10 ms·

The last new subway line in Japan

125 points by jpatokal 11y ago

astrange 11y ago
N.b. this article links to Spike Japan, which is a very long-form blog by some literary British type guy who visits rural/suburban Japanese towns and tells you all about how they're nearly abandoned due to the oncoming population crisis. But whenever I've linked his articles to someone who actually lives there, they've pointed out he just visited on a holiday so all the residents have left to go do something more interesting.
- Zikes 11y ago
  But there is a looming population crisis, right? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=japan+birth+rate http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=japan+birth+rate
  - Retric 11y ago
    Nope. China (365/sq mile) has less than 1/2 the population density of Japan (836/sq mile) and they instituted population control recently. Slowly shrinking populations are generally good for the average person and with most of there debt being internal Japan does not need to grow total GDP. As to rail lines losing money, how much do you think the average road make per year exactly.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      China is in big trouble demographically. They recently relaxed the one child policy, and that isn't really enough. Sinking populations are bad when it comes to the pyramid nature of taking care of elderly.
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      I'm sorry, but basically anyone familiar with the demographics disagrees with you. (1) a TFR of 1.2 is not slowly shrinking, it is a collapse (2) you end up a dependency ratio of more than 1 retiree per worker very quickly. So no, it's not good news for anyone born today. (3) it is even worse, because Japan has the world's longest life expectancy. so that 1 child is going to have to support 4 generations of senior citizens. Any kid born today is going to be burdened by an incredibly expensive social net, making it even HARDER to afford to have enough children to even manage replacement. It is a serious catastrophe.
      - Gibbon1 11y ago
        It's not that bad since Japans infrastructure requirements are falling as well. And old people often don't require as many resource inputs as children and working age people. Unless you are talking the US with it's relatively unhealthy older population and bloated healthcare system[1] [1] You know where someone is checking out, the system gleefully spends a hundred grand to make sure their last few months of life totally sucks
        jpatokal 11y ago
        Um, nope. Old people need a lot more health care than young ones, anywhere in the world: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccostsbyage.png http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccost...
        Gibbon1 11y ago
        It tends to balance out, while they need more health care, they use less of other resources. But put it this way, the US spends about 17% of it's GDP on healthcare. So an aging population is a serious issue. Say you double that and now it's 34% of GDP (yikes). Now consider Japan, 10%. And Japan has a significantly older demographic already. So say it rises 50% over twenty years to 15%. That's still better than the US right now. China's healthcare expenditures are 5% of GDP. Numbers from here. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS
      - Retric 11y ago
        Your wrong. Read up on the "per capita" effects of the Black Death which was linked to a temperary prosparity spike. In modern times. 2) the effects of declining population reduce the number of non productive children and increases the number of working childless females which more than compensates. It also drastically reduces new infrastructure needs. 3) your math is way off. A 65 year old worker +25y would be unlikely to have two 90 year old parents let alone four 115 year old grand parents. They would also have .7 children in the work force (65 - 25 ) = 40. So you don't stack more than one generation pluss it's 1.4 children per two parents. This is also just starting Japan had positive population growth in 2010. And negative 0.7% in 2014. The real issue for nations is needing positive GDP growth to keep up with external debt.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
      Much like the US has all sorts of scrub lands in the west that knock down the population density numbers, China has all sorts of scrub lands in the west that knock down the population density numbers.
      - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        Not just scrub lands. They literally have mountains everywhere, even between heavy populated eastern cities. If you take a bullet train from Beijing to Guangzhou, it is heavily tunneled for much of the entire trip, which makes the task even more amazing.
        Retric 11y ago
        Japan is mostly mountans which is why 68.5% of the country is covered in forests. Where farms cover 50% of China and 12% of Japan. Now China has more land at higher elevation and less rainfall on the western half, but elevation is only an issue at steep gradients or extreme elevations. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#/media/File%3AChina_topo.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_People%27s...
        seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        Uhm...no. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China > Although China's agricultural output is the largest in the world, only about 15% of its total land area can be cultivated. China's arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world's population. Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated. > China's limited space for farming has been a problem throughout its history, leading to chronic food shortage. While the production efficiency of farmland has grown over time, efforts to expand to the west and the north have met with limited success, as such land is generally colder and drier than traditional farmlands to the east. China and Japan really aren't that far off on topology.
