Central Japan Railway Company

Central Japan Railway Company
Company information
Type	Public company
Industry	Transportation
Products	Rail transport
Headquarters	Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
Areas served	Tōkai region, Japan
CEO	Shunsuke Niwa (President) Shin Kaneko (Chairman)
Parent	Japan Railways Group
Subsidiaries	39 group companies, including Nippon Sharyo and the Tokai Transport Service Company
History
Founded	1 April 1987
Predecessor(s)	Japanese National Railways
Other
Website	global.jr-central

The Central Japan Railway Company (Japanese: 東海旅客鉄道株式会社 Tōkai Ryokaku Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha), officially abbreviated as JR Central (Japanese: JR東海 JR Tōkai), is the main subsidiary of the Japan Railways Group based in central Japan.

History

Main article: Japan Railways Group

By the 1980s, the Japanese National Railways had become practically insolvent due to the decline of rail transport and fare increases failing to compensate for high labor costs. The Japanese National Railways was privatized and split into seven different companies on 1 April 1987, with the Japanese National Railway Settlement Corporation later formed to distribute the funds among the companies. JR Central was formed from the previous JNR lines that ran around the Chūbu and Tōkai regions, with its Japanese name taken from the latter region in which the company operates.

Shunsuke Niwa is JR Hokkaido's current president, having served in this role since 2023.

Network

JR Central owns 1,982 km (1,232 mi) of rail lines, including one Shinkansen line and a number of commuter lines. Their main base of operations is at Nagoya Station, with their headquarters located above the station in the JR Central Towers.

The company is in the process of constructing the Chūō Shinkansen, a high-speed maglev line slated to open around 2027.

Presidents

Name	Term start	Term end
Hiroshi Suda	1987	1995
Masayuki Matsumoto	2004	2010
Yoshiomi Yamada	2010	2014
Kōei Tsuge	2014	2018
Shin Kaneko	2018	2023
Shunsuke Niwa	2023	Active

Trivia

• JR Central's image song is titled the Tōkai Passenger Railway Company Song, released in 2007 and performed by Nikikai. Prior to this in 1989, the company had an unofficial image song titled Kimi wo Nosete (lit. "carrying you") that was used in many commercials, performed by Mariko Takahashi; the lyrics for that song were written internally. It is now described as a "beloved" song by the company.