Nowhere else in the world do railways offer the kind of safety and punctuality as provided in Japan, where trains with a top speed of 285 kph are operated at three-minute intervals.
But confidence in the railway system is rapidly collapsing as serious accidents and other troubles have of late been occurring in rapid succession involving trains operated by member companies of the Japan Railways Group, which came into being in 1987 following the privatization of Japanese National Railways (JNR).
To make matters worse, these troubles have not come about as a series of isolated cases. Rather they are rooted in the business-as-usual management style pursued by the JR Group firms and a deterioration in the quality of work performed at actual work sites.