- chrischen 11y ago
  People like to hear what they want to hear. "Ghost cities in China," "Sweatshops where your clothes are made." Funny thing is in the back of their mind they actually do believe their Nike Shoes are made by Children, are outraged, and continue to buy them.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jpatokal 11y ago
  Are you seriously claiming that the places he visits are only temporarily depopulated because everybody is on holiday?! He's not pulling these stats out of his ass: the town of Yubari used to have 120,000 people, and now has 9,362. This is of course extreme, but basically the entire countryside is following along the same lines. Here's a random prefecture (Aomori) on Kaso-Net, which shows the areas officially classified as "depopulated" by the Japanese government, meaning they've lost >25% of their population: http://www.kaso-net.or.jp/map/aomori.htm http://www.kaso-net.or.jp/map/aomori.htm Red means it contains parts that are depopulated, yellow means it's about to be, green means the area as a whole is already over the limit.
  - pouetpouet 11y ago
    As you stated Yubari is an extreme example. It was a coal mining town. The mines closed down in the 1980s. There is a global trend of concentration in big cities with the service industry, woring women, specialisation...
jackschultz 11y ago
I was just in Japan and they had ads for this coming line that we weren't quite sure what they meant. Interesting to hear that it opened, and is the last subway line planned. I don't have comments about the economics of Japan's railways, but I was extremely impressed with the system itself: - The app to direct you through the system was really handy. Enter a starting and ending location, and it told us how to get there perfectly. Over the entire week we were there, we didn't have any issues taking the wrong train. - You pay by distance traveled by tapping a card when you enter the subway and again when you exit. Different from the systems in the US I've travelled (specifically Chicago) where you tap once at the beginning. Also impressed with how quickly the system read your card. - The stations where you can make connections are labeled really well with arrows noting where to go next and how far away they are. However those connections can be really long distances. I think the longest was 700ish meters, a little under a half a mile. Seeing 400m on a sign seemed normal. - Despite the distances between the connections, I don't think we had to transfer more than once ever. The lines were very well related. - The stations themselves covered a giant area under the ground and had a ton of numbered exits. Take the wrong exit and you could be a long way from where you were trying to go. But we also used the numbers to specify where we were coming from if we were meeting people, and guides used them in directions. - The trains themselves were impressively quiet. Granted Japan is in general, but these were notably quiet. Kind of a shock to come back to Chicago and hear the secondhand music or people yelling on the phone. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Really impressed with Japan in general though. Highly recommended for people to visit.
- PopsiclePete 11y ago
  Japan is very impressive in some ways and very...unimpressive in others. It's like they're super-high-tech in everything - except computers, which are very expensive compared to what you can get here in the US. That and their strange insistence on using fax machines and cash for everything. But yes, when it comes to taxi cabs and those amazing toilets that warm your ass-cheeks while playing music, if feels they're easily 75-100 years ahead of us. http://www.theonion.com/article/earthquake-sets-japan-back-to-2147-2240 http://www.theonion.com/article/earthquake-sets-japan-back-t...
rwmj 11y ago
I guess another option is to work to increase the population again. There's no implicit reason why Japanese couldn't have more children (the immigration option does seem to be off the table).
- Cyberdog 11y ago
  And how do you propose that would happen? They followed the same demographic trend of birthrate decline as GDP and urbanization rose as many other countries. There's no rolling that progress back, and I don't foresee any particular reason they'd become an exception to that rule. It's far more likely the politicians and/or society as a whole will come to its senses and start promoting immigration, but I don't really see that happening either.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > And how do you propose that would happen? If the social safety net becomes weaker (which one would expect if its current strength becomes demographically untenable), then immediate family in the next generation becomes the dominant personal safety net, and larger family sizes are incentivized (its basically one of the processes that led to declining birth rates in the developed world running in reverse, as social safety nets weaken rather than strengthening.) Note that I'm not saying this is painless, as its a social change which is very slow and lagging the driving force.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    >And how do you propose that would happen? It requires a cultural shift. But those kinds of shifts do happen, particularly when they make sense and have the support of the government. After WW II a number of countries promoted large families, and that's what they got. >It's far more likely the politicians and/or society as a whole will come to its senses and start promoting immigration, but I don't really see that happening either. Whether that constitutes "coming to its senses" is really a question up for debate. Mass immigration is trading one set of problems for another. They might be substantially worse off.
