Hokkaido Railway Company

The Hokkaido Railway Company (Japanese: 北海道旅客鉄道株式会社 Hokkaidō Ryokaku Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha), officially abbreviated as JR Hokkaido (Japanese: JR北海道 JR Hokkaidō), is the main subsidiary of the Japan Railways Group based on the island of Hokkaido.
==History==
:Main article: Japan Railways Group
By the 1980s, the Japanese National Railways had become practically insolvent due to the decline of rail transport and fare increases failing to compensate for high labor costs. The Japanese National Railways was privatized and split into seven different companies on 1 April 1987, with the Japanese National Railway Settlement Corporation later formed to distribute the funds among the companies. JR Hokkaido was formed from the previous JNR lines that ran in Hokkaido. Unlike some of JR's other constituent companies, JR Hokkaido remains under ownership of the state-affiliated Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency.
Yasuyuki Watanuki is JR Hokkaido's current president, having served in this role since 2022.
==Network==
JR Hokkaido operates 2,333.6 km (1,450 mi) of lines, including one Shinkansen lines and numerous commuter lines. Their headquarters are located in Sapporo's Chūō Ward.
==Presidents==
Name 	Term start	Term end
Yoshihiro Ōmori 	1987 	1996
Shinichi Sakamoto 	1996 	2003
Akio Koike 	2003 	2007
Naotoshi Nakajima 	2007 	2011
Akio Koike (second term)	2011 	2013
Makoto Nojima 	2013 	2014
Osamu Shimada 	2014 	2022
Yasuyuki Watanuki 	2022 	Active
==Trivia==
*JR Hokkaido's image song is titled Kita no Daichi (lit. "Northern Land"), released in 1988 and performed by Dark Ducks. The song was released on one of Dark Ducks's albums.
Category:Companies