification technology in Japan from the dawn of railways to today’s shinkansen high-speed railways and the progress in power technologies required for successful electric operations.