  - gutnor 11y ago
apsec112 11y ago
"A future this or any other transport technology lacks in Japan, for the Tōzai line is almost certainly the last subway line Japan will ever build." "Ever" is a very, very long time! There might not be any new subways for a few decades, but the idea of a "subway" itself is only about a hundred and fifty years old. How could one possibly know whether Japan will need new subways in seven hundred years? And seven hundred years is just an eyeblink, compared to "ever". The human species is about a hundred thousand years old, and most animals have been around for far longer than that.
- knappe 11y ago
  So a better form of transportation won't come around in over 700 years? I think you're being a little pedantic.
  - apsec112 11y ago
    They said "almost certainly", and put "last subway line Japan will ever build" in bold font for emphasis. In any case, that really isn't a very strong argument: "The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than the writer. The lowest form of these is to disagree with the author's tone. E.g. I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a cavalier fashion. Though better than attacking the author, this is still a weak form of disagreement. It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is. Especially since tone is so hard to judge. Someone who has a chip on their shoulder about some topic might be offended by a tone that to other readers seemed neutral. So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, say where." http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
rangibaby 11y ago
There are a few things I would like to point out about this article: • He goes on about linear trains being confused with maglev trains. Huh? In the exact Wikipedia article he links to, it has a section on maglevs that use linear motors (including JR's SCMaglev), and he describes a linear train (the Linimo = Linear motor) as a maglev later on. • Before JNR (the old state-owned rail company) was split into separate companies, it was hemorrhaging money from the cost of running marginal routes. Japan is a developed country, why does it need more infrastructure? • I'm not sure about the Hokuriku or Hokkaido shinkansens, but calling the Chuo Shinkansen is a public work is wrong. JR Central are financing it entirely on their own. They seem to think it's a viable investment, so good on them. US $72 billion overall isn't that bad. That's only ten billion more than it cost to develop the JSF, or 72 Instagrams, and this is actually expected to make a profit at some point (sooner if you believe it brings an economic benefit to the cities it is connecting). I can't really trust this article at all. Reader beware?
- jpatokal 11y ago
  Author here. 1) I think you just proved my point. The new Sendai subway uses a linear motor, but is not maglev, while the Linimo and Chuo are maglevs and thus use linear induction motors more or less by definition. However, these are both generally just dubbed リニア in the Japanese press. 2) The privatized JRs still hemorrhage money due to marginal routes, most are loss-making and only JR Central makes sizeable profits. Until the Iwaizumi Line was shut down last year, JR East had not shut down a single line since privatization in 1987, despite >50 of its 60-odd lines losing money. 3) JR Central is notionally privatized, but it's still de facto an arm of the government. The new line is being built with the central government's explicit approval and implicit financial backing.
  - rangibaby 11y ago
    Hi! 1) I see. Why didn't you just say that more clearly in your article then? The Japanese press runs some zingers sometimes (all the boasting about The Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower* comes to mind). 2) That's why I think not building any more lines could be a good idea. I guess we agree on that. 3) I would like to read more about that (seriously). Could you please give some sources? Japanese language is fine.
adventured 11y ago
> Matsutani’s suggested cure is shutting down excess capacity to free up scarce labor, paring back investment, increasing wages and freezing taxes In my opinion the solution is for Japan to default on their debt obligations. They're already aggressively doing that in the classic stealth way, with currency debasement. The problem is, that approach is going to take decades, which ensures a non-stop erosion over that time. It would be drastically better to do it all at once, and to then get on with rebuilding while they have a larger working population. And while they're at it, reform the government that got them there to begin with so it doesn't happen again. There's no scenario where they can ever pay back their national debt, and payments on it are consuming a very large portion of their budget. If they take the long road, it's going to be a really bad 20 years at least, as their current problems are going to get far worse.
- Kunlun 11y ago
  Interesting subject. Any links to share on the current and proposed approach?
- frivoal 11y ago
  Isn't most of Japan's debt owned domestically? Making local companies and retired people go bust by defaulting on debt they own doesn't sound like a good way out.
  - wcummings 11y ago
    You're correct it's domestic sovereign debt.

