East Japan Railway Company


is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as JR Higashi-Nihon in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo, next to Shinjuku Station. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange with secondary listings in the Nagoya and Osaka stock exchanges, is a constituent of the TOPIX Core30 index, and is also one of the two only Japan Railways Group constituents of the Nikkei 225 index, the other being JR Central.
hybrid DMU on Senseki-Tohoku Line
in Gunma Prefecture

History

JR East was incorporated on 1 April 1987 after being spun off from the government-run Japanese National Railways. The spin-off was nominally "privatization", as the company was actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the government-owned JNR Settlement Corporation for several years, and was not completely sold to the public until 2002.
Following the breakup, JR East ran the operations on former JNR lines in the Greater Tokyo Area, the Tōhoku region, and surrounding areas.

Lines

Railway lines of JR East primarily serve the Kanto and Tohoku regions, along with adjacent areas in Kōshin'etsu region and Shizuoka prefectures.

Shinkansen

JR East operates all of the Shinkansen, high-speed rail lines, north of Tokyo, except the Hokkaido Shinkansen, which is operated by JR Hokkaido.
The Tokyo-Osaka Tōkaidō Shinkansen is owned and operated by the Central Japan Railway Company, although it stops at several JR East stations.

Kanto regional lines

These lines have sections inside the Tokyo Suburban Area designated by JR East. This does not necessarily mean that the lines are fully inside the Greater Tokyo Area.

Koshinetsu regional lines

Tohoku regional lines

Train services

Below is the full list of limited express and express train services operated on JR East lines as of 2011.

Shinkansen

All remaining express services operated on JR East tracks are overnight expresses.
During fiscal 2017, the busiest stations in the JR East network by average daily passenger count were:
  1. Shinjuku Station
  2. Ikebukuro Station
  3. Tokyo Station
  4. Yokohama Station
  5. Shinagawa Station
  6. Shibuya Station
  7. Shimbashi Station
  8. Omiya Station
  9. Akihabara Station
  10. Kita-Senju Station

    Subsidiaries

JR East co-sponsors the JEF United Chiba J-League football club, which was formed by a merger between the JR East and Furukawa Electric company teams.

Environmental issues

JR East aims to reduce its carbon emissions by half, as measured over the period 1990–2030. This would be achieved by increasing the efficiency of trains and company-owned thermal power stations and by developing hybrid trains.

Union issues

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has stated that JR East's official union is a front for a revolutionary political organization called the Japan Revolutionary Communist League. An investigation of this is ongoing.

East Japan Railway Culture Foundation

The East Japan Railway Culture Foundation is a non-profit organization established by JR East for the purpose of developing a "richer railway culture". The Railway Museum in Saitama is operated by the foundation.

Bids outside Japan

EJRC holds a 15% shareholding in West Midlands Trains with Abellio and Mitsui that commenced operating the West Midlands franchise in England in December 2017. The same consortium has also been listed to bid for the South Eastern franchise.