Odakyu Electric Railway - Company History

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Financial history 1953–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1923
Founder Toshimitsu Tsurumatsu (利光鶴松)
Founding location 東京都
Core business at founding The electric railway between Shinjuku and Odawara
Listed 1949
President Suzuki Shigeru President since 2024 (age 60, as of 2026)
Current priority Real estate development · Asset replacement Redeveloping the west exit of Shinjuku station and regenerating Hakone tourism
Founding
In May 1923 Toshimitsu Tsurumatsu founded Odawara Express Railway with capital of ¥13.5 million. Its parent was Kinugawa Hydroelectric Power, which Toshimitsu had set up in 1910, and the railway was conceived as a large consumer for its surplus electricity. In April 1927 the whole 82.5km from Shinjuku to Odawara opened in one stroke as the longest electric railway in Japan at the time, but much of the country it ran through was uninhabited moorland and demand never caught up with the conception. The Enoshima Line opened in April 1929; Teito Electric Railway was absorbed in May 1940 and Kinugawa Hydroelectric Power in March 1941, when the name was changed to Odakyu Electric Railway. In May 1942 a merger with Tokyo Yokohama Electric Railway and Keihin Electric Express Railway turned it into Tokyo Express Electric Railway and the name disappeared; the separation of June 1948 brought it back as Odakyu Electric Railway with capital of ¥100 million.
The Decision
Laying a second pair of tracks over one line took fifty-four years. The quadruple-tracking of Yoyogi-Uehara to Noborito, begun with the city-planning decision of December 1964, was held up for decades by the difficulty of buying land; it passed through Kitami to Izumi-Tamagawa in June 1997, Setagaya-Daita to Kitami in November 2004 and the undergrounding around Shimo-Kitazawa in March 2013, and four-track running began over about 12km from Yoyogi-Uehara to Noborito in March 2018. The total outlay was about $2.8B (¥310bn). Trains in the morning commuting peak rose from 27 to 36, and the journey from Machida to Shinjuku shortened from 49 minutes to 37. The weight of the work was absorbed by Odakyu Department Store, founded in 1961, and Odakyu Real Estate, founded in 1964 — and in May 1997 that department store named its unprofitable bubble-era investments a negative legacy and began clearing them up. Spending half a century on a single line left the company concentrating its investment at the two ends of it, Shinjuku and Hakone.
Today
Leaning on neither property nor hotels, more than half the profit still comes from the railway. In the year to March 2026 consolidated revenue was $2.6B (¥419bn), operating profit $333.2M (¥53bn) and net profit $236.5M (¥37bn). Transportation earned $1.1B (¥179bn) of revenue and $186.5M (¥30bn) of profit, Lifestyle Services $980.7M (¥155bn) and $48.7M (¥8bn), and Real Estate $536.2M (¥85bn) and $98M (¥16bn); of the $332.6M (¥53bn) the three businesses made between them, 56 per cent came from transportation. Capital spending, too, went more to transportation, at $322.5M (¥51bn), than to real estate, at $136.6M (¥22bn). The main building of Odakyu Department Store at Shinjuku closed in October 2022, and the proceeds of the asset switch at the west exit of Shinjuku — the hotel and the neighbouring offices sold for about $925.2M (¥130bn) in March 2023 — went into a mixed-use tower due for completion in the 2029 financial year. What let the company take the sale of ageing assets first and the next investment second is that the railway keeps producing more than half the profit.
Competition
At Hakone the company still faces the same rival over a resort it took hold of seventy-six years ago. In February 1949, having regained its independence in the break-up of the Greater Tokyu, Odakyu acquired shares in Hakone Tozan Railway and Kanagawa Chuo Omnibus and ran the buses, the sightseeing boats and the hotels as one. Seibu-affiliated buses running into routes Odakyu had monopolised were the spark, and from the 1950s until about 1968 the quarrel ran on, obstruction of traffic included. Once it was settled the two divided the ground between the Shinjuku side and the Atami and Mishima side, but the reorganisation of the Odakyu Hakone group in April 2024, and investment on the order of $100.2M (¥15bn) in regenerating the Hakone area from the 2025 financial year, have rekindled it as a contest of investment over inbound visitor demand. For an Odakyu with no private railway whose tracks overlap its own along the line, the focus of competition is not a route but a single resort, Hakone.

