Keisei 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 1909
Founder Honda Teijiro (本多貞次郎)
Founding location 東京都
Core business at founding A pilgrimage railway to Naritasan Shinshoji temple
Listed 1949
President Amano Takao President since 2025 (age 60, as of 2026)
Current priority Asset rotation · Shareholder returns Reducing the Oriental Land shareholding and returning the proceeds to shareholders
Founding
In June 1909 Honda Teijiro and his associates established Keisei Electric Tramway with capital of about ¥1.5 million to carry pilgrims to Naritasan Shinshoji temple. Services opened between Oshiage and Ichikawa in November 1912, and it took twenty-one years of extension eastward before the line was completed through to Narita in April 1930. On the Tokyo side, Aoto to Nippori opened in 1931 and Nippori to Ueno Park in December 1933, giving the company Keisei Ueno station. Because the main line out of Oshiage ran alongside the government-run Sobu Line and took the long way into the city centre, Keisei brought its bus services in-house in 1932, entered the property business in 1933, and also ran an electric light and power business with twenty-four towns and villages in the Higashi-Katsushika district of Chiba Prefecture as an exclusive supply area. In June 1945 the name was changed to Keisei Electric Railway, and in May 1949 it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The Decision
Keisei covered the disadvantage of a line running beside a national railway with assets it held outside the railway. In December 1960 it began mutual through running with Toei Subway Line 1, softening the inconvenience of a terminus at Oshiage; in July of the same year it founded Oriental Land jointly with Mitsui Fudosan and others, and entered the development of reclaimed land off Urayasu. The weight of profit carried by the side businesses rose from under 30 per cent around 1960 to nearly 80 per cent by 1964. When those side businesses fell into trouble in the oil shock, and the Narita airport line built at a cost of $58.4M (¥15bn) stood unused while generating interest, the business reached a dead end in 1977. In June 1979, in consultation with its nine main banks, the company carried out a staff rationalisation that included 334 voluntary redundancies, and Kawasaki Chiharu stepped down as president. The opening of Tokyo Disneyland by Oriental Land in 1983 changed the pattern from covering the railway with side businesses to supporting it with the unrealised gain on a shareholding.
Today
Recurring profit larger than operating profit is the mark of a single equity-method affiliate carrying the earnings. In the year to March 2026 consolidated revenue was $2.1B (¥332bn) and operating profit $214.3M (¥34bn), while recurring profit reached $370.5M (¥59bn). Most of the difference is non-operating income of $183.4M (¥29bn), largely the profit returned by Oriental Land, to which the equity method is applied. By segment, Transportation had sales of $1.3B (¥205bn) and profit of $110.6M (¥18bn), Real Estate $197.3M (¥31bn) and $72.7M (¥12bn), and Distribution & Retail $371.8M (¥59bn) and $1.3M (¥200m); of the $215.6M (¥34bn) of profit earned by the six businesses, Transportation accounted for 51 per cent and Real Estate for 34 per cent. In March 2024 the company sold 1 per cent of Oriental Land for $528.7M (¥80bn), and in November of the same year recovered a further $407.9M (¥62bn), bringing its holding down to a little over 20 per cent. Shrinking a shareholding worth more than the core business has left the railway's own earnings exposed directly to the view of the market.
Competition
On the two lines running to Narita Airport, Keisei halved the journey time and turned a disadvantage into an advantage. The section from Keisei Narita to Narita Airport opened with the airport itself in May 1978, but the station stood 800 metres from the terminal building, and through running into the underground station beneath the terminal had to wait until March 1991. In July 2010 the Narita Airport Line opened at a total project cost of about $1.4B (¥126bn), linking Nippori and Narita Airport in as little as 36 minutes at a maximum speed of 160 kilometres an hour. That cut the roughly 70 minutes by way of the main line to less than half, reversed the standing of the journey time against JR East's Narita Express, and lifted transport revenue from about $1.1B (¥114bn) in the year to March 2008 to about $1.5B (¥160bn) in the year to March 2020. The airport line that in 1977 stood unused and generated nothing but interest became, over some thirty years, the route by which the growth of the airport was turned into fare revenue.

