Fifty years two Shinkansen bullet trains completed their first journeys,
kickstarting a high-speed rail network that would transform Japan. The
world's first high-speed commercial train line was built along the
Tokaido, one of the five routes that connected the Japanese hinterland
to Edo, the city that in the mid-1800s became Tokyo.
The term 'shinkansen' literally means 'new trunk line': symbolically, it
lay at the very centre of the huge reconstruction effort. All previous
railways were designed to serve regions. The purpose of the
Tokaido Shinkansen, true to its name, was to bring people to the capital.
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