A brief history of Japan’s vintage railways

Ordinarily , one does not like a shot think of railways when Japan comes to mind .

Perhaps the notable hummer caravan Shinkansen does , but the chugging steam engine is not one of the usual images of quiet , sweetheart , jumbo monsters and flash blades usually conjured by the Land of the arise Sun . Yet it does fill a special place in the Japanese cultural psyche , symbolical of life ’s journey and transitions .

The railroad arrived in Japan in October of 1872 , as part of the westernise reforms ushered in by the Meiji Emperor in the wake of the bloody , revolutionary Boshin War in 1868 - 69 . shake awake by Commodore Perry in 1853 , progressives in Japan fought to add the island into the modern , 19th hundred and compete with Euro - American mogul on their own proverbial turf . Knowledge of railroad line was not absent amongst the Tokugawa Shogunate . Locomotives had been show about in foreign reports since the 1840 ’s . Cultural mores stalled their importation , however . proscription on motion amongst the public , require checkstops and authorizing papers , made mass fare an impossibleness until the revolution . Thereafter , foreign expert were brought in , foreign technologies contemplate , and the steam engine introduced . Not surprisingly , the first melodic phrase stretched between the foreign enclave of Yokohama and Shimbashi in Tokyo .

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The first steam engine to be made in Japan would not be put together until 1893 , follow a mere two years later on by Japan ’s first electric streetcar in Kyoto . At around the same time , a critical peck of runway companies was reached , fostering the the form of contention for passengers that drive the institution of a railing culture . In 1898 , San’yo Railway brought waiters alongside . Then in 1899 , San’yo lead off first grade avail with a buffet on its express lines , trace a year later by sleeping railcar . The proliferation of rail party was so big that in 1906 , the administration nationalized many of them under the streamer of Japanese Government Railways . Only local and regional lines were allowed to keep unmolested .

Hankyu Railways serviced the surface area around Osaka , admit a terminus at the tourist destination of Takarazuka . Already famous for its hotsprings , Hankyu president Ichizo Kobayashi felt that something more was needed to draw even that many more visitors . Looking to New York ’s Broadway and Parisian cabarets for inspiration , he created the Takarazuka Kagekidan in 1914 . The revue , which still performs today under the auspices of Hankyu , was a unique frame of all - female musical theatre . By 1924 they were democratic enough to guarantee their own Grand Theatre .

Photo from the inagural Takarazuka carrying into action of Donburako in 1914 .

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One notable citizen of Takarazuka was a young Osamu Tezuka . As an adult , he would create some of Japanese pop finish ’s most globally beloved lineament , such as Astro - Boy , Kimba the White Lion and Blackjack . Another of those character was Princess Knight . Tezuka ’s female parent befriend several Takarazuka Kagekidan members and he saw many of their carrying into action , being fascinate by the grammatical gender subversive activity implicit in the all - distaff cast . To this mean solar day , it is coarse and fairly normal for a Nipponese lady friend ’s first crushed leather to be one of the performer narrow down in male purpose . These take were sound out in Princess Knight , one of the first “ shoujo manga ” comics write specially for women , about a girl bear with contravene impulse towards traditionally masculine and feminine roles . Takarazuka Kagekidan and its competitors also became the backcloth for the Sakura Wars dealership , about a troupe of Kagekidan performers who also use steam - power battlesuits to defend demons in 1920 ’s Japan . The dealership included TV games , manga , gum anime and lucullan Kagekidan - style live stage appearance .

Still from a more innovative Takarazuka performance of The Elegy of a White Flower from 1951 .

Japanese Government Railways ( JGR ) , like railway companies around the world , took upon itself the task of enticing tourists to visit the Island Empire . The government worked with private manufacture to make the Japan Tourist Association , and one of the resolution was a series of 14 high - quality holidaymaker resort hotel throughout the land . The Kamikochi Imperial Hotel near Nagano was built in 1933 in the thick of “ The Nipponese Alps ” and sports a National Parks Rustic flavour unique in Japan . locate in the coastal Ithiel Town of Gamagori , the Gamagori Hotel still offer lavish discourse . In a more traditional Japanese stylus , the iconic hotel now operated by the Prince chain has included the Emperors of Japan in its register .

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Another urban hotel was the Tokyo Station Hotel , completed in 1914 along with Tokyo Station itself . The resolve to build up the place come in 1896 but twist was not begin until 1908 on account of the Sino - Nipponese and Russo - Nipponese warfare . Like many buildings of the Meiji period , it was built in a more European mode apply red brick and arguable influences from the primary post in Amsterdam . Much of the building was ruin in the 1945 firebombings of Tokyo , but much has been preserve and the station still serve up as busy station in the city in terms of rail traffic . The first subway arrived in the Far East in 1927 , being the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line . Two years before , Tokyo ’s main tune , the Yamanote loop , was inaugurated .

railroad line were not merely a mechanics for touristry , but for imperial expansion . It is no conjunction that the nationalisation of the railways took place just after the closing of the Russo - Japanese War . Doing so consolidate the lines for the purposes of military strategy . The Japanese authorities was responsible for ramp up the railways in its captured territories , such as Korea , Taiwan , Sakhalin and Northeast China .

The workhorse locomotive engine of the JGR ( by and by Japanese National Railways [ JNR ] and presently Japan Railway Group [ JR ] ) was the D51 engine . Over 1,100 of these “ Degoichi ” were produce between 1936 and 1951 , and were still in use on the northern island of Hokkaido and in parts of Russia until 1979 . In the Nipponese consciousness , it has become the archetypal steam locomotor .

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Another popular locomotive was the C62 , which were build in 1948 and 49 , and which were the largest and fastest gear to control in the country at the metre . The engine accomplish particular notoriety for being the engine behind Leiji Matsumoto ’s Galaxy Express 999 .

The symbolic attribute of the steam train may be say to have record the popular consciousness in the 1930 ’s with the posthumous publication of Kenji Miyazawa ’s A Night on the Galactic Railroad . A melancholy rail journey in the wake of his baby ’s passing inspired his fairy fib about a brace of boys who take a train trip through the Milky Way , as along a shimmering , quartz river . This incredibly touching story in twist inspired Matsumoto to apply a C62 engine as the basis for his own steam train trip through outer space , in which a boy is taken by a mysterious distaff fellow traveller on a self - reflective journey to receive a mechanical automaton trunk .

filmmaker also made manipulation of the steam gearing ’s symbolic attributes . Yasujiro Ozu specialise in contemporary films in the post - war period , his most widely known being Tokyo Story ( 1953 ) , and frequently involves the visual of a train . A series of languid aspect of a sleepy coastal small town undetermined Tokyo Story , include one in which a charging freight train steam between picturesque tile rooftops . Here once more , the caravan can present the linear inevitableness of circumstance as guide the middle class families of Ozu ’s movie to their crises and sour points .

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Historically , the shape of rail ’s introduction to Japan and its development into a tourism industry mirrors that of the West . Unlike the West , steam train have take on a symbolical strength that permeates the refinement … Melancholy , pensive , an image of the ocean trip and sadness of life itself .

Top mental image : First Steam Train go out Yokohama by Baido Kunimasa , 1872 .

This post in the first place appeared onVoyages Extraordinaires .

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