Shinkansen high-speed railway in Japan - statistics & facts
Ambitious plans to construct a high-speed railway system in Japan first arose8524 prior to the Second World War but remained unrealized for several decades. The story of Japan’s high-speed railway, the Shinkansen, truly began with the (first) Tokyo Summer Olympics hosted in 1964, as the government was intent on finishing the large high-speed railway project before the event was hosted. In said year, the Tokaido Shinkansen commenced operations linking the country’s two populous regions Kanto and Kansai. The first high-speed train, dubbed 'Hikari', needed slightly more than three hours to bridge the 550 kilometers between Tokyo and Osaka. Nowadays, the fastest 'Nozomi', operating at speeds up to 285 kilometers per hour (km/h), needs merely 141 minutes and runs almost as precisely as the clockwork.