Timeline

1909–1959The fate of running beside a national line, and securing a terminus in central Tokyo

  1. 1909Keisei Electric Tramway (京成電気軌道) is established
  2. 1912Electric services open between Oshiage and Ichikawa, and Magarikane to Shibamata
  3. 1921The section from Funabashi to Chiba opens
  4. 1926The section from Tsudanuma to Narita Hanasakicho opens
  5. 1930Narita Hanasakicho to Narita opens, completing the line to the temple town
  6. 1931The section from Aoto to Nippori opens
  7. 1932The company begins operating its bus services directly
  8. 1933Nippori to Ueno Park opens, creating Keisei Ueno station
  9. 1945The name is changed to Keisei Electric Railway
  10. 1949Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

1960–1991Founding Oriental Land, and entering the airport access business

  1. 1960Through running begins with Toei Subway Line 1, today's Asakusa Line
  2. 1960Oriental Land founded, with Mitsui Fudosan among those taking part
  3. 1964Side businesses reach nearly 80 per cent of profit
  4. 1966The second international airport is sited within Chiba Prefecture
  5. 1972Hokuso Development Railway established for Chiba New Town
  6. 19777.1 km of airport line stands unused as the business reaches crisis
  7. 1978Keisei Narita to Narita Airport opens; the Skyliner begins running
  8. 1979Kawasaki Chiharu moves up to chairman; Sato Mitsuo (佐藤光夫) becomes president and a five-year rebuilding plan starts
  9. 1983Oriental Land opens Tokyo Disneyland
  10. 1991Through running begins into the underground station at the Narita Airport terminal

1992–2020Sky Access opens, and an unrealised gain larger than the railway

  1. 1992Consolidated revenue of $1.5B (¥193bn) in the year to March
  2. 1998The business of Chiba Kyuko Electric Railway (千葉急行電鉄) is taken over
  3. 2003The bus business is transferred to Keisei Bus
  4. 2009Teito Motor Transportation (帝都自動車交通) becomes a subsidiary
  5. 2010The Narita Airport Line, Narita Sky Access, opens
  6. 2017Kobayashi Toshiya becomes president and representative director
  7. 2019Kanto Railway (関東鉄道) becomes a subsidiary
  8. 2020Transport revenue reaches about $1.5B (¥160bn) before the pandemic

Founding Story

1909–1959The fate of running beside a national line, and securing a terminus in central Tokyo

Keisei set out as a pilgrimage railway to the temple at Narita and spent half a century discovering that the railway alone would not pay for itself: the Sobu Line of the government railways ran alongside it for much of its length, and the route into central Tokyo was a detour. Operating revenue of $4.2M (¥2bn) in the year to March 1953 had reached only $9.4M (¥3bn) six years later, and by then buses, property and an electricity supply concession were carrying weight that the tracks could not.

The fate of the parallel Sobu Line, and building the line from Oshiage to Ueno

In June 1909 the founder Honda Teijiro (本多貞次郎)[1] and his associates established Keisei Electric Tramway with capital of roughly ¥1.5 million[2]. It was a railway whose chief purpose was to carry pilgrims to Naritasan Shinshoji temple, conceived to link the shitamachi — Tokyo's low-lying old merchant quarters — with Narita by electric railway. The section from Oshiage to Ichikawa opened in November 1912[3], and the line kept pushing east: Funabashi to Chiba in 1921, Tsudanuma to Narita Hanasakicho in 1926, and in April 1930 the through connection to Narita itself[4]. That the full line took twenty-one years from incorporation reflects both the difficulty of raising money and the thinness of the population along the route. A trade journal in 1930 judged that Keisei's largest problem was its parallel relationship with the government-run Sobu Line. Once the Sobu Line ran straight into the city centre via Ryogoku, the convenience of the Oshiage terminus would be the poorer, so Keisei — the journal argued — had to reach central Tokyo whatever the sacrifice[5].

