The Death and Privatization of Japanese National Railways (Part 2, 1982-1987)
How does a national train agency die?
In Part 1, I examined the Japanese National Railways’ (JNR) debt crisis which began in the mid-1960s and ballooned out of control by the mid-1970s, and the emergent administrative reform movement in the late 1970s in partial response. To recap, JNR accrued by 1987 a total long-term liability position of 37.2 trillion Yen (roughly $256 billion in 1987 USD) due to two decades of immense and growing annual deficits. The reason was mainly JNR’s obligations to operate a sprawling passenger rail network far beyond its resources and to expand even further — despite limited support from the national government and its politicians who frequently abused JNR as a political bargaining chip with constituents and businesses.1
I also identified key men within the new “administrative reform movement” which quickly rallied around the dissolution of JNR and the privatization and sectionalization of its network. Pro-business, pro-privatization and anti-labor union figures such as Toshio Doko, Hiroshi Kato and the San Nin Gumi JNR middle managers were identified as major players in the push for JNR privatization in Part 1. But none of them were politicians who wielded the heft and influence to dissolve and privatize JNR, one of the largest bureaucracies in Japan at the time. Such Herculean tasks would be reserved for the new Prime Minister of Japan who took office in November 1982: Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Despite personal allergies to individualistic views of history, it would be disingenuous to underplay Nakasone’s critical role as the singular political dynamo in this saga. Nakasone’s predecessor, Zenko Suzuki, gave life to the JNR privatization movement, but it was Nakasone who fused the esoteric and highly bureaucratic leaders of the administrative reform movement with his political guile within his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDF). Nakasone’s personal drive was both personal and ideological, fueled by his longstanding anti-labor enmity, desire to import the electoral successes of his fellow world leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to Japan, and hunger to notch a major victory for his political legacy. In the course of his pursuit, Nakasone would reshape Japanese railways, its workers and their labor unions, the bureaucrats in and around the industry and the larger Japanese society in his image.
Author’s Note
This is the third installment of a multi-part examination of JNR’s history, and aforementioned, a critical timeline and history in understanding both the fall of JNR and birth of JR. Popular in discussions of global railways, a detailed and granular history of both JNR and JR is much needed, especially in the English language.
To accomplish this work, I rely heavily on two English-language papers found online: University of Stirling academic Ian Smith’s 1996 study “The Privatisation of the JNR in Historical Perspective: An Evaluation of Government Policy on the Operation of National Railways in Japan” and Ohio State University academic Eunbong Choi’s 1991 study “The Break-up and Privatization Policy of the Japan National Railways, 1980-87: A Case Study of Japanese Public Policy-Making Structure and Process.”
In the year-plus of research, reading and writing this project, I can sense there is much literature in Japanese on this topic that is not easily available to an English speaker in the United States. As such, I welcome all feedback, including corrections. Thanks to the excellent written works of Smith and Choi, I hope this will help serve a great deal of utility in furthering and elevating discourse on successful railways around the world.
The Fox and the Elephant
Yasuhiro Nakasone’s political ascent began as a youthful rebel fighting for his war-defeated country. As a freshman Diet lawmaker, Nakasone in 1951 wrote a 28-page letter to General Douglas MacArthur — the Supreme Commander of Japan then occupied with the Korean War — lambasting his occupation in Japan.2 MacArthur reportedly threw the letter in the wastebin in anger, cementing Nakasone’s bona fides as a right-wing politician in postwar Japan.
Ingrained in the famous 1955 System, LDP’s electoral domination and one-party rule from 1955 to present day, Nakasone climbed the party ranks and experienced many different leadership posts. Most importantly, from 1967 until 1968, Nakasone served as Minister of Transport, giving him critical exposure to the administration of JNR and personal insights of JNR 15 years later.3 In 1980, Nakasone lost the leadership race to Suzuki. Seeing Nakasone as a threat, Suzuki “rewarded” Nakasone with the Cabinet post of Director General of the Administrative Management Agency (AMA), an obscure and unwieldy bureau aimed at improving government efficiency. 4 Nakasone latched his agency to the mission of Suzuki’s administrative reform promises and used his powers to create the Second Ad Hoc Administrative Reform Commission (Second Rincho) and appointment of Toshio Doko as its chairman.5 As outlined in Part 1, Doko’s Second Rincho was the genesis of privatizing and dividing JNR.
