Simply ten days earlier than the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Video games, Japan opened its Tōkaidō Shinkansen, a high-speed rail line connecting Tokyo with Osaka. Shinkansen bullet trains showcased the prime quality of Japanese railway expertise to the world, with trains travelling at as much as 285 km/h (177 mph).
Greater than ten trains depart from Tokyo every hour, and the common delay stays at simply 54 seconds per practice – a lot decrease than in different nations such because the UK. To date, Japan’s bullet trains have additionally recorded zero passenger fatalities of their 60 years of operation.
The reliability, punctuality and security of Japanese railways has strengthened the nation’s id as a self-professed railway expertise superpower.
Nevertheless, Japan’s Shinkansen is a self-contained railway system designed to be remoted from the standard railway community. For instance, the system is a devoted high-speed line with a wider monitor than the remainder of the community. Which means the bullet practice’s good popularity, which has been nurtured over a long time, is based on it being a standalone venture.
The irony right here is that whereas Japanese suppliers have developed excessive technical know-how, their expertise are being wasted as they battle to adapt to the worldwide railway market.
In late 2023, Japan expressed its reluctance to affix Indonesia’s US$7.3 billion (£5.9 billion) high-speed rail venture, citing considerations about technical compatibility and attainable harm to its “model”. In consequence, Indonesia picked China to construct the railway as a substitute. China additionally provided to do it sooner and with fewer circumstances.
My very own analysis means that home satisfaction and confidence will flip into anxiousness as Japanese railway experience continues to come across abroad rivals, and fails to win contracts.
The Taiwanese expertise
Japan has efficiently exported its “prime quality” rail infrastructure to Taiwan, India, Europe and the UK previously. However Japan’s expertise of exporting bullet practice expertise to Taiwan within the late Nineties and early 2000s stays a cautionary story.
The Taiwanese high-speed railway, a 350km line that runs alongside the west coast of the nation, resulted in a mixture of European and Japanese applied sciences after a lot political haggling. The Japanese engineers had been apprehensive that their bullet trains needed to run on European tracks, an engineering requirement not anticipated by the Shinkansen expertise.
They feared that the bullet practice’s worldwide popularity would undergo if something went fallacious within the course of of blending Japanese and European designs.
Fortunately, nothing has gone fallacious. However this episode reveals how Japanese engineers are obsessive about ensuring the bullet practice expertise is bought as a whole package deal.
That is an instance of the “Galapagos Syndrome”, a metaphor used to explain services which have developed with a concentrate on a single market or tradition, making them distinct when in comparison with the remainder of the world. The popularity of the bullet practice rests on not mixing with non-Japanese expertise.
The expertise in Taiwan additionally highlighted one other dimension of Japanese railway experience: that Japanese producers lack the required experience to compete within the worldwide railway market the place the blending of expertise from varied nations is the norm.
Future dangers
The Japanese authorities has lately introduced that it might again a bid from Japanese corporations to export underground railway experience and expertise to the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean nation is planning to increase its underground railway system primarily in its capital, Santo Domingo.
Japan’s involvement is smart given its expertise working fast mass transit programs. This form of system already operates in main Japanese cities like Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Fukuoka. Nevertheless, there’s a danger that the Japanese system stays incompatible with what is out there from the worldwide market.
Until the Japanese system is suitable internationally, then the operator will stay caught with Japanese expertise when the time comes for renewal. In any other case, they might want to discover a non-Japanese provider prepared and in a position to shoehorn their expertise into the Japanese system.
This predicament is paying homage to Taiwan’s current battle to resume its high-speed trains. The unique trains that Japan bought to Taiwan at the moment are due for refurbishment. And the Taiwanese operator has had to decide on between buying model new trains both from totally different Japanese producers or from European suppliers.
Buying new trains from Japan meant incurring further prices, whereas procuring European rolling inventory would end result within the larger complexity of getting a blended fleet. Ultimately, the Taiwanese operator opted to buy new trainsets from Japanese companies Hitachi and Toshiba.
Japan’s self-image is constructed on the notion that the Japanese expertise is the most effective on the planet. However Japan’s authorities and railway trade nonetheless have so much to be taught from the worldwide market. For now, Japanese confidence should cohabitate with anxiousness.