Timeline

1923–1949A sightseeing railway that opened on empty land and lost its own name to the war

  1. 1923Odawara Express Railway incorporated with ¥13.5m capital
  2. 1927Odawara Line opens throughout, Shinjuku to Odawara, 82.5km
  3. 1929Enoshima Line opens, Sagami-Ono to Katase-Enoshima
  4. 1940Teito Electric Railway, operator of the Inokashira Line, absorbed
  5. 1941Merger with Kinugawa Hydroelectric Power; renamed Odakyu Electric Railway
  6. 1942Merged into Tokyo Express Electric Railway with Tokyo Yokohama and Keihin
  7. 1944Keio Electric Tramway absorbed into the Greater Tokyu
  8. 1948Separated from Tokyu; Odakyu Electric Railway re-established
  9. 1949Shares acquired in Kanagawa Chuo Kotsu and Hakone Tozan Railway
  10. 1949Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

1950–1995The Shinjuku terminal retail that paid for the turn to commuting

  1. 1950Through services begin onto the Hakone Tozan line
  2. 1955Through services begin onto the national railway's Gotemba line
  3. 1961Odakyu Department Store established
  4. 1962Odakyu Department Store opens its Shinjuku store
  5. 1964Odakyu Real Estate established
  6. 1964Quadruple-tracking from Yoyogi-Uehara to Kitami approved under the city plan
  7. 1966Mukogaoka-Yuen monorail line opens
  8. 1967Shinjuku west-exit station building completed
  9. 1974Tama Line opens, Shin-Yurigaoka to Odakyu-Nagayama
  10. 1978Through running begins with the Chiyoda subway line
  11. 1990Tama Line extended from Odakyu Tama-Center to Karakida

1996–2019Fifty-four years and ¥310bn: the quadruple-tracking finished

  1. 1997Toshimitsu Kunio becomes president of Odakyu Department Store while remaining an executive of the railway
  2. 1997Work begins on clearing up the negative legacy of the bubble years
  3. 1997First quadruple-tracking stage completed, Kitami to Izumi-Tamagawa
  4. 2004Second quadruple-tracking stage completed, Setagaya-Daita to Kitami
  5. 2008Through running of limited-express rolling stock onto the Chiyoda line begins
  6. 2011Yamaki Toshimitsu becomes president
  7. 2013Existing line put underground, Higashi-Kitazawa to Setagaya-Daita
  8. 2017Hoshino Koji becomes president
  9. 2018Quadruple-tracking completed in full; four-track running begins
  10. 2019Enoshima Electric Railway made a wholly owned subsidiary by share exchange

Founding Story

1923–1949A sightseeing railway that opened on empty land and lost its own name to the war

Odakyu did not begin as a railway business at all. Toshimitsu Tsurumatsu had built a hydroelectric company that needed a large consumer for its surplus power, and the railway was conceived as that consumer — which is why, in 1927, a private company was able to lay 82.5 kilometres of electric line in one stroke across country that was still largely uninhabited. The tourist traffic to Hakone and Shonan that was supposed to fill it took more than a decade to arrive, and by the time the line finally paid its way the war had taken the company itself: in 1942 Odakyu was folded into Tokyu, and the name disappeared from the map for six years.

82.5 kilometres of electric railway across uninhabited moorland

In May 1923 Toshimitsu Tsurumatsu (利光鶴松) and his associates incorporated Odawara Express Railway (小田原急行鉄道) with capital of ¥13.5 million[1][2], and within months the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the construction programme head on. Even so, in April 1927 the whole 82.5 kilometres from Shinjuku to Odawara opened at once, making it the longest electric railway in Japan at the time[3]. In the prospectus Toshimitsu had argued that traffic between Odawara, Hakone and Tokyo has of late grown ever heavier, and however far the state railway increases its capacity, relieving this congestion will be difficult[4], pressing the case for taking pressure off the Tokaido main line and cutting journey times. In April 1929 the Enoshima Line opened from Sagami-Ono to Katase-Enoshima[5], carrying excursion traffic to the Shonan coast. The founding conception was to have both at once — sightseeing traffic to Hakone and Shonan, and commuter traffic in the Tokyo suburbs.