Nakasone used the AMA to continue building his political brand and coalition inside the Dietary LDP.6 Under the 1955 System, factions inside the LDP often served as the de facto opposition in the Diet. Nakasone was in a minority faction of the LDP, leaving him vulnerable to attacks from the majority faction led by former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka (a key player in Part 1). Nakasone also suffered a reputation as a “weathercock” (AKA weathervane) who switched sides frequently for personal gain, hindering his Party popularity. When confronted if the label bothered him (his wife very much was), Nakasone responded: “What is most important in Japan now is the weathercock. A weathercock's legs are fixed, but its body is very flexible. Thus it can tell the direction of the wind…Japan needs the attributes of a weathercock if it is to survive despite a vulnerable security system and international economic encirclement…Those who become weathercocks are truly courageous people.”7
Nakasone hoped through the AMA he can build a reputation as a disciplined reformist — no longer an opportunistic weathercock — and build the “thick pipeline” with Japan’s big business leaders for his future run at Prime Minister.8 Nakasone, eager to score political wins, increasingly relied on the octogenarian businessman Toshio Doko and his Second Rincho to deliver plans to reorganize languishing public corporations, including JNR. Nakasone sought to tie his reputation to the Second Rincho’s growing “conviction that a wide ranging administrative reform of central and local government organizations was possible without the need to raise taxation”.9
By the summer of 1982, Suzuki’s cabinet was faltering by internal LDP feuds catalyzed by factions driven by two former Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka and Takeo Fukuda. Suzuki resigned in hopes of healing the LDP, and Nakasone — with the backing of the majority Tanaka faction despite being a minority member — ascended to Prime Minister in November 1982. Nakasone’s new intra-party coalition would prove shaky. Tanaka quipped the new Prime Minister tied to his majority faction “is like a fox riding on the back of an elephant. The elephant goes where it wants to go, and if the fox does not like it, let it get off.”10
Nakasone relied on his personal charisma and bombast to govern and promissed he will be “settling the accounts of post-war politics” — by dismantling the restraints placed on Japan by the United States after WWII — both in foreign and domestic affairs.11 Despite his famous personal friendship with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, describing himself as a baseball catcher to Reagan the pitcher, Nakasone guided his foreign policies using the compass of his political origins: personal enmity toward MacArthur and the post-war Japan he instituted.12 Among MacArthur’s creations were three public corporation commonly grouped as San Kocha: the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Japan Salt and Tobacco Corporation and Japanese National Railways. The first two would ultimately be privatized in 1985 without much of a fight and its internal structures intact. JNR, however, would not undergo such a painless transition under Nakasone.
