Shinkansen

The Shinkansen (Japanese: ???) is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. The first line, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, was opened in 1964. The network has since expanded to link most major cities on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu with running speeds of up to 300 km/h.

Naming

The popular English name bullet train is a Western translation of the Japanese term dangan ressha (????), which was the name given to the project while it was initially being developed in the 1940s.

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The modern name Shinkansen literally means "New Trunk Line" and hence strictly speaking refers only to the tracks, while the trains themselves are offically referred to as "Super Express" (??? ch?-tokky?). In practice, however, the distinction is rarely made even in Japan.

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When building the Shinkansen network, it was not often feasible to build the line to connect to an already existing station and therefore a new second station was built. Many Shinkansen stations (eg. Shin-Yokohama Station and Shin-Osaka Station) thus have the prefix shin- in their name, but this simply means "new" in Japanese and is not a direct reference to the Shinkansen.

Related Topics:
Shin-Yokohama Station - Shin-Osaka Station

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