Buying the Tokaido Shinkansen outright — leaving the lease behind (1991)

The resolve never to let go of the asset that earns

At the heart of this decision was a company that merely ran the trains reaching to take the earning asset itself — the track and stations — into its own hands. The privatization design had parked the Shinkansen, a national asset, with a holding corporation, and had each operator pay a fee to run over it. That JR Central dismantled that framework from the inside just a few years after it was born, moving the facilities onto its own books, says a great deal about the kind of company it is. Precisely because it held a stable line, it wanted that line whole and to itself — and behind the language of efficiency and autonomy lies a plain resolve never to let go of the asset that earns.

At the same time, the buyout was the starting point that all but set the company’s later course. Owning the facilities made the listing possible; a system it could run on its own judgment underwrote the acceleration of the Nozomi; and the profits the Tokaido Shinkansen threw off would in time feed the plan to build the Linear Chuo Shinkansen entirely at its own expense. Had it not secured, at this moment, the autonomy to command a line by itself, the vast investments of later years would probably have taken a different shape. That JR Central pushed this move through even at the cost of being called a “troublemaker” within the JR group is emblematic of its go-it-alone independence.