1981-1982: The Media Turns on JNR
In the winter of 1981 and spring of 1982, JNR privatization was still nascent idea incubating deep within the committee meetings of the Second Rincho and LDP’s own Mitsuzaka Subcommittee. But media interest began to snowball around the new idea, and they created their own velocity by openly and positively discussing privatization. Long a supporter of JNR labor unions, the media turned on the unions to air anti-labor grievances, with mass newspapers leading the charge on investigating the sudden issue of the “collapse of JNR work discipline”. 13
When a train crashed in Nagoya in March 1982 due to a drunken engineer driving a diesel locomotive into a passenger train and injuring 10, the newspapers surprised JNR insiders with its ferocious criticism, a deviation from relative sympathetic positions of the past despite worse accidents.14 The pressure was unrelenting and hyperbolic; magazines began labeling JNR and its unions was enemies to the nation, as evidenced by a April 1982 magazine piece titled “JNR Labor-Management Relationship: A Traitor Theory to the Country”. 15
Leading the media offensive were Chairman Doko and his protege Hiroshi Kato, the chairman of the influential Fourth Subcommittee within the Second Rincho. Doko and Kato branded themselves as “Mr. Administrative Reform” and “Professor Mass Communications”, respectively, to instill public, affable faces of privatization to the Japanese public.16 Doko — who in 1981 penned an opinion piece titled “If We Continue in this Manner, Japan Will be Bankrupt” — appeared in articles or on TV show programs 50 times in 1981 and 1982 to speak on his administrative reform movement.17 The national public television channel NHK broadcasted in July 1982 a documentary program on Doko, portraying the 85-year old as a dignified, principled businessman who disdained all luxuries and craved the simple life.18
If Doko was the modern Japanese Cincinnatus, Kato was the chipper, energetic wonk eager to talk policy. Kato himself was interviewed in 60 articles and TV programs in 1981 and 1982, speaking as the common sense professor who could plainly explain complex topics.19 Kato was far more explicit in the calling for privatization of San Kocha and relied heavily on national right-wing newspapers, such as the Yomiuri Shinbun and the Sankei Shinbun, to speak his platform; Kato specifically lauded the Sankei Shinbun as “the vanguard of the public campaign for reform”.20 The JNR scoops delivered by Kato to the Yomiuri or Sankei (or the San Nin Gumi JNR managers to the Yomiuri) catalyzed an arms race among newspapers — including more left-wing newspapers like the Asahi Shinbun — to run bigger and more extensive exposes on JNR.
The Sankei Shinbun kept the pace of the news arms race. From February to November 1982, Sankei published investigations on militant and undisciplined JNR union workers identified as the main reason for JNR’s terminal decline.21 The Sankei popularized the slogan “Yami Kara Poka” as the rallying banner of anti-labor sentiment against JNR unions, highlighting workers who allegedly got overtime pay without working overtime (Yami), paid for non-existent service operations (Kara), and taking holidays without due notice (Poka).22 The “Yami Kara Poka” slogan was repeatedly cited as evidence for JNR’s obsequence to the abusive and radically left-wing labor unions. (Admittedly one of its larger JNR unions were under the umbrella of the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan which endorsed Marxist ideology openly)23 JNR workers by large felt large newspapers were highly and unduly critical and biased against JNR and their productivity, and the criticisms dampened employee morale.24
The Sankei soon began advocating for JNR privatization and division and the breaking of its labor unions. Public opinion came around to Sankei’s positions; in an April 1982 Yomiuri Shinbun poll, 52% of respondents thought JNR workers were not enthusiastic about their work and 50% blamed on over staffing. Strikingly, 42% of respondents wanted to privatize and split JNR compared to 16% who wanted to keep JNR uniform and public.25 That large support for JNR privatization would stick throughout 1986.
Choi emphasizes mass media’s role played a key part of driving Nakasone’s agenda toward JNR privatization and division and stresses that mass media “had not only benign and indirect influence but also strong and surprising power over society and politics.”26 Choi quotes a leading member of the Second Rincho on the committee recruiting newspapers and TV networks (bold for emphasis):27
We on the Council realized that the first step toward reform was to create popular awareness of the need for reform…Japan was sick even though we did not feel any pain yet. Without such an understanding, administrative reform was impossible.
The reform was performed like a triple time in music, with three principal actors: the government as a promoter, the PCAR (Second Rincho) as a responsible conductor, and people as cheering squads. In addition, the mass media played a significant role in creating a reform mood so as to lead people to cheer up. In this sense, the government and Council owed much to the mass media.
1982-1983: Nakasone Takes Power
1982 moved like tropical rain: slow drips at the start turning into a downpour. Coupled with the media push, a continuous stream of administrative reports backing privatization created momentum: in April, the Fourth Subcommittee supported breaking JNR into regional companies; in June, an intra-party Matsuzaka Committee backed systemic changes, including privatization, as the de factor LDP position; in July, a Second Rincho report officially backed JNR privatization; and in August, Suzuki and Nakasone launched the JNR Reform Commission to officially begin the process. In September, Suzuki announced plans to privatize and break up JNR within five years, his last involvement with JNR privatization as Prime Minister.
