Misplaced Pages

#854145

22-579: The Japan Railways Group was founded on 1 April 1987, when Japanese National Railways (JNR) was privatized. Japanese National Railways was divided into six regional passenger rail companies and a single freight railway company, Japan Freight Railway Company. The company has only about 50 kilometers (31 mi) of track of its own, and therefore operates on track owned by the six JR passenger railways as well as other companies which provide rail transport in Japan . In 2017, only about 5% of all freight in Japan

44-583: A break-away group from Doro. The term Kokuyū Tetsudō "state-owned railway" originally referred to a network of railway lines operated by 17 private companies that were nationalized following the Railway Nationalization Act of 1906 and placed under the control of the Railway Institute. Later, the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications took over control of

66-605: A deficit for many years. While major part of the operation of JR Freight is on the tracks owned and maintained by other JR companies, JR Freight owns the railway lines (as Category-1 railway business) as follows: As of 1 March 2017, JR Freight owns and operates the following rolling stock , with most of the newer motive stock being exclusively built by Toshiba Infrastructure Systems & Solutions : Japanese National Railways The Japanese National Railways ( 日本国有鉄道 , Nihon Kokuyū Tetsudō or Nippon Kokuyū Tetsudō ) abbreviated JNR or Kokutetsu ( 国鉄 ) ,

88-475: A difficult problem for JNR. Since public workers were prohibited to strike , they carried out "work-to-rule protests" that caused trains to be delayed. On March 13, 1973, train delays caused by such protests resulted in a riot of angered passengers at Ageo Station in Saitama Prefecture. From November 26, 1975, to December 3, 1975, major labor unions of JNR conducted an eight-day-long illegal "strike for

110-518: A public corporation, JNR experienced a series of mysterious incidents as follows. Although the police at that time treated them as terrorism by the communists , doubts have been raised as to the validity of this conclusion. In later years, JNR was a target of radical leftists . On October 21, 1968, groups of extremist students celebrating "International Antiwar Day" occupied and vandalized Shinjuku Station in Tokyo. They criticized JNR's collaboration in

132-409: Is carried by rail but nearly all of that, 99%, is carried by JR Freight. Trucks carry about 50% and ships about 44%. JR Freight has seen its share of the freight market gradually decrease since 1993. In the 2010s JR Freight has been carrying more freight because of the decrease in the number of available truck drivers due to age as well as government policy to reduce carbon dioxide. JR Freight has run

154-589: The Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency , the successor body to the JNR Settlement Corporation. The agency said it would pay 20 billion yen, approximately 22 million yen per worker, to 904 plaintiffs. However, as the workers were not reinstated, it was not a full settlement. Between 1950 and 1965, JNR indirectly owned a professional baseball team named Kokutetsu Swallows ( 国鉄スワローズ , Kokutetsu Suwarōzu ) . Swallow

176-467: The Vietnam War by operating freight trains carrying jet fuel for U.S. military use. On November 29, 1985, militants supporting a radical sect of JNR's labor union objecting to the privatization of JNR damaged signal cables at 33 points around Tokyo and Osaka to halt thousands of commuter trains and then set fire to Asakusabashi Station in Tokyo. As such, relationships with labor unions were always

198-551: The JNR Reconstruction Act (officially the Act on Special Measures concerning Reconstruction Promotion of Management of Japanese National Railways, Act No. 111 of 1980) directed JNR to specify unprofitable lines ("specified local lines") that should be replaced by bus operations based on certain criteria set by a Cabinet Order. However, even if Units of transportation measurement were below 4000 per day, these 51 sections which met

220-507: The JNR Settlement Corporation, later stated that their help in finding work consisted of giving him photocopies of recruitment ads from newspapers. This period ended in April 1990, and 1,047 were dismissed. This included 64 Zendoro members and 966 Kokuro members. Twenty-three years after the original privatization, on June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court settled the dispute between the workers and

242-516: The JR companies. There was substantial pressure on union members to leave their unions, and within a year, the membership of the National Railway Workers' Union (Kokuro) fell from 200,000 to 44,000. Workers who had supported the privatization, or those who left Kokuro, were hired at substantially higher rates than Kokuro members. There was a government pledge that no one would be "thrown out onto

