In the driver’s seat of a two-car train, Katsunori Takemoto puts on his white gloves and checks the antiquated gauges before setting out alongside cabbage fields in Japan’s rural Chiba.
Like many small railway lines across Japan’s countryside, the 60-year-old trains that ply this route are a loss-maker, but Takemoto has found a way to keep the business afloat.
With a combination of savvy marketing partnerships with pop stars and branded souvenirs, the president of Choshi Electric Railway navigated the firm into the black last year, while helping promote the local region.
Photo: AFP
“I feel strongly that this is the mission of all local trains. We want to serve as advertising vehicles for communities,” Takemoto told reporters. “Towns without trains wither away. So rebuilding rural trains must be done as part of rebuilding communities.”
However, the 99-year-old business he took over in 2011 is the exception rather than the rule in Japan, home to hundreds of loss-making rural rail lines. Depopulation, vehicle ownership, freight trucking and the COVID-19 pandemic have badly affected revenue.
“If we leave things as they are and don’t do anything, it is clear to everyone that sustainable public transport systems will fall apart,” Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Tetsuo Saito said earlier this year.
Photo: AFP
The rural lines are legacies of Japan’s economic boom through the 1970s, but failed to adapt to rural depopulation, as younger people left for cities and some villages emptied altogether.
Infrastructure such as city halls and hospitals are increasingly built along main roads, with visitors expected to drive rather than take trains.
Of the country’s 95 small railways — services outside urban areas or major regional links — 91 recorded deficits last year, ministry data showed.
Photo: AFP
That contrasts sharply with lucrative urban lines such as Central Japan Railway, which operates the Shinkansen super express between Tokyo and Osaka.
It earned a net profit of nearly ￥400 billion (US$2.99 billion at the current exchange rate) for the year to March 2020, before the pandemic took hold.
Major train operators can use profits from urban areas to subsidize rural services, but even industry titan East Japan Railway (JR East), which serves 13 million passengers daily in Tokyo and eastern Japan, is baulking at the cost.
Photo: AFP
It lost ￥68 billion last year on the 66 most problematic segments of rural railways.
In the worst section, the company paid more than ￥20,000 for every ￥100 earned.
“We have done all we can to increase usage and cut costs,” Takashi Takaoka, a JR East executive officer, told reporters this year. “The fact is that there are areas where trains are not the best mode of transportation.”
Photo: AFP
Not everyone agrees, and governors from about half of Japan’s regions have filed a joint plea to Saito warning that slashing rural routes would endanger tourism and require spending on alternatives such as buses.
However, experts say that change is inevitable and communities need to embrace innovations, potentially including self-driving transport.
For now, though, lines like Takemoto’s are turning to alternatives to stay afloat.
His Choshi Electric Railway makes 80 percent of its revenue from non-train operations, including baking and selling its popular soy sauce-soaked crackers.
The company has sold everything from corn puffs to slices of railway track, and Takemoto aggressively promotes the line on television, joking about his cash-strapped firm with well-rehearsed self-deprecating puns.
He has even run “haunted house” trains and “professional wrestling” lines, on which bare-chested fighters rumbled in front of passengers and at stations.
The firm has paired up with pop idols, comedians and YouTubers to keep the company in the public eye.
“Ironically, we have to focus on non-train services to keep the trains running,” Takemoto said.
Despite Takemoto’s efforts, Choshi Electric Railway still depends on subsidies and loans, and passenger figures continue to slide.
“Maybe the time will come when our service as a railway firm will no longer be needed, but it’s not the time now,” he said. “We are beaten up, all battered and covered in rust, but we believe there are many things we can still do and we must keep moving forward.”
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