After a hiatus following Nakasone’s ascension to Prime Minister in November 1982, the JNR Reform Law was passed by the Diet in May 1983 to begin the Commission and the five-year road to privatization. The JNR Reform Commission would meet from June 1983 for two years; three of its five members served on the Second Rincho including Hiroshi Kato, “Mr. Professional Communications”, himself. JNR President Fumio Takagi repeatedly voiced his criticism of the Doko and Kato-led Rincho committees. Nakasone, who knew Takagi well, forced Takagi out of his position after eight years of service and replaced him with a supporter, Iwao Nisugi, on the presumption Nisugi backed privatization.28 That would prove to be a mistake by 1985.
The JNR Reform Commission began meeting in the summer of 1983, but according to Smith, “the reform war has already been won”.29 The opposition party, the Socialists, and other leftist minority parties in the Diet aligned themselves with JNR’s two most left-leaning labor unions, Kokuro (The National Railways Labor Union) and Doro (National Railway Locomotive Power Union), and voiced their fundamental opposition to JNR privatization and dissolution. However, they were electorally outmatched by LDP. Despite many LDP Diet members’ private concerns on how JNR privatization may impact business dealings made with close LDP business donors, they stayed quiet behind party lines and on Nakasone’s promise JNR privatization and division would help deliver an even bigger victory at the next General Election.
Here we see Nakasone’s personal will enter front stage. Nakasone saw two major objectives ahead: first, to completely destroy the left-wing JNR trade unions and erase them from Japanese political life forever, and second, to emulate Reagan and Thatcher’s electoral successes in the US and UK, respectively, by bringing to Japan big neoliberal change. Nakasone argued that if Japan ignored the major policy changes happening in other developed countries, Japan could fall behind in international prestige and thus needed bold action.30 Through the JNR Reform Commission, Nakasone ensured his own party’s support for his grand legacy project would go unopposed. The LDP rank-and-file — home to so much internal rancor which forced the predecessor Suzuki to resign — was so compliant through the process that one newspaper noted “in such an important matter it would have been natural to have active debate within the LDP as well, but most members did not say a word.”31
1984: The Walls Close In
In 1984, JNR reported 3.88 trillion Yen in revenue. Nearly 81 percent of its total revenues came from passenger revenues – and a third of passenger revenues came solely from the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansens which connected Tokyo to Fukuoka via Osaka. But it reported expenses of 5.2 trillion Yen, leaving JNR with the total deficit of 1.65 trillion Yen. It was the 19th consecutive year JNR reported deficits; its cumulative deficit was 12.2 trillion Yen, and its total long-term debt came to a whopping 21.8 trillion Yen.32 (In addition to ‘exceptional’ debts of more than 10 trillion Yen)33 Of the 245 passenger trunk and local lines JNR operated, only the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen and seven lines between Tokyo and Osaka made profits.
In 1984, as the Reform Commission worked, initial promises made with privatization were being altered as reality set in. In an interim report to Nakasone in August 1984, the Commission wrote, for the first time, that privatization would not provide a complete solution to JNR’s long-term debts.34 This ran contrary to previous statements that JNR’s indebtedness was precisely the reason for the need for privatization. Instead, the Commission promised to deliver methods to “handle a certain amount of JNR’s liabilities by depending on taxation of the people.”35
In August, the minority Socialist Party announced its own JNR reform plans. The Socialist plan listed opposition to JNR privatization or division; no employee layoffs; 30% of capital costs to be funded from the private sector; and JNR’s long-term debts and unprofitable areas of operations would be taken over by the state. However, the Socialists did not officially adopt it into the party’s platform until 1986, due to heavy resistance from Kokuro opposing any plans that entertained privatization, for or against.36 As the party representing Japanese labor, the Socialists could not move forward without Kokuro’s buy-in, but the Socialists ultimately adopted the plan without Kokuro support in preparation for the 1986 General Election.
