At the end of March, JR Tokai admitted something that we have been writing about for a number of years, which is that the inaugural Shinagawa-Nagoya leg of the Chuo Shinkansen, more popularly known as the linear motorcar in Japanese and the maglev in English, will not open in 2027 as originally planned. JR Tokai, the railway company in charge of the project (often referred to as JR Central in English), had already submitted a notification to the transport ministry in December saying that the maglev wouldn’t open until “after 2027,” but didn’t announce the revision publicly until March 28. Some reporters and at least one major media outlet, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), have been suggesting for years that, given the unprecedented scale of the project, there was no way JR Tokai was going to open the line, which will zip passengers between Tokyo and Nagoya in 40 minutes, by 2027.

The company was going to have to deliver the bad news eventually and needed a convenient scapegoat. They already had one in the form of Shizuoka Prefecture Governor Heita Kawakatsu, who had been a thorn in the side of the project for more than a decade (though the prefecture’s beef with JR Tokai extends back to before his administration). JR Tokai is now blaming Kawakatsu almost exclusively for the delay. As we’ve explained in the past, the governor, who professes to be in favor of the maglev, had refused to grant the company permission to carry out tunnel construction in his prefecture until it could guarantee that the Oi River, which is in the vicinity of the construction work, would not lose any water as a result. Tens of thousands of residents rely on the river as a water source, and JR Tokai’s own impact study projected that tunnel construction would result in a significant loss. The problem has been a matter of debate between the prefecture and the railway since 2014.

According to Nikkei, the transport ministry called a meeting at the end of March where the water problem was discussed within a framework of environmental conservation related to the maglev construction, and at the start of the meeting JR Tokai President Shunsuke Niwa said that, due to Shizuoka’s intransigence, he could no longer project when the Shinagawa-Nagoya leg would open. Another JR Tokai official explained that the original construction period of 17 years “could not be shortened,” and since it would have taken ten years to complete the line after construction of the Shizuoka section started, even if they did so this year they wouldn’t be able to finish the 8.9 kilometers of tunnel that passes through the prefecture until 2034. This is a big problem for JR Tokai since local governments and businesses located along the maglev line have been carrying out infrastructure construction and redevelopment in anticipation of a 2027 opening, and the delay could cost them money and, more significantly, public trust.

Then, on April 2, Kawakatsu announced he would resign in June, one year before his fourth term is up, for something that had nothing to do with the maglev or JR Tokai. During a speech to welcome new prefectural employees, the governor made a stupid remark belittling vegetable sellers and other occupations. All the media reports on the resignation mentioned that JR Tokai had blamed Kawakatsu for the fact that the maglev wouldn’t open in 2027, and while the ostensible reason for Kawakatsu’s standing down is the remark, he told reporters, perhaps passive-aggressively, that he wanted to remove himself as an obstacle to the tunnel construction.

When Kawakatsu resigned, at least one journalist, Hideki Kashida, had already published an article saying that the governor was being scapegoated by JR Tokai. Kashida has been writing about the project since the mid-2000s for various publications, not to mention his own very detailed website, and knows more about it than any other reporter. He is one of the few media entities, along with Nikkei, that has insisted the maglev would not open in 2027 owing to JR Tokai’s miscalculations regarding the scale of construction involved and other factors. He doesn’t discount Kawakatsu’s stubbornness, but cites it as just another factor in the delay. A few days before Kawakatsu’s faux pas, Kashida wrote a long piece for Shukan Playboy News that outlined how mainstream press and social media placed the onus for the maglev delay on Shizuoka when citizens groups had been pointing out for years that there were much bigger problems with JR Tokai’s construction timetable. Granted, these groups were for the most part opposed to the project from the beginning, mainly for environmental reasons, but Kashida had over the years investigated their claims by visiting construction sites and talking to people involved, including representatives of JR Tokai and local governments who were promoting the project for their own benefit. 

The whole Shizuoka problem started in 2013 after JR Tokai completed its assessment of the environmental impact of construction for the entire line. The resulting report worried the leaders of 8 cities and 2 towns in Shizuoka that get their water from the Oi River. According to the report, during construction of the tunnel that passes through the prefecture, the river will lose up to 2 tons of water a second. While Shizuoka nominally supported the project, when Kawakatsu was alerted to this finding he sent a message to JR Tokai demanding that the company find a way to resupply the Oi river with the water it would lose because of construction operations. The following year, a group consisting of JR Tokai and some experts formed to discuss measures for returning water to the river system, environmental conservation, and the safety of landfill sites that would be receiving the massive amounts of soil and rock being removed during excavation of the tunnel. 

Over the next decade, JR Tokai made several suggestions about the water resupply, such as collecting ground water during excavation work and channeling it back into the river, or redistributing some of the water that had been redirected for a nearby hydroelectric dam, but none of these plans were acceptable to the prefecture, which said the company did not include any detailed instructions on how they would be carried out. In June 2020, then JR Tokai President Shin Kaneko asked Kawakatsu to allow the company to start construction immediately so that the line could open by 2027. Kawakatsu refused. 