Construction on the Tokyo side went forward in parallel. The section from Aoto to Nippori opened in 1931[6], and in December 1933 Nippori to Ueno Park opened, creating Keisei Ueno station[7]. Securing the Ueno terminus raised the line's drawing power toward Narita, and it also, in a later era, provided the base for an airport access railway running from Nippori. In 1932 the company began operating its buses directly, and in 1933 it entered the property business[8]. Carrying pilgrims to Narita-san and developing housing along the line became the two pillars that supported Keisei in its founding years. A further pillar of earnings was an electric light and power business, with twenty-four towns and villages in the Higashi-Katsushika district of Chiba Prefecture as an exclusive supply area, which produced steady income under an agreement with Tokyo Dento (東京電灯, Tokyo Electric Light) covering the prefecture[9]. With the Ueno terminus in hand, Keisei took its place among the leading private railways of the Tokyo region.

A change of name, a listing, and the structural handicap of the parallel line

In June 1945 the company changed its name from Keisei Electric Tramway to Keisei Electric Railway[10], and in May 1949 it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange[11]. From the years of postwar reconstruction into the high-growth era, the population along the Keisei line grew and commuter traffic became the mainstay of revenue. Tourist traffic to Narita-san receded into the background, and the face Keisei showed was that of a metropolitan suburban railway carrying commuters and students. In 1956 the National Capital Region development plan was drawn up, setting out a policy of restraining the inflow of population into the central wards of Tokyo and fostering satellite towns in the surrounding belt[12]. A plan to disperse an inflow of some 200,000 people a year in the central wards out to the periphery placed the Chiba side, where Keisei ran, in a favourable position[13]. Demand for residential land on the Chiba side was expected to expand reliably, and the Keisei line stood to share in it.

Keisei's standing among the private railways of the capital region was nevertheless a hard one. In a 1959 interview its president, Kawasaki Chiharu (川崎千春), assessed his own railway frankly: to be honest, the railway business is placed in very poor locational conditions. There are many stretches that parallel the national railway lines. And to get into the city centre we have to go the long way round, so the fare comes to more. On that point we are at a great disadvantage. He pointed to private railways such as Tokyu, which had no lines running parallel to the national railway, as the more fortunate comparison[14]. In the same period Kawasaki also spoke of the squeeze from discounted commuter fares, saying that season-ticket passengers travel at an average discount of 70 per cent, and students at up to 90 per cent, which is a fare below cost. He accepted it as unavoidable social policy while placing it among the factors pressing on private railway management[15]. Within that structural handicap of the parallel line, Keisei was preparing its next move: through running into the subway system of central Tokyo.

1960–1991Founding Oriental Land, and entering the airport access business

Two decisions taken in a single year, 1960, set the shape of the next three decades: through running into the Toei subway, which softened the handicap of the parallel line, and the founding of Oriental Land, which put Keisei's money into reclaimed land off Urayasu. The side businesses that followed came to carry most of the group's profit — and when the oil shock struck they carried most of the damage as well, leaving Keisei to open the Narita airport line in the middle of the worst crisis in its history.

Through running into the subway, and side businesses at 80 per cent of profit

In December 1960 mutual through running began with Toei Subway Line 1 — today's Asakusa Line — so that passengers on the Keisei network could travel without changing to Shinagawa and on toward Yokohama[16]. It also laid the basis for through running with Keihin Kyuko Electric Railway[17]. In his interview the previous year Kawasaki had described considering a plan to build a subway of Keisei's own from Oshiage to Yurakucho, before deliberation in the transport council settled on construction by the metropolitan government with Keisei running into it[18], and had said: with this subway through service, the passengers who until now have been taken by the national railway will come across to our line.[19] Through running into the subway was one of the few options available for relativising the structural disadvantage of the parallel line.

In July of that same year, 1960, Oriental Land was founded[20]. It was set up with capital of ¥250 million to reclaim the sea off Urayasu in Chiba Prefecture, develop the land for commerce and housing, and build a large-scale leisure facility — and Keisei records the founding in its own corporate history as an event of the Keisei group. Mitsui Fudosan also took part in establishing the company[21]. Keisei was raising the weight of its side businesses at the time: their share of profit, which had been under 30 per cent around 1960, is said to have reached nearly 80 per cent by 1964[22]. Its ground for line-side development was inferior to that of Tokyu and other rivals, but the advance of the Keiyo industrial belt and the concentration of population in Chiba Prefecture were changing the premises along the Keisei line[23]. In 1966 the siting of the second international airport — later Narita — within Chiba Prefecture was indicated, and an indirect benefit to Keisei was already being predicted[24]. In 1972 the company established the Hokuso Development Railway (北総開発鉄道) to provide access to Chiba New Town[25]. It was an era in which the wave of residential development in Chiba and the spread of Keisei's own network advanced as one.