With the LDP and Socialists taking sides on the JNR issue, labor unions and bureaucratic ministries also lined up their support. The first move came from the management-friendly JNR union Tetsuro (Japan Railway Workers Union), which in June announced its support for the Reform Commission. In October, the Ministry of Transport – long the neglected half-brother of JNR – also expressed support for JNR’s privatization, delivering a blow for JNR leadership who by then were desperate for allies inside government. The Ministry came to the decision on three reasons: realizing Nakasone will not be budged; its own regulatory powers will not be impacted by privatization and division; and to get even with JNR executives, who historically looked down at the Ministry as second fiddle in the transportation pecking order in the nation.37
After years of passivity toward the development of the Second Rincho and the Reform Commission, the JNR Board and leadership finally came to their senses in the summer of 1984 to fight for its self-preservation. A Nakasone appointment, JNR President Nisugi supported privatization but against division of JNR into sectional companies. As JNR President, Nisugi sought to keep JNR whole and began preparing for its own Reform Plan to be published at the end of the year. Nisugi’s sudden haste coincided with a change-of-heart in the JNR Board; its most pro-reform member, Tomoyuki Ota, turned against the JNR Reform Commission as the Commission alienated the Board in its discussions in reorganizing JNR. To stop Nakasone, Ota, Nisugi and other pro-status quo JNR executives hoped to enlist former Prime Minister and LDP kingmaker Kakuei Tanaka to their side with the new Reform Plan.38
Nisugi presented his yet-to-be-published plan to the JNR Reform Commission in December 1984. (The plan would publish the next month) The Commission received the report coldly and expectedly disapproved it. Word soon got out to pro-privatization newspapers and skewered it as “too little, too late.” The plan drew no support from the Ministry of Transport and all JNR labor unions.39 Kokuro and the other left-wing union Doro opposed JNR’s reform plan because of the plan’s pro-privatization stance; Tetsuro, on the other hand, opposed because of its anti-division stance. The plan fell flat on its face. But the fight for survival had just begun.
1985: The Final Struggle. Nakasone Cleans House
On January 10, 1985, Nisugi paid a visit to Kakuei Tanaka. Despite Nakasone’s tenure in the Prime Minister for nearly three years, Tanaka still commanded the largest LDP faction. Tanaka had long held a keen interest in JNR; it was Tanaka who pressured the JNR to begin construction on the Joetsu Shinkansen between Tokyo and his beloved hometown, Niigata. (The Joetsu Shinkansen opened in 1982 to immediate and huge deficits, ballooning JNR’s long-term debts at a faster annual rate between 1982-1987 than any previous five-year stretch). Nisugi made the calculated risk that if anyone can stop Nakasone, it would be Tanaka.
Nisugi shared the JNR Reform Plan with Tanaka and asked for his support of the LDP machine to preserve JNR in whatever way possible.40 But whatever leverage Tanaka may have had to stop Nakasone would forever remain a mystery, as Tanaka suffered a massive stroke the very next month in February. Tanaka’s illness was covered with global intrigue, with The New York Times warning it may “unsettle Japanese politics.”41 Following the stroke, Tanaka’s health deteriorated, becoming a shadow of his pre-stroke self. He retired from politics in 1989 and died in 1993.
With Tanaka fortuitously out of sight, Nakasone soon took his revenge on the insubordinate JNR leadership. In February, Nakasone warned the JNR leadership to “take responsibility” for the agency’s fiscal crisis.42 The “final straw” came a few months later when the Prime Minister learned Ota contacted the Asahi Shinbun to publish materials supportive of the anti-privatization JNR Board. Nakasone sacked Nisugi and Ota and their supporters in June 1985 and replaced them with pro-privatization bureaucrats. To back Nakasone’s Pyrrhic victory, twenty JNR managers – included the infamous San Nin Gumi three – published a statement in June titled “We Feel This Way Towards JNR Reform'' lambasting JNR’s own Reform Plan and advocating for full privatization and division. The new JNR leadership rewarded the San Nin Gumi with promotions to senior posts the following month. 43
In July, the JNR Reform Commission completed its final report on privatization and division. Now it was time for the Diet to enact policies recommended in the report. The deadline to dissolve JNR was set to April 1, 1987.
