Japanese Railway History

Japanese Railway History 9

Dawn ofJapanese National Railways
Mitsuhide Imashiro
War’s End and Railways

After fighting with Germany and Italy
against the USA, Great Britain and otherAllies, Japan accepted the Allied Potsdam
Declaration and surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945.
During the war, coastal shipping carrying coal and other goods was diverted tomilitary use and these commodities werehandled by railways. The Kanmon undersea tunnel was built to connect thecoal mines of Kyushu with mainland
Honshu, illustrating the heavy dependence on railways for shipment of domestic cargo. Japan imported all its
petroleum, and gasoline for private automobiles was severely rationed withmost diverted to military use. Motortransportation was almost entirely destroyed toward the war’s end and wassubstituted by railways.
Railways monopolized domestic transportation in wartime Japan, while profits
were used by the military. Other thanminimum measures to cope with increased cargo, the facilities and cars wereunmaintained and not renewed. Lines
were heavily bombed toward the end,
although trains were kept running by thestrong commitment of employees. Air
raids killed 4,403 employees, and killed
or injured 1,494 passengers. These figures do not include deaths or injuriescaused by the atomic bombs because thenumbers are unknown. People’s morale
was boosted even on 15 August by being able to say, ‘The trains are running’.

1906-7 and the privatization in 1987.
Postwar Japan was run by the Allied Occupation Forces from General Headquarters (GHQ). Democratic reforms
included dissolution of financial cliques(zaibatsu) and land reforms aimed at ending the landlord system. The railway wasno exception; a letter from General MacArthur dated 22 July 1948 instructed theJapanese government to turn the Japanese
Government Railways into a public corporation. The letter was written as amove to suppress the growing leftwinglabour movement, which was thriving in
the middle of the inflation-driven economic confusion, and the growth of communism. It instructed the government toreorganize the Japanese Government
Railways and other state monopolies into
public corporations, leading to the birthsof JNR, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Public Corporation, and the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation. The latter two included ‘public corporation’ intheir titles, but JNR did not due to resistance from bureaucrats, who were reluctant to change the state railway businessto a public corporation, isolated from thegovernment. In talks with GHQ, theyclaimed that labour disputes could be settled by measures other than changing toa public corporation, opposing the ideaof the war-damaged railway facilities
being restored by anyone except the government. Japan at that time was indirectly
administered by GHQ, meaning that its
instructions were implemented by theJapanese government. Naturally, GHQ
instructions carried absolute power, andMacArthur’s letter had serious significance.

Public Corporation
The public corporation concept was newto railway bureaucrats, and they studied
it from examples such as the TennesseeValley Authority (TVA), London Transport,and other public corporations. The concept was not easily adaptable to theJapanese tradition of centralized administration. GHQ itself did not fully understand public corporations and could notpresent a model that was suitable forpostwar Japan.
Today, we know from the history of public corporations in the UK and Germany,

MacArthur’s Letter and Start ofJapanese National Railways

The Japanese Government Railways werereorganized as a public corporationcalled Japanese National Railways (JNR)
on 1 June 1949. This was a major change
in the history of Japan’s railways, and is
as important as the nationalization in46

Japan Railway & Transport Review • January 1997

Soldiers Returning from Battlefronts in 1946 at Moji Station, Northern Kyushu(Transportation Museum)

Copyright © 1997 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Class-C57 Steam Locomotive Crowded with People Visiting Countryside in Search of Food
(Japan National Railways: A Centennial Photo History)

that the ambiguity of the term createdseveral difficult problems. In the case ofthe JNR, the ambiguity was coupled tothe fact that JNR was not fully autonomous, meaning that management was not
given the right to determine fares (thebasic unit of income) and wages (the basic unit of expenditure).
The Teito Rapid Transit Authority, established during the war as a subway system in Tokyo, was actually a good
example of a public corporation, but itwent unnoticed. Public corporations
were first established in many countries
between World War I and World War II.
The Teito Rapid Transit Authority wasone, but because it was formed under thewartime regime, it was not viewed as apublic corporation that was part of thedemocratization measures.
Conversion to public corporations in areas such as the railways, telegraph andtelephones, tobacco and salt, was followed by electric utilities and steel mills.
Electric utilities were formed into regional
private companies. They were under attack by labour, and regionalization aimed
to weaken the leftists by dividing a single large labour organization into several unions. This measure was recognizedby the reformists as a good example when
JNR was privatized into several companies in 1987.

