Odakyu Electric Railway Co., Ltd. - Origins

Origins

Japanese society is increasingly concentrated in large cities and centered on railroad stations. The rapid growth of the Japanese economy has accelerated the trend, and there is continuing demand for space in or within easy access of a city for both residential and business purposes.

As Tsutomu Shimizu, one of Odakyu's top executives, has stated, "Just as the ancient civilizations flourished in the basins of big rivers, modern civilization develops alongside railways." Private railroad companies in Japan usually build their railroads on undeveloped and unused sites with easy access to city centers and construct supermarkets and department stores in the station buildings, thus establishing their stations as centers for distribution and commercial activities. Railroad companies acquire massive amounts of land around their stations and diversify into businesses such as real estate, construction, leisure and tourism, and information services.

Tsurumatsu Toshimitsu, the founder of Odakyu, was a lawyer and then a member of the National Diet before he became involved in the management of the railroad business. In 1911, he founded the Kinugawa Hydro-Electric Co., Ltd., which was eventually to develop into Odakyu Railway Company Limited. In 1921, Toshimitsu applied on behalf of Tokyo High Speed Railway Co., Ltd. for a license to build a railroad linking the southwestern part of Tokyo with the central region of Kanagawa Prefecture. The license was granted in 1922, and the company was renamed Odawara Express Railway Co., Ltd. after Odawara City, which lies at the foot of Mount Fuji. The official inauguration of the company took place on May 1, 1923. Nearly four months after Toshimitsu had embarked on this difficult project, which required enormous initial investment, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, reducing Tokyo and Yokohama to ashes. However, this disaster worked to the advantage of the newly established Odakyu, because many people whose homes had been destroyed began to want to move into the less-affected suburbs, boosting new land development and construction work. As the development of suburban Tokyo was an important social issue at that time and a great number of investors were willing to invest in this project, there was no difficulty in securing funding for the construction of the railroad. In 1925, government permission was given for the execution of the whole project and an 82-kilometer-long railroad between Shinjuku and Odawara was built in one and a half years, the fastest completion period recorded in the history of Japan's railroads. Business went well until Japan was hit by the Depression in the 1930s.

Odakyu's business started to recover again in the mid-1930s, but in 1937 the Sino-Japanese War broke out and there was every sign that it would be long and hard. As part of the wartime emergency measures, the Japanese government decided that