Most of the country the line ran through, however, was undeveloped moorland, and getting a sightseeing railway off the ground proved anything but easy. In June 1926 ダイヤモンド (Diamond) wrote that apart from the stretch between Shinjuku and Noborito the greater part of it is uninhabited moorland[6], and set that against Hankyu Railway, which had taken twenty years to reach a dividend of 12 per cent. In April 1929 the 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun) duly reported that although the opening of the Enoshima Line increased the capital, revenue did not increase, and the company has fallen into ever deeper difficulty[7], noting that even a 5 per cent dividend was being scraped together out of gains on land valuations. An application for additional subsidy from the Railway Ministry, and a plan to raise fares by 20 per cent that collapsed under public opposition, are the picture of a shortfall in demand pushing back against the sightseeing railway the founders had drawn.

Wartime consolidation, and six years in which the Odakyu name did not exist

In May 1939 ダイヤモンド reported that fare revenue came to about ¥1.8 million, a rise of 33.3 per cent against the same period a year earlier[8], attributing the gain chiefly to military facilities moving into the area around Zama. The irony was plain: what lifted the company out of its early financial difficulty was the militarisation of the very country it ran through. In May 1940 Odakyu absorbed Teito Electric Railway, operator of the Inokashira Line[9], and in March 1941 a merger with Kinugawa Hydroelectric Power (鬼怒川水力電気) brought the change of name to Odakyu Electric Railway[10]. Then in May 1942, under the Land Transport Business Coordination Act, it was absorbed into Tokyo Express Electric Railway through a three-way merger with Tokyo Yokohama Electric Railway and Keihin Electric Express Railway[11]. This was the founding of the so-called Greater Tokyu (大東急) régime, which placed Keio and Keikyu under the same roof. A private railway built to carry holidaymakers was reassembled, inside a wartime consolidation of transport, into a vast organisation charged with commuter traffic across the western capital region, and any room for independent management was taken away.

In May 1944 Keio Electric Tramway joined as well, and the private railway network of the western capital region was concentrated into a single company[12]. Nineteen years after its founding the Odakyu name had gone from the map, and it would take another six years to return. After the war Tokyu had not the strength to fund, out of one company, the restoration of the former Odakyu lines that air raids had damaged severely, and calls for separation and independence grew among former Odakyu employees. Odakyu Electric Railway, re-established on 1 June 1948 with capital of ¥100 million, was thus a new legal entity distinct from the pre-war Odawara Express Railway[13]. Keio Teito Electric Railway and Keihin Express Electric Railway became independent at the same time, and the Greater Tokyu was dismantled[14]. In February 1949, immediately after regaining independence, the company acquired shares in Kanagawa Chuo Omnibus (神奈川中央乗合自動車) and Hakone Tozan Railway[15], taking hold in one move of the bus network along its line and of the core of Hakone tourism. Its listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in May that year[16], and the investments that followed in Ginza Taxi, the Hakone sightseeing boats, Musashino Omnibus and Enoshima Kamakura Kanko, gave the post-war Odakyu group its skeleton.

1950–1995The Shinjuku terminal retail that paid for the turn to commuting

The Odakyu that came out of the war was a sightseeing line running through country that was rapidly filling with houses, and through the late 1950s it remade itself into a commuter railway — only to find that carrying commuters did not pay, because season-ticket fares were held below cost as a matter of social policy. Revenue grew from $3.6M (¥1bn) in 1953 to $6.0B (¥563bn) by 1995, but very little of that came from the fare box on its own: the department store at Shinjuku, the housing estates along the line and the station buildings above the platforms were what carried the track.

Becoming a commuter railway, and the built-in loss in season tickets

It was in the late 1950s that Odakyu changed its character from a sightseeing line to a commuter line. In June 1958 ダイヤモンド analysed that until now the company has done well on its distinctive character as a sightseeing line. From here on, however, its weight as a commuter line is expected to grow steadily heavier[17]. The same article observed that season-ticket revenue was held, from the standpoint of social policy, at a low fare that disregards the profitability of a private enterprise[18] — sketching a revenue structure in which non-season income from holidaymakers had to make good the loss on season traffic carried below cost. In September 1958 the 読売新聞 series The Face of Tokyo (東京の素顔) portrayed the area around Seijo Gakuen as an upmarket residential district[19], evidence of how far post-war housing development along the line had already gone.

