50th anniversary of Shinkansen - high-speed railway line of Japan

 

 

Date of Issue – 1 October 2014

50^th anniversary of Shinkansen – High Speed Railway Line of Japan

Japan Post has prepared for issuing a new commemorative stamp to mark the 50^th anniversary of Shinkansen. The stamp has been already designed and will be released on the 1^stof October. The stamp will be presented at special celebration on this occasion.

The Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train line is set to mark its 50th anniversary in October, having carried more than 5.5 billion passengers since its 1964 debut.

The project to build the shinkansen line started in April 1959, amid Japan’s postwar high-growth period, and was completed in just over five years. It went smoothly thanks to a “Dangan Ressha (bullet train)” project before the start of the Pacific War to connect Tokyo and Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, over a distance of 970 kilometers within nine hours.

Although the Dangan project was suspended during the war, land lots acquired for it and completed tunnels helped facilitate the shinkansen project.

The shinkansen began operating between Tokyo and Osaka on Oct. 1, 1964, nine days before the start of the Summer Olympic Games in the nation’s capital. It drastically improved the transportation capacity of the Tokaido line, which was nearing its limit, and carried more than 100 million people within the first three years of service.

Prompting the movement of people, goods and capital, the shinkansen served as the locomotive of Japan’s economic growth from the 1960s. When the World Exposition was held in Osaka in 1970, some 10 million of 60 million visitors reportedly used the shinkansen.

The shinkansen not only became the foundation of Japan’s economic growth by linking Tokyo and Osaka but also gave hope to Japanese people as a symbol of the nation’s postwar recovery from “burnt-out ruins”, said professor Satoshi Fujii at Kyoto University’s Department of Urban Development.

Club News

The Indian Thematic Society has released September 2014 issue of its quarterly magazine "ITS Stamp News" , editor Suraj Jaitly http://itsstampnews.blogspot.in/