Foundation: 1987
Headquarters: Shibuya Ward, Tokyo
President: Yuji Fukasawa
Executive Summary: East Japan Railway Company (JR East) is the main railway company operating in the Kanto region and is the largest railway company in the nation. It is the largest of the seven private companies created by the breakup of the state-run Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1987. JR East’s revenue is in large part from rail passengers, but it also derives income from hotels, real estate, construction, car rentals, and other industries. Its origins can be traced back to Japan’s first railroads in the 1870s. Seventeen railway companies that would later become JNR were nationalized by the government in 1906 at the urging of Home Minister and future Prime Minister Takashi Hara. Much of the nation’s railway infrastructure was damaged or destroyed by US bombing in the Pacific War, and in the Occupation Period (1945-1952) there was little progress toward recovery when it was under the authority of the US Army’s Transportation Military Railway Service. Later, however, during the rapid growth period of the Japanese economy, JNR advanced markedly. A major milestone was the launch of Shinkansen high-speed train services months before the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The conservative government, however, became alarmed at the political power and assertiveness of railway unions, and using debt concerns as their pretext, the administration of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone moved to break up the JNR and to privatize it. In the case of JR East, with its daily access to millions of passengers in Japan’s capital region, privatization proved to be a success. Its annual income is in the range of US$30 billion.