In step with that shift to commuting, Odakyu moved into building up retail at its Shinjuku terminus. Odakyu Department Store was established in June 1961[20] and its Shinjuku store opened for business in November 1962[21]. In December 1964 Odakyu Real Estate was founded[22], taking the group properly into selling residential land along the line, and the Shinjuku west-exit car park and underground shopping arcade followed in November 1966, the Shinjuku west-exit station building in November 1967[23]. In a 1964 conversation the president, Ando Naroku (安藤楢六), looked back: Odakyu opened in 1927, but because it runs along the back roads of Kanagawa Prefecture it went through a long stretch of hard management. What changed that was the military facilities built along the line during the war, which brought more housing, and country along the line that had never been developed opened up rapidly[24] — signalling the move to put commuter traffic at the centre of the business.

Reaching Tama New Town, and capital spending that swelled with it

In December 1964 the grade separation and quadruple-tracking of the line from Yoyogi-Uehara to Kitami received city-planning approval[25]. Behind it lay morning peak congestion running above 250 per cent: without hard capacity, the turn to a commuter railway would not hold together. In October that year the 読売新聞 reported the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's plan for housing for 300,000 people in Tama, an undertaking premised on Keio, Odakyu and Seibu running services into it[26]. Interviewed in August 1965, Ando Naroku said: Since the metropolitan government has announced its plan to build for 300,000 people in Tama, we too have planned a new 9.4km line branching at Kitami and running to Inagi-Honmachi in response; including that, we shall need the enormous sum of about ¥23 billion[27], voicing his misgivings about a structure that internal reserves alone could not fund and that would therefore lean on borrowings and bonds.

Those misgivings were borne out by the 読売新聞 editorial of April 1971, Building Great Housing Estates and Investing Ahead in Transport, which criticised the fact that the Keio and Odakyu services into the new town have still not been started[28] and laid bare a stand-off in which the private railways were holding out for cheap land, long-term low-interest finance and a special fare régime. The Tama Line opened in June 1974 from Shin-Yurigaoka to Odakyu-Nagayama[29], was extended to Odakyu Tama-Center in April the following year and to Karakida in March 1990[30]. In April 1981 the morning edition of the 読売新聞 ran a feature on ten years of Tama New Town, judging the 18,000 dwellings ranged there Tokyo's foremost dormitory town[31]. This was also the period in which retail clustered at points along the line, one after another: the Machida station building in September 1976, the Shinjuku south-exit station building in October 1984, the Odakyu Nishi-Fuji Golf Club in August 1989, the Shin-Yurigaoka shopping centre building in November 1992 and the Sagami-Ono station building in October 1996.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  2. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. Odawara Express Railway, founding prospectus, February 1923↩
  5. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  6. ダイヤモンド (Diamond), Diamond Inc., June 1926↩
  7. 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), 12 April 1929↩
  8. ダイヤモンド (Diamond), Diamond Inc., May 1939↩
  9. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  10. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  11. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  12. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  13. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  14. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  15. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  16. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  17. ダイヤモンド (Diamond), Diamond Inc., June 1958↩
  18. ダイヤモンド (Diamond), Diamond Inc., June 1958↩
  19. 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), September 1958↩
  20. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  21. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  22. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  23. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  24. 広告 (Kokoku), July 1964↩
  25. Odakyu Electric Railway, corporate website↩
  26. 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), October 1964↩
  27. 実業の世界 (Jitsugyo no Sekai), August 1965↩
  28. 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), April 1971↩
  29. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  30. Odakyu Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  31. 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), April 1981↩

References & sources

  1. Diamond, Diamond Inc.: 21 June 1926 on the underground railways and Odawara Express seen through their share prices; 11 May 1939 on Odakyu getting back on its feet; 17 June 1958 on Odakyu prospering as visitor numbers rose. NDL Digital Collections.
  2. Yomiuri Shimbun: 12 April 1929 on Odakyu's financial difficulties; 6 September 1958 from the series The Face of Tokyo; 3 October 1964 on the housing district for 300,000 people; the editorial of 4 April 1971 on building great housing estates and investing ahead in transport; and the morning edition of 22 April 1981 on ten years of Tama New Town.
  3. Odawara Express Railway — the founding prospectus of February 1923.
  4. Jitsugyo no Sekai, August 1965, interview with president Ando Naroku; Kokoku, July 1964, conversation with Ando Naroku.

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