Earlier in the year, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation (JTSPC) – were officially privatized from state monopolies to publicly traded stock companies. A mere five years ago, in 1980, the three San Kocha companies were in equal standing for reform in the eyes of administrative reformers of Doko and Kato. Within five years, JNR became the predominant focus of the movement as the NTT and JTSPC’s own privatization processes occurred with little resistance or fanfare. As NTT and JTSPC reached the end of their privatization journey, JNR was still hurtling toward the finish line. A few more dominos needed to fall before JNR’s demise.
1986: Labor Surrenders. JNR Sentenced to Death
Between 1975 and 1986, JNR shed nearly 150,000 workers from its payroll, shrinking from 432,200 workers nationwide to 277,020 eleven years later.44 The shrinkage had devastating effects on its once impregnable labor unions. Whatever intra-JNR labor solidarity remained by 1986 had been stripped in the ongoing labor reductions, and labor unions sought to find high ground for themselves in the incoming post-privatization future, one that forecasted 70,000 more job reductions within the next year.45
In January 1986, the historically militant and left-wing labor union Doro declared its support for JNR privatization and division, joining the management-friendly labor union Tetsuro. Doro’s bending of the knee was shocking; the union steadfastly resisted privatization along with Kokuro for years and harbored more far-left radicals in its ranks than Kokuro. But Smith notes Doro union’s leader, Akira Matsuzaki, privately signaled JNR management as far back as 1981 he was willing to compromise to prevent the destruction of his union and avoid mass layoffs.46 Five years later, Matsuzaki’s Doro abandoned all further strike action and agreed to cooperate with management on voluntary retirements and job transfers prior to April 1, 1987. JNR and Doro further agreed to drop the latter’s legal claims of JNR unfair labor practices for the former's lawsuit for damages in previous illegal strikes.47
Kokuro, the largest JNR labor union, now was the last holdout. Despite its executive leadership open to working with JNR management, its union membership staunchly opposed any and all proposals to give in. In March, the membership voted against supporting the Socialist Party’s JNR reform plan. In October, the leadership pleaded to let them negotiate with JNR but was overwhelmingly rejected in a vote.48 The leadership resigned following the failed referendum, and a new more hardline leadership declared its intent to continue fighting. For their recalcitrance, Kokuro members would soon pay the heaviest toll among all JNR unions in the job rationalizations in the lead-up to privatization.
Following the JNR Reform Commission’s final report in July 1985, the Japanese Diet set to legislate proposals for JNR privatization and division throughout 1986. In February and March, the Nakasone Cabinet drew up eight bills dissolving JNR and privatizing the sectional companies in its replacement by April 1, 1987. The bills were temporarily suspended for the General Election in July; Nakasone’s LDP won 300 out of 512 seats, the most seats ever won in Party history before and since. With a 43-seat majority, the LDP swiftly brought the eight bills back to the Diet in September. After former review of the bills, the eight JNR Reform Laws were passed on November 28.
With eight strokes of the pen, the Japanese National Railways – one of the world’s great railway agencies – would operate for four more months and then cease to exist when midnight struck on April 1, 1987.
“Japan was sick even though we did not feel pain yet”
The death of the Japanese National Railways did not go quietly into the night. In fact, the opposite occurred, with public interest pouring out for the revolutionary change promising to change the fabric of Japanese daily life. In the days heading to April 1, 1987, JR successors – six passenger rail companies in total – each ran their own television commercial campaign to remind riders the old JNR was on its way out. JR East, the biggest of the new companies encompassing Tokyo, ran daily countdown commercials featuring the popular idol Kumiko Goto, ending with a calendar countdown to April 1.
