The Japan Freight Railway Company (Japanese: 日本貨物鉄道株式会社 Nippon Kamotsu Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha), officially abbreviated as JR Freight (Japanese: JR貨物 JR Kamotsu), is the freight-carrying subsidiary of the 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 Freight was formed as a successor to JNR's past freight operations. Unlike some of JR's other constituent companies, JR Freight remains under ownership of the state-affiliated Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency.
Shin Inukai is JR Freight's current president, having served in this role since 2022.
Network[]
JR Freight operates on 7829.1 km (4864.8 mi) of rail lines; the vast majority of this track is owned by the six passenger-carrying subsidiaries of the JR Group, with only about 35.3 km (21.9 mi) owned by JR Freight.
Presidents[]
Name
Term start
Term end
Masashi Hashimoto
1987
1993
Yasushi Tanahashi
1993
1997
Yoshio Kaneda
1997
1999
Naohiko Itō
1999
2007
Masaaki Kobayashi
2007
2012
Shuji Tamura
2012
2018
Koichi Shingai
2016
2022
Shin Inukai
2022
Active
Trivia[]
JR Freight's image song is titled Four Seasons. The song was released in 2006 and sung by Koji Yamamoto. JR Freight has since released a number of music videos of the song, featuring their employees performing the song.