The Tokaido Corridor

Tokaido represents a considerable accumulation of infrastructures and productive forces in the Tokyo-Osaka corridor. The term refers to the imperial road that linked Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto but now refers to an urban region accounting for more than 90 million people; 70% of the Japanese population. The most important agglomerations are Tokyo with a population of 26 million, Nagoya and Osaka with a respective population of 6 and 10 million. There are also several cities are over 1 million (Kobe, Kyoto and Yokohama). The corridor is strongly influenced by geographical constraints with a mountainous inland Japan and three major coastal plains around bays (Bays of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka).

The cohesion of the corridor is assumed by massive transport infrastructures including ports, airports, highways and especially a high-speed train network (Shinkansen). The first rail connection in the corridor was built in the 1880s. In 1930, an express train on the Tokaido Line, took an average of eight hours and 20 minutes between Tokyo and Osaka. The high speed train system reduced that time to 4 hours be the 1960s and new generations of trains further reduced this trip to two hours thirty minutes by 2000.

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