Copyright © 1997 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Personnel Cuts
During the war, the Japanese Government Railways hired employees to replace those going to fight. After the war
ended, the total number doubled from
300,000 in 1939 to over 600,000 in 1947
and 1948 as soldiers returned from battlefields, and as railway employees returned from the ex-colonies of Manchuria
and Korea.
In May 1949, the government passed alaw to reduce the number of personnel
as a tool to reduce the number of public
servants including those in the government railways. A personnel cut was executed under the new law to reduce thenumber by 95,000 and the plan was completed by July.
The MacArthur letter prohibited strikes
by public servants while rejecting collective bargaining. The National Railways
Workers’ Union had been organized inMarch 1946 as a confederation and waslater reorganized as a single organizationin June of that year. Internally, the union
was divided into two or three camps ofleftists and rightists. An opposition movement was organized by the leftist executive of the union against the MacArthur
letter and the personnel cuts, but all theleftist executives were fired for leading
an unlawful strike. The dismissal wasfollowed by the ‘Red Purge’, and the leftists lost power.
On 1 June 1949, the Japanese Government Railways was reorganized as JNR.
The cuts in personnel were enforced on
the same day and the first cut was announced on 4 July. On 5 July, Mr Shimoyama, the new JNR president was

Due to copyright issues, the original photo cannot be shown.

Unexplained Derailment at Matsukawa Station in 1949

(The Mainichi Newspapers)

Japan Railway & Transport Review • Jaunary 1997

47

Japanese Railway History 9

found dead under suspicious circumstances. A second personnel cut wasannounced on 12 July, and it was followed by a series of accidents; a railcar
went out of control at Mitaka Station on
15 July, and a train derailed near Matsukawa Station on 17 July. Neither ofthese accidents was solved but they werereported by the media as if they were thework of leftists, who lost public support.
The start of the Korean War, and Cold Warchanged GHQ policy from disarmamentand democratization to reconstructing Japan as a member of the Western bloc.
Accidental Train Fire at Sakuragicho in 1951

Restoration of Railways
Railway operation in postwar Japan faceda serious dilemma between the fast-growing need for transportation, and a capacity that had fallen to less than 30% of the
pre-war level. Transportation demandrose rapidly as people flocked to trains;
soldiers returning from Manchuria, Korea, etc., schoolchildren evacuees returning from the countryside, GIs, foreigners,
and hungry people going to farming villages in search of food. A heavy burden

was placed upon railways because motor and coastal transportation was stillunrestored. The burden was made evengraver because railways had been unmaintained during the war. A series ofbad accidents, including a train fire at
Sakuragicho Station, resulted from wornout facilities and lack of funds to maintain them. However, despite the burden,
the railway authorities did all they could
to restore services and modernize. They
resumed limited express train operations
and introduced electric and diesel trains.

