History of rail transport in Japan

The history of rail transport in Japan began in the late Edo period. There have been four main stages:

Though rail transport had been known through Dutch traders in Dejima, Nagasaki and earlier, the impact of model railroads brought by foreigners such as Yevfimy Putyatin and Matthew Calbraith Perry was huge. The British also demonstrated a steam locomotive in Nagasaki. Saga Domain, a Japanese feudal domain (han), made a working model and planned to construct a line. Bodies such as the Satsuma Domain and the Tokugawa shogunate reviewed railway construction., but a line did not come to reality before the Meiji Restoration.

Just prior to the fall of the Shogunate, the Tokugawa regime issued a grant to the American diplomat Anton L. C. Portman to construct a line from Yokohama to Edo (soon to be renamed Tokyo). In 1868 Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant, was responsible for bringing the first steam locomotive, "Iron Duke", to Japan, which he demonstrated on an 8-mile track in the Ōura district of Nagasaki. The government of Japan decided to build a railway using British financing and 300 British and European technical advisors: civil engineers, general managers, locomotive builders and drivers. On September 12, 1872, the first railway, between Shimbashi (later Shiodome) and Yokohama (present Sakuragichō) opened. (The date is in Tenpō calendar, October 14 in present Gregorian calendar). A one-way trip took 53 minutes in comparison to 40 minutes for a modern electric train. Service started with nine round trips daily.

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