A district court on Wednesday ordered Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) to pay 49 million yen in compensation to the parents of a teenage boy killed in a 1995 shinkansen accident at Mishima Station on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line.
"JR Tokai was responsible for taking every possible safety measure to prevent accidents," said presiding Judge Sachiko Takahashi, of the Shizuoka District Court's Numazu branch.
The railway operator failed to adequately instruct the station master about the importance of monitoring departing trains and did not install a TV monitor to supervise passengers on the platform, Takahashi said.