Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/416

404 trunk line being delayed by various causes. Japan is not naturally suited to railway construction: the country is too mountainous; the streams—mere beds of sand to-day—are to morrow, after a heavy rain, wild surging rivers that sweep away bridges and embankments. For these reasons, the idea of carrying the Tōkyō-Kyōto railway along the Nakasendō, or backbone of the country, which would have been far better in time of war, as being removed from the possibility of an attack from the sea side, fell through, the engineering difficulties proving insuperable. The only alternative was to follow the Tōkaidō, the great high way of Eastern Japan, which skirts the coast along the narrow strip of flat country intervening between the foot of the hills and the Pacific Ocean. This work was completed, and the thousandth mile of railway opened, in the summer of 1889. The total mileage had increased to 4,237 at the end of March, 1903. The most difficult line constructed was that opened for traffic in 1893, between Yokohama and Karuizawa, on the way from Tōkyō to Naoetsu. It leads over a steep mountain pass called the Usuitōge, and the inclination is 1 in 15 for a length of five miles, three miles of which are in tunnels all cut through rock. The train is taken up the pass by "Abt" engines, which have a cog wheel working on a rack-rail laid between the ordinary rails.

Japanese railway enterprise, although started by the government, is now far from being exclusively in official hands. Companies, on the contrary, are numerous, some private, others more or less under government shelter and patronage. The most important is the Nippon Telsudō Kwaisha ("Japan Railway Company"), which owns the main line running north to Aomori. Next to it come the Kyūshū Railway, and the Sanyō Railway which owns the main line running along the northern shore of the Inland Sea. The total mileage of the various private lines aggregates nearly three-quarters of the whole given above.

Reduced to its simplest expression, the Japanese railway system practically consists of one long trunk line from Aomori in the extreme north to Shimonoseki in the south-west, together with