Japanese State Railways

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JNR logo
Sign at the headquarters of the State Railways in Chiyoda , Tokyo.

The Japanese National Railways ( Japanese 日本 国有 鉄 道 Nihon / Nippon kokuyū tetsudō , short Kokutetsu ( 国 鉄 ); English Japanese National Railways , short JNR ) is the former state railway company of Japan. It was spun off in 1949 from the Ministry of Transport, which was previously responsible for operations, as an independent public company. As of April 1, 1987 , railway operations were divided among seven independent sub-companies under private law (six regional for passenger transport and one nationwide for freight transport), the largest of which are now listed, profitable and largely privately owned, the smallest are still fully owned the responsible self-governing body of the state (English JRTT ).

Often one also includes all state predecessors before 1949 in the designation Staatsbahn / kokutetsu (English, among other things, Japanese Government Railways (JGR)). The successors of the state railway are often referred to as the JR Group (Japanese only JR , jeiāru , actually never Japan reiruueizu ; English Japan Railways Group ), which operate under the common brand, work together on customer services and inevitably operationally, but do not form a group of companies in the narrower sense. The article Rail transport in Japan provides an overview .

history

prehistory

The first railway line in Japan was completed in 1872 from Tokyo to Yokohama , followed by the Kobe - Osaka line in 1874 and the Osaka to Kyoto line in 1877 . The routes later became part of the Tōkaidō main line .

Due to the poor financial situation of the state and the high costs that the railway construction caused, the Japanese government allowed the establishment of private railways in 1880 with reduced tax rates for the owners. Success quickly turned up. As early as 1893, the route network was around 2,100 km, of which around 880 km were state-owned.

Between 1906 and 1907, important private railways were nationalized to give the military better control over the railways. With a route network of approx. 5,200 km of private railways compared to approx. 2,500 km of state railways, free access to private railways was a strategic necessity for the military, which was strengthened after the Russo-Japanese War . The state railways, which had previously been under the Ministry of Communications (from 1907 onwards the "Reichsbahn Authority ", teikoku tetsudō-chō ) were subordinated to the new railway office ( tetsudō-in ) in 1908 . At the time of the second Ōkuma cabinet , the chairman was Soyeda Juichi . In 1920 the Railway Authority was upgraded to the Ministry of Railways ( tetsudō-shō ).

Japanese State Railways

After the Second World War , the state railway was converted into a public company on June 1, 1949 ( kōkyō kigyōtai , as well as Nihon Tabako Sangyō (JT) and Nippon Denshin Denwa (NTT)) and from then on traded as Nippon Kokuyū Tetsudō . The reasons for the conversion were the high debts that had accumulated in the years after the war. Since the state railway was obliged to take on around 250,000 railway workers from the former occupation areas and soldiers as employees and was forbidden to make price adjustments (= increases) (in order to dampen inflation or make it invisible), the state enterprise achieved a deficit annually. In addition, with the support of the occupying power in the context of democratization, trade unions were founded. The sōrengō , founded in February 1946, had 508,000 members, with a total of approx. 670,000 employees, and paralyzed rail operations with regular strikes.

Prestige of JNR was the 1964 Summer Olympics opened Shinkansen -Hochgeschwindigkeitszug. The state railway also included bus and ferry lines, at times a baseball team and hospitals.

The greatest accident in the company's history occurred on September 26, 1954. The railway ferry Tōya , operated by the state railway , which connected the island of Hokkaidō to the island of Honshū via the Tsugaru Strait, sank on September 26, 1954 in typhoon No. 15 (international " Taifun Marie "). According to a publication by the state railway, the death toll was 1,153.

Preparing for privatization

Numerous Japanese state-owned companies were privatized under Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone , including the JNR. Before privatization, the company was chronically in deficit and suffered mainly from inefficient investments and high labor costs.

On June 7, 1983, the Japanese government appointed a commission for the rehabilitation of the Japanese State Railways , which met for the first time on June 10 of the same year. The five members were made up of high-ranking industry managers and university professors. It was planned to develop a concept for dividing the state railway into seven companies organized under private law by June 1987. To underline the importance of the commission, Prime Minister Nakasone , Transport Minister Hasegawa and other members of the government attended the first meeting. The commission went back to the 1982 recommendations of the Commission for the Reform of the State Administration .

Splitting and privatization

With effect from April 1987, the company was split into seven private companies under the umbrella of Japan Railways .

At this point in time, the state-owned railway company had amassed debt of more than 37 trillion yen (455 billion German marks ) - more than half of the Japanese national budget. With the privatization, the public sector took over 69 percent of the debt, a total of 31% was taken over by the companies on the Japanese main island: JR Higashi-Nihon ( JR East ), JR Nishi-Nihon ( JR West ) and JR Tōkai ( JR Central ).

In protest against the proposals of the commission, the president, the executive and the operational president of the JNR resigned in autumn 1985. The committee had planned a division of the railway into several corporate divisions as well as a workforce reduction of around 80,000 jobs.

In the 1991/92 financial year, the seven successor companies achieved a profit of 146 billion yen (1.8 billion D-Mark at 1992 prices) with an average increase in sales of seven percent. JR East, West and Central have not been able to reduce their debt levels significantly until then. JR East, the largest railway company, had debts of 5.42 trillion yen (66.7 billion German marks) at the end of fiscal year 91/92 - 2.8 times its annual turnover. The debt level at JR Central was 5.47 trillion yen (67.3 billion German marks).

baseball

From 1950 to 1965, the State Railroad owned the professional baseball team Kokutetsu Swallows . The name of the "State Railway Swallows" was derived from the well-known Tsubame ("swallow") express train that connected Tokyo with Osaka before the Shinkansen was built.

  • The first president of the state railway (kokutetsu sōsai) , Shimoyama Sadanori , died in July 1949 under unexplained circumstances in front of a freight train.

  • The 1951 railway accident at Sakuragichō contributed to the resignation of his successor Kagayama Yukio .

  • After investigations in parliament, the third state railroad president Nagasaki Sōnosuke took responsibility for the sinking of the Shiun state railway ferry by resigning in 1955.

  • The construction of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen is attributed to the fourth sōsai Sogō Shinji ("father of the Shinkansen"), but who resigned in 1963 because of the financial irregularities in the construction.

  • A state railway bus in Shikoku

  • The state railway ferry Tosa

literature

Commons : Japanese National Railways  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Announcement of the restructuring commission plans the division of the JNR . In: Railway technical review . 32, No. 9, 1983, p. 560
  2. ↑ a b c Announcement Profits and Debts with Japan Railways . In: Railway technical review . 41, No. 5, 1992, p. 341
  3. ↑ Report of resignation to the Japanese Railways . In: Railway technical review . 34, No. 10, 1985, p. 706