Regauging the Nagoya line to run through to Osaka (1959)

The price of turning a crisis into a moment

The heart of this decision lies in the way President Saeki Isamu reread an immovable emergency — the disaster itself — as the opportunity to execute a long-pending plan. That he overrode the unanimous opposition of his directors to carry out repair and gauge widening at the same time was not because money was plentiful; it can be read as a judgement about timing, that a major work requiring long suspensions difficult to secure in normal times could only be done now, while the track was already unusable. The paradox of this case is that the decision came faster in the middle of a crisis than it would have in calm conditions.

The advantage in the Osaka–Nagoya speed contest that the through express aimed at, however, did not last five years past the opening of the Tokaido Shinkansen in 1964. In its original context — a confrontation with the national railway — the gauge investment lost its main purpose almost at once. Even so, the through infrastructure built in one stroke on the back of the disaster, and the Vista Car brand, survived as the base that supported the turn into a tourist railway by way of the later Mie Electric Railway merger. The question of how to make use of assets gained through a rapid response to crisis carried on, in altered form, into Kintetsu’s management after it hit the wall of the Shinkansen.