Narita opens, ¥15bn of idle airport line, and a crisis in the business

In May 1978, timed to the opening of New Tokyo International Airport at Narita, the section from Keisei Narita to Narita Airport station — today's Higashi-Narita — opened and the airport limited express Skyliner began running[26]. Keisei, which had set out as a pilgrimage railway to Narita-san, had acquired a new role as the access railway to an international airport. The delay in the airport's opening had in the meantime been a heavy burden on the business. By 1977 Keisei's position was critical: the core railway and bus divisions had lost earning power to competition from the national railway and the Tozai subway line, and to that were added the interest burden of excessive land investment around the oil shock, support for a department-store subsidiary, and 7.1 kilometres of airport line built at a cost of $58.4M (¥15bn) that stood unused[27].

In 1979 Kawasaki Chiharu named the oil shock as the direct cause of the crisis: it hit the property business and the department-store business hard. Things became very difficult — but the real problem is the point I made at the start, that we simply cannot make a go of it on the railway alone.[28] He also observed that while public undertakings such as the Teito Rapid Transit Authority's Tozai Line were being reinforced to match the development of the Chiba side, Keisei as a private company found it hard to commit construction spending on the same scale. When Oriental Land opened Tokyo Disneyland in 1983[29], the value of the Urayasu area on the Keisei network was transformed. In March 1991 through running into the underground station beneath the Narita Airport terminal was achieved[30], improving the convenience of a direct airport connection. In parallel, the Hokuso Development Railway section from Keisei Takasago to Shin-Kamagaya opened, and the foundations of what would become the Narita Sky Access line began to fall into place.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Keisei Electric Railway, 京成webミュージアム (Keisei Web Museum, the Keisei story)↩
  2. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  5. Diamond (Diamond, Inc.), 1 January 1930↩
  6. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  7. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  8. Keisei Electric Railway, 京成webミュージアム (Keisei Web Museum, the Keisei story)↩
  9. Diamond (Diamond, Inc.), 1 January 1930↩
  10. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  11. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  12. Yomiuri Shimbun, 16 August 1956↩
  13. Yomiuri Shimbun, 16 August 1956↩
  14. Keizai Tembo (経済展望), 1 June 1959↩
  15. Keizai Tembo (経済展望), 1 June 1959↩
  16. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  17. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  18. Keizai Tembo (経済展望), 1 June 1959↩
  19. Keizai Tembo (経済展望), 1 June 1959↩
  20. Keisei Electric Railway, Integrated Report 2025 (Value Creation Timeline) / Oriental Land Co., Ltd., annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  21. Mitsui Fudosan, corporate history (official website)↩
  22. Keizai Tembo (経済展望), 15 November 1964↩
  23. Jitsugyo no Sekai (実業之世界), April 1960↩
  24. Yomiuri Shimbun, 25 February 1966↩
  25. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  26. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  27. Keisei Electric Railway — can a public project fail even in private hands? (12 September 1977)↩
  28. Nikkei Business (Nikkei BP), 13 August 1979↩
  29. Keisei Electric Railway, Integrated Report 2025 (Value Creation Timeline)↩
  30. Keisei Electric Railway, annual securities report, corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Diamond (Diamond, Inc.), 1 January 1930, the electric railway special issue, on Keisei Electric Tramway.
  2. Yomiuri Shimbun: 16 August 1956, on the National Capital Region plan; 25 February 1966, investment guide on Keisei Electric Railway.
  3. Keizai Tembo: 1 June 1959, interview with president Kawasaki Chiharu; 15 November 1964, [](https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2272079) on line-side development.
  4. Weekly press, 12 September 1977, on the management crisis.
  5. Nikkei Business, 13 August 1979, interview with Kawasaki Chiharu. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, January 2024, interview with president Kobayashi Toshiya.
  6. Keisei Electric Railway Co., Ltd. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section and segment disclosures.

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