SECTION 10

#1732851220855

264-543: The debt has risen to ¥30 trillion ($ 491 billion in 2021 dollars). Many lawsuits and labor commission cases were filed over the decades from the privatization in 1987. Kokuro and the National Railway Locomotive Engineers' Union (Zendoro), both prominent Japanese railway unions, represented a number of the JNR workers. Lists of workers to be employed by the new organizations were drawn up by JNR and given to

286-490: The inauguration of high-speed Shinkansen service along the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line on October 1, 1964. However, JNR was not a state-run corporation; its accounting was independent from the national budget. Rural sections without enough passengers began to press its management, pulling it further and further into debt. In 1983, JNR started to close its unprofitable 83 local lines (the closure continued three years after

308-403: The last day of JNR. JNR operated both passenger and freight services. Shinkansen , the world's first high-speed railway was debuted by JNR in 1964. By the end of JNR in 1987, four lines had been constructed: JNR operated bus lines as feeders, supplements or substitutions of railways. Unlike railway operation, JNR Bus was not superior to other local bus operators. The JR Bus companies are

330-499: The network. The ministries used the name Japanese Government Railways (JGR) to refer their network in English. During World War II , many JGR lines were dismantled to supply steel for the war effort. On June 1, 1949, by a directive of the U.S. General HQ in Tokyo , JGR was reorganized into Japanese National Railways, a state-owned public corporation . JNR enjoyed many successes, including

352-574: The privatization). By 1987, JNR's debt was over ¥27 trillion ($ 442 billion at 2021 exchange rates) and the company was spending ¥147 for every ¥100 earned. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone , an avowed advocate of privatization , strongly supported breaking up JNR and in August 1982 launched the JNR Reform Commission to officially begin the process. By an act of the Diet of Japan , on April 1, 1987, JNR

374-469: The right to strike", which resulted in a total defeat of the unions. Specified local lines The specified local lines ( 特定地方交通線 , Tokutei chihōkōtsū sen ) were the railway lines specified by Japanese National Railways (JNR) under the 1980 JNR Reconstruction Act ( 国鉄改革法 , Kokutetsu kaikaku hō ) to be closed. All of 83 lines were closed and substituted by buses or transferred to other railway operators between 1983 and 1990. Article 8 of

396-539: The street", and so unhired workers were classified as "needing to be employed" and were transferred to the JNR Settlement Corporation , where they could be assigned for up to three years. Around 7,600 workers were transferred in this way, and around 2,000 of them were hired by JR firms, and 3,000 found work elsewhere. Mitomu Yamaguchi, a former JNR employee from Tosu in Saga prefecture who had been transferred to

418-489: The successors of the bus operation of JNR. JNR operated ferries to connect railway networks separated by sea or to meet other local demands: Out of three routes assigned to JR companies in 1987, only the Miyajima Ferry remains active as of 2023. A number of unions represented workers at JNR, including the National Railway Workers' Union (Kokuro), the National Railway Locomotive Engineers' Union (Doro), and Doro-Chiba,

440-572: Was privatized and divided into seven railway companies, six passenger and one freight, collectively called the Japan Railways Group or JR Group. Long-term liabilities of JNR were taken over by the Japanese National Railway Settlement Corporation . That corporation was subsequently disbanded on October 22, 1998, and its remaining debts were transferred to the national budget's general accounting. By this time

462-790: Was a symbol of JNR as it is the English equivalent of the Japanese Tsubame , the name of a deluxe train operated by JNR in the 1950s. JNR sold the team to the Sankei Shinbun in 1965, and called the Atoms from 1966 to 1973; the team is now the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and has been owned by the Yakult company since 1970. JNR as a public corporation (from 1949 to 1987) experienced five major accidents (including two shipwrecks of railway ferries) with casualties more than 100: In its very early days as

SECTION 20

#1732851220855

484-471: Was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated 19,756.8 km (12,276.3 mi) of narrow gauge ( 1,067 mm ( 3 ft 6 in )) railways in all 46 prefectures of Japan. This figure expanded to 21,421.1 km (13,310.5 mi) in 1981 (excluding Shinkansen), but later reduced to 19,633.6 km (12,199.8 mi) as of March 31, 1987,

#854145