So, according to Kashida, by the time JR Tokai announced the postponement of the opening of the line, the official delay of the start of construction on the Shizuoka section amounted to three years and 9 months, but his study of work on other portions of the line reveals delays that are much longer, specifically:

-A railway yard is supposed to be built for idle rolling stock near the planned Kanagawa Prefecture maglev station in Sagamihara. JR Tokai projects it will take 11 years to build, but construction has not even begun because all the land necessary for the yard has not been secured. More than two years ago Nikkei reported on this snag and apparently the land still hasn’t been fully acquired, but even if it were acquired sometime this year, construction of the yard would not be completed until 2035 at the earliest. Kashida adds that even when all the “railway-related facilities” are completed, JR Tokai will need another two years to test all the electrical functions and vehicle operations before the line can be opened to the public.

-Construction of the Second Metropolitan Tunnel in Kanagawa Prefecture is behind schedule by ten years.

-Some residents in the Southern Alps of Yamanashi Prefecture, through which the maglev will run, filed a lawsuit to stop construction. As a result, work has been delayed by six years. JR Tokai estimated this section would take 7 years to build.

-JR Tokai still has not signed a contract for construction of the Number 2 Oi Tunnel in Gifu Prefecture, thus setting work on that section back by ten years. The same goes for work on the Kukuri Tunnel section in Gifu. 

-Due to a breakdown of the equipment used to bore the tunnels in Aichi Prefecture, the creation of emergency exits has been delayed by 4 years and 9 months. (Note: 86 percent of the Shinagawa-Nagoya leg of the maglev is underground—depending on the elevation of the surface land, as much as 100 meters underground in some sections—and according to regulations there must be emergency exits to the surface located every 5 kilometers. So in addition to having to build horizontal tunnels for the train, JR Tokai must build dozens of vertical tunnels that require the purchase or leasing of land on the surface where the exits are located.)

In the summer of 2020, Kashida interviewed a vice president of JR Tokai and asked him about the abovementioned delays. Could the 2027 deadline still be met? He only answered that it was still the company’s aim. After the interview, Kashida checked on the “progress of construction” for all sections of the “real tunnel” (meaning the tunnel for the train, and not auxiliary tunnels needed for things like removing soil and rock or for emergency exits) undergoing work at the time, and calculated that only 10-16 percent of the work had been done so far. In detail, the Shinagawa-Nagoya line is 286 km. The only section that is completely finished is the 43-km stretch of experimental railway built for testing the train in Yamanashi Prefecture. Of the remaining 243 km, 211 require excavation, and work has only begun on 68 km’s worth so far. In terms of surface track, 32 km of the line will be built on elevated platforms, and according to citizen groups that are monitoring progress, only 22 columns for supporting the platforms have been erected so far. More than 600 columns are still needed. 

But the gist of Kashida’s article is the demonizing of Kawakatsu. JR Tokai needs someone to blame because its selling of the project to local governments came with the promise of a 2027 opening, and many of these local governments and the businesses they serve are anxious about the delay. 

He uses Kanagawa Prefecture as a reference. Though JR Tokai has only planned for one train an hour to stop at the Chuo Shinkansen Kanagawa Station near Hashimoto Station in Sagamihara, the prefecture has publicized 5 trains an hour by counting the other four expresses that pass through but don’t stop. The prefecture estimates that the station will see 38,000 passengers a day for an economic boost of ¥320 billion a year. Kashida says that other prefectures along the line have promoted their own maglev-related development projects involving large infrastructure investment and private development based on similarly scaled numbers. Except for Shinagawa and Nagoya, none of the maglev stations will be attached directly to existing stations, so new construction is needed. Many of these projects are going ahead as planned, and if the maglev isn’t completed by 2027, all the new plazas and access roads and commercial facilities will have little purpose until the maglev does open. 

Some of this construction necessitates the relocation of residents. Sagamihara is removing about 100 houses for a new road that will pass over the maglev tunnel, which is 20 meters below the surface. One local told Kashida that the city was afraid that residents of the area would sue because of the noise and vibration, so it built the road as an excuse to implement the Public Project Land Use Law, which allows local governments to sieze properties for public works projects. Some residents have said they will sue anyway. 

Kashida heard a similar story in Ida, the city where the Nagano Prefecture station will be built. JR Tokai has adopted the unusual policy of building the stations along the maglev line (for conventional shinkansen lines, that’s the job of local governments), but it is the respective local governments’ responsibility to secure land and build attendant infrastructure. In Ida, about 190 homes and 100 commercial facilities will need to be relocated to make room for maglev-related public works. Many have already moved. One business owner said that the compensation provided by the city and prefecture was not enough to move his factory. He will need to spend another ¥100 million. 

Many local government officials to whom Kashida spoke said they have received no word from JR Tokai as to when the maglev will now open, though at least one said that the railway told them the construction period would be “shortened.” More delays would likely anger those who are affected by the project. The ones who hope to benefit from it will have to wait to see results, while those who have to move will wonder why they had to move. In any case, the delay will mean a pause in commercial investment is some areas around stations. As for now, JR Tokai can still blame it all on Kawakatsu, but how long will that last?