As JR counted down to its birth, the 38-year-old JNR was on its deathbed. The death of JNR came to represent a symbolic release from a societal, even spiritual, illness Japan contracted and could not shake out. As one JNR Reform Commission member said: “Japan was sick even though we did not feel pain yet.”49 JNR became the symbol of the Oyakata Hi No Maru problem – that the government will always foot the bill for public agencies – and of Japan’s public sector malaise. Despair turned to anger, as evidenced by the media turn of 1981; JNR managers were seen as part of a “traitor” class who needed to “take responsibility” and that “if we continue like this, Japan will be bankrupt” from their irresponsibility.50 51
Who got them sick? For Nakasone, the Americans who occupied their country after the War in 1945. The agency, from its birth, was corrupted by American hands – specifically, that of Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers. The pro-privatization forces continuously spoke in the language of health and corruption to describe JNR’s original sin; they pinned JNR’s on the supposedly “alien” nature of its public corporation structure “imposed” by foreign forces in 1947.52 Privatization was Japan’s “cure.”53 And what better nurse than Nakasone, the man who earned his stripes by spiting MacArthur in 1951?
The death of JNR was neither natural nor inevitable: it was simply political. As seen in Part 1 and this post, the politicization of the JNR is what doomed the national service and catalyzed the debt crisis. Its executioner was a guileful politician — the weathercock, the fox — who delivered a promise made during his ascension. Through JNR’s 38-year existence, missed opportunities litter its timeline — i.e. the formation of the Railway Construction Council in 1951, the first year in the red in 1964, the labor strike of 1975 — where a different kind of political vision and willpower may have resolved JNR’s crises to whatever degree and kept the agency alive and whole. But instead, it was Nakasone and his neoliberals who realized their vision first. So JNR is dead, and a new era began.
Smith, Ian. “The Privatisation of the JNR in Historical Perspective: An Evaluation of Government Policy on the Operation of National Railways in Japan.” The University of Stirling, 1996, p. 238
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/world/asia/30nakasone.html
Smith, p. 394
Smith, p. 341-342
Smith, p. 342
Smith, p. 342
Choi, Eunbong. “The Break-up and Privatization Policy of the Japan National Railways, 1980-87: A Case Study of Japanese Public Policy-making Structure and Process.” Ohio State University, 1991, p. 146-147
Choi, p. 392
Smith, p. 348
Choi, p. 190
Choi, p. 140
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/01/16/japan-the-view-from-mansfield/e5c96fe5-ae22-44a3-b634-2ae6e2b4ae66/
Smith, p. 375
Choi, p. 353
Ibid.
Smith, p. 377
Smith, p. 637
Smith, p. 433
Smith, p. 377
Choi, p. 357
Smith, p. 378
Smith, p. 379
Choi, p. 351
Smith, p. 376
Choi, p. 354
Choi, p. 360
Choi, p. 349-350
Choi, p. 295
Smith, p. 390
Smith, p. 393
Smith, p. 396
Choi, p. 266
Smith, p. 467-468
Smith, p. 401
Ibid.
Smith, p. 410
Smith, p. 417-418
Smith, p. 403
Smith, p. 405
Ibid.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/05/world/tanaka-s-illness-may-unsettle-japanese-politics.html
Choi, p. 307
Smith, p. 406
Choi, p. 1
Choi, p. 472
Smith, p. 414
Smith, p. 415
Smith, p. 416
Choi, p. 349
Choi, p. 302
Smith, p. 31
Smith, p. 622
Ibid.
This was a great completion of the story of the end of JNR. I'm looking forward to more of the contemporary history of JR in the early days. I thank you for your work very much on this. You've brought a lot of light to this subject which is so rich with history in the Japanese railways to us.
A bit of discussion on Naked Capitalism about the astronomical costs of building transit in the US contained in All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/all-aboard-the-bureaucracy-train this is about transit and not rail. There is some mention of Japan in the article and NC comments. I posted links to your substack about JR.
Of course the situation with rail transit and both passenger and freight railroads in the US is horrendous.