Tsubame Limited Express Hauled by Steam Locomotive on Tokaido Line after Post-war Restoration in Early 1950s(Japan National Railways: A Centennial Photo History)

48

Japan Railway & Transport Review • Jaunary 1997

(Transportation News)The first 5-year plan in 1957 initiatedserious investment in railway facilities.
The start of the Korean War in 1950
turned Japan into a UN military base.
Demand for transport of military supplies
increased sharply, leading to rapid economic growth. As the economy gained
momentum, the capacity of the TokaidoLine soon reached its limit.
The Tokaido Line was (and still is) themost important traffic market in Japanever since its completion in 1889. In
1950, it represented only 3% of totalroute kilometers, but accounted for about
24% of transport volume. The completion of the long-awaited electrification in1956 between Tokyo and Osaka to improve capacity did not solve the problems and, so in 1958, the Japanese
government and JNR agreed to construct
the Tokaido Shinkansen on the international standard gauge (1435 mm). The
project was started with financing fromthe World Bank and was completed 6years later in 1964. The project had been
first envisaged in 1938 before the war
when it was called the Bullet Train
Project. It was supposed to lay new international-standard tracks from Tokyo toOsaka and Shimonoseki, with an undersea tunnel between Japan and the Korean Peninsula connecting Japan, Koreaand Manchuria. The Project was actual-Copyright © 1997 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

■ Three Ill-Fated JNR Presidents

Shimoyama

Kagayama

Nagasaki

Sadanori Shimoyama became the first

Inaugural Run of Tsubame after Full Electrification of Tokaido Line in 1956

ly started; land was purchased and tunnels were built along the route, but theproject was abandoned as the war grewworse.
In a way, the Tokaido Shinkansen wasseen as the resumption of the prewar
Bullet Train Project. After completion, it
produced a much greater economic effect than ever anticipated, deflecting ridicule and disproving the notion in advanced countries that the railway wasdeclining.
■(Transportation Museum)

References
Japanese National Railways, A Centennial
History of Japanese National Railways 1974
Mitsuhide Imashiro, The Formation and Characteristic Japanese Features of Public Corporations; Prospect for A Management
Revolution in Japan; Institute of Business Research, Daito Bunka University 1995
Mitsuhide Imashiro, JNR after The War; Development of Theories on Railway Policies,
Hakuto Shobo 1988

Mitsuhide Imashiro
Professor Mitsuhide Imashiro graduated from the post-graduate school of Seikei University in
1978. He lectures at Daito Bunka University, and has been visiting professor at Stirling University
in Scotland. In 1991, he published Outcome of the Privatization of the Japanese National Rail-ways.

Copyright © 1997 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

President of JNR when it was founded in June
1949. Born in 1901, he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Tokyo and joined
the Ministry of Railways immediately aftergraduation in 1925. After serving as a highranking railway engineer during WWII, he became Administrative Vice-Minister of Transportin April 1948 and prepared for the birth of JNR.
His first task as President was reducing theworkforce which expanded sharply after the waras railway employees returned from battlefronts
and overseas railways. The government’s proposal to cut the workforce caused serious unrest, and Shimoyama was under strong pressure from the Occupation Forces, the Japanese
government, and the protesting trade unions.
He disappeared suddenly on 5 July1949 andwas found dead the following day on a mainline railway track near Tokyo. It was never clear
whether his death was suicide or murder.
Yukio Kagayama became JNR’s Acting
President immediately after Shimoyama’s
death, and was appointed President officiallyin September 1949. Born in 1902, he read law
at the University of Tokyo and joined the Ministry of Railways in 1927. As President, he faced
a number of difficulties including the mysterious train accidents at Mitaka and Matsukawa.
He was forced to resign in August 1951 after
106 passengers were killed by a train fire at
Sakuragicho Station in Yokohama.
Sonosuke Nagasaki succeeded Kagayama
as JNR President. Born in 1896, he studied
law at the University of Tokyo and joined theMinistry of Railways in 1920. He was purged
from public duty shortly after the war, because
he served as a top civil servant under the WarCabinet. After his return to public life as JNR
President, he tried hard to reconstruct the ruined railways, but he was also forced to resignin May 1955, after a railway ferry sank in theInland Sea of Japan killing 168 people.
The tragedies of these three JNR presidents
symbolize the severe post-war conditions of therailways.
(Photos: Transportation Museum)Japan Railway & Transport Review • January 199749