125 points by jpatokal 11y ago

N.b. this article links to Spike Japan, which is a very long-form blog by some literary British type guy who visits rural/suburban Japanese towns and tells you all about how they're nearly abandoned due to the oncoming population crisis. But whenever I've linked his articles to someone who actually lives there, they've pointed out he just visited on a holiday so all the residents have left to go do something more interesting.

Zikes 11y ago
But there is a looming population crisis, right? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=japan+birth+rate http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=japan+birth+rate
- Retric 11y ago
  Nope. China (365/sq mile) has less than 1/2 the population density of Japan (836/sq mile) and they instituted population control recently. Slowly shrinking populations are generally good for the average person and with most of there debt being internal Japan does not need to grow total GDP. As to rail lines losing money, how much do you think the average road make per year exactly.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    China is in big trouble demographically. They recently relaxed the one child policy, and that isn't really enough. Sinking populations are bad when it comes to the pyramid nature of taking care of elderly.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    I'm sorry, but basically anyone familiar with the demographics disagrees with you. (1) a TFR of 1.2 is not slowly shrinking, it is a collapse (2) you end up a dependency ratio of more than 1 retiree per worker very quickly. So no, it's not good news for anyone born today. (3) it is even worse, because Japan has the world's longest life expectancy. so that 1 child is going to have to support 4 generations of senior citizens. Any kid born today is going to be burdened by an incredibly expensive social net, making it even HARDER to afford to have enough children to even manage replacement. It is a serious catastrophe.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      It's not that bad since Japans infrastructure requirements are falling as well. And old people often don't require as many resource inputs as children and working age people. Unless you are talking the US with it's relatively unhealthy older population and bloated healthcare system[1] [1] You know where someone is checking out, the system gleefully spends a hundred grand to make sure their last few months of life totally sucks
      - jpatokal 11y ago
        Um, nope. Old people need a lot more health care than young ones, anywhere in the world: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccostsbyage.png http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccost...
        Gibbon1 11y ago
        It tends to balance out, while they need more health care, they use less of other resources. But put it this way, the US spends about 17% of it's GDP on healthcare. So an aging population is a serious issue. Say you double that and now it's 34% of GDP (yikes). Now consider Japan, 10%. And Japan has a significantly older demographic already. So say it rises 50% over twenty years to 15%. That's still better than the US right now. China's healthcare expenditures are 5% of GDP. Numbers from here. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS
    - Retric 11y ago
      Your wrong. Read up on the "per capita" effects of the Black Death which was linked to a temperary prosparity spike. In modern times. 2) the effects of declining population reduce the number of non productive children and increases the number of working childless females which more than compensates. It also drastically reduces new infrastructure needs. 3) your math is way off. A 65 year old worker +25y would be unlikely to have two 90 year old parents let alone four 115 year old grand parents. They would also have .7 children in the work force (65 - 25 ) = 40. So you don't stack more than one generation pluss it's 1.4 children per two parents. This is also just starting Japan had positive population growth in 2010. And negative 0.7% in 2014. The real issue for nations is needing positive GDP growth to keep up with external debt.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    Much like the US has all sorts of scrub lands in the west that knock down the population density numbers, China has all sorts of scrub lands in the west that knock down the population density numbers.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      Not just scrub lands. They literally have mountains everywhere, even between heavy populated eastern cities. If you take a bullet train from Beijing to Guangzhou, it is heavily tunneled for much of the entire trip, which makes the task even more amazing.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Japan is mostly mountans which is why 68.5% of the country is covered in forests. Where farms cover 50% of China and 12% of Japan. Now China has more land at higher elevation and less rainfall on the western half, but elevation is only an issue at steep gradients or extreme elevations. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#/media/File%3AChina_topo.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_People%27s...
        seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        Uhm...no. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China > Although China's agricultural output is the largest in the world, only about 15% of its total land area can be cultivated. China's arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world's population. Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated. > China's limited space for farming has been a problem throughout its history, leading to chronic food shortage. While the production efficiency of farmland has grown over time, efforts to expand to the west and the north have met with limited success, as such land is generally colder and drier than traditional farmlands to the east. China and Japan really aren't that far off on topology.
chrischen 11y ago
People like to hear what they want to hear. "Ghost cities in China," "Sweatshops where your clothes are made." Funny thing is in the back of their mind they actually do believe their Nike Shoes are made by Children, are outraged, and continue to buy them.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jpatokal 11y ago
Are you seriously claiming that the places he visits are only temporarily depopulated because everybody is on holiday?! He's not pulling these stats out of his ass: the town of Yubari used to have 120,000 people, and now has 9,362. This is of course extreme, but basically the entire countryside is following along the same lines. Here's a random prefecture (Aomori) on Kaso-Net, which shows the areas officially classified as "depopulated" by the Japanese government, meaning they've lost >25% of their population: http://www.kaso-net.or.jp/map/aomori.htm http://www.kaso-net.or.jp/map/aomori.htm Red means it contains parts that are depopulated, yellow means it's about to be, green means the area as a whole is already over the limit.
- pouetpouet 11y ago
  As you stated Yubari is an extreme example. It was a coal mining town. The mines closed down in the 1980s. There is a global trend of concentration in big cities with the service industry, woring women, specialisation...

jackschultz 11y ago

I was just in Japan and they had ads for this coming line that we weren't quite sure what they meant. Interesting to hear that it opened, and is the last subway line planned. I don't have comments about the economics of Japan's railways, but I was extremely impressed with the system itself: - The app to direct you through the system was really handy. Enter a starting and ending location, and it told us how to get there perfectly. Over the entire week we were there, we didn't have any issues taking the wrong train. - You pay by distance traveled by tapping a card when you enter the subway and again when you exit. Different from the systems in the US I've travelled (specifically Chicago) where you tap once at the beginning. Also impressed with how quickly the system read your card. - The stations where you can make connections are labeled really well with arrows noting where to go next and how far away they are. However those connections can be really long distances. I think the longest was 700ish meters, a little under a half a mile. Seeing 400m on a sign seemed normal. - Despite the distances between the connections, I don't think we had to transfer more than once ever. The lines were very well related. - The stations themselves covered a giant area under the ground and had a ton of numbered exits. Take the wrong exit and you could be a long way from where you were trying to go. But we also used the numbers to specify where we were coming from if we were meeting people, and guides used them in directions. - The trains themselves were impressively quiet. Granted Japan is in general, but these were notably quiet. Kind of a shock to come back to Chicago and hear the secondhand music or people yelling on the phone. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Really impressed with Japan in general though. Highly recommended for people to visit.

PopsiclePete 11y ago
Japan is very impressive in some ways and very...unimpressive in others. It's like they're super-high-tech in everything - except computers, which are very expensive compared to what you can get here in the US. That and their strange insistence on using fax machines and cash for everything. But yes, when it comes to taxi cabs and those amazing toilets that warm your ass-cheeks while playing music, if feels they're easily 75-100 years ahead of us. http://www.theonion.com/article/earthquake-sets-japan-back-to-2147-2240 http://www.theonion.com/article/earthquake-sets-japan-back-t...

rwmj 11y ago

I guess another option is to work to increase the population again. There's no implicit reason why Japanese couldn't have more children (the immigration option does seem to be off the table).

Cyberdog 11y ago
And how do you propose that would happen? They followed the same demographic trend of birthrate decline as GDP and urbanization rose as many other countries. There's no rolling that progress back, and I don't foresee any particular reason they'd become an exception to that rule. It's far more likely the politicians and/or society as a whole will come to its senses and start promoting immigration, but I don't really see that happening either.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > And how do you propose that would happen? If the social safety net becomes weaker (which one would expect if its current strength becomes demographically untenable), then immediate family in the next generation becomes the dominant personal safety net, and larger family sizes are incentivized (its basically one of the processes that led to declining birth rates in the developed world running in reverse, as social safety nets weaken rather than strengthening.) Note that I'm not saying this is painless, as its a social change which is very slow and lagging the driving force.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >And how do you propose that would happen? It requires a cultural shift. But those kinds of shifts do happen, particularly when they make sense and have the support of the government. After WW II a number of countries promoted large families, and that's what they got. >It's far more likely the politicians and/or society as a whole will come to its senses and start promoting immigration, but I don't really see that happening either. Whether that constitutes "coming to its senses" is really a question up for debate. Mass immigration is trading one set of problems for another. They might be substantially worse off.
- gutnor 11y ago

apsec112 11y ago

"A future this or any other transport technology lacks in Japan, for the Tōzai line is almost certainly the last subway line Japan will ever build." "Ever" is a very, very long time! There might not be any new subways for a few decades, but the idea of a "subway" itself is only about a hundred and fifty years old. How could one possibly know whether Japan will need new subways in seven hundred years? And seven hundred years is just an eyeblink, compared to "ever". The human species is about a hundred thousand years old, and most animals have been around for far longer than that.

knappe 11y ago
So a better form of transportation won't come around in over 700 years? I think you're being a little pedantic.
- apsec112 11y ago
  They said "almost certainly", and put "last subway line Japan will ever build" in bold font for emphasis. In any case, that really isn't a very strong argument: "The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than the writer. The lowest form of these is to disagree with the author's tone. E.g. I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a cavalier fashion. Though better than attacking the author, this is still a weak form of disagreement. It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is. Especially since tone is so hard to judge. Someone who has a chip on their shoulder about some topic might be offended by a tone that to other readers seemed neutral. So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, say where." http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

rangibaby 11y ago

There are a few things I would like to point out about this article: • He goes on about linear trains being confused with maglev trains. Huh? In the exact Wikipedia article he links to, it has a section on maglevs that use linear motors (including JR's SCMaglev), and he describes a linear train (the Linimo = Linear motor) as a maglev later on. • Before JNR (the old state-owned rail company) was split into separate companies, it was hemorrhaging money from the cost of running marginal routes. Japan is a developed country, why does it need more infrastructure? • I'm not sure about the Hokuriku or Hokkaido shinkansens, but calling the Chuo Shinkansen is a public work is wrong. JR Central are financing it entirely on their own. They seem to think it's a viable investment, so good on them. US $72 billion overall isn't that bad. That's only ten billion more than it cost to develop the JSF, or 72 Instagrams, and this is actually expected to make a profit at some point (sooner if you believe it brings an economic benefit to the cities it is connecting). I can't really trust this article at all. Reader beware?

jpatokal 11y ago
Author here. 1) I think you just proved my point. The new Sendai subway uses a linear motor, but is not maglev, while the Linimo and Chuo are maglevs and thus use linear induction motors more or less by definition. However, these are both generally just dubbed リニア in the Japanese press. 2) The privatized JRs still hemorrhage money due to marginal routes, most are loss-making and only JR Central makes sizeable profits. Until the Iwaizumi Line was shut down last year, JR East had not shut down a single line since privatization in 1987, despite >50 of its 60-odd lines losing money. 3) JR Central is notionally privatized, but it's still de facto an arm of the government. The new line is being built with the central government's explicit approval and implicit financial backing.
- rangibaby 11y ago
  Hi! 1) I see. Why didn't you just say that more clearly in your article then? The Japanese press runs some zingers sometimes (all the boasting about The Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower* comes to mind). 2) That's why I think not building any more lines could be a good idea. I guess we agree on that. 3) I would like to read more about that (seriously). Could you please give some sources? Japanese language is fine.

adventured 11y ago

> Matsutani’s suggested cure is shutting down excess capacity to free up scarce labor, paring back investment, increasing wages and freezing taxes In my opinion the solution is for Japan to default on their debt obligations. They're already aggressively doing that in the classic stealth way, with currency debasement. The problem is, that approach is going to take decades, which ensures a non-stop erosion over that time. It would be drastically better to do it all at once, and to then get on with rebuilding while they have a larger working population. And while they're at it, reform the government that got them there to begin with so it doesn't happen again. There's no scenario where they can ever pay back their national debt, and payments on it are consuming a very large portion of their budget. If they take the long road, it's going to be a really bad 20 years at least, as their current problems are going to get far worse.

Kunlun 11y ago
Interesting subject. Any links to share on the current and proposed approach?
frivoal 11y ago
Isn't most of Japan's debt owned domestically? Making local companies and retired people go bust by defaulting on debt they own doesn't sound like a good way out.
- wcummings 11y ago
  You're correct it's domestic sovereign debt.