BOOK REVIEW: With an introduction by Prof Roderick Smith of Imperial College, London, If There Were No Shinkansen is the work of former East Japan Railway Chairman Shuichiro Yamanouchi, who died in 2008. Subtitled High-speed rail experience from its birth to today in Japan, the book is a remarkable personal account of the early development and subsequent history of Japan’s famous high speed railways.
With 243 pages and 64 illustrations, it has been edited and adapted from an original manuscript that was written for a private audience. The editing team has added notes and recent information ‘based on assumptions concerning what Mr Yamanouchi would write in this book now’.
Chapters include The Great Railway Nation of Japan, The Struggle of the Technicians, Safety and Comfort, Developing the World’s Finest Railway and Privatisation as a Cultural Revolution. Dealing with safety, engineering and management issues, the book includes frank accounts of the labour relations problems that plagued Japanese National Railways and ended with privatisation in 1987.
The author’s experience includes resolving both technical and managerial issues on Japan’s 1 067 mm gauge network as well as his role in relation to the Shinkansen. There are details of trials with the early Shinkansen rolling stock and subsequent designs, as well as commentary on the problems of noise, delays in building the Joetsu and Tohoku lines and many other issues. Yamanouchi also relates his experience in Europe, including during his time as Vice President of the International Union of Railways.
In an epilogue, written in 1998, the author says that in his ‘more than 40 years on the railway, I have experienced the heights of glory and the depths of hell. The Shinkansen was the pride of Japan and a renaissance for the railways … I shudder to imagine what would have come to pass if we had not built the Shinkansen 30 years ago and restructured JNR 10 years ago. There is no doubt in my mind that Japan’s railway would have faded into extinction.’
The book is published by Springer of Singapore in hardback and ebook formats; ISBN (print) 978-981-99-8889-1; ISBN (online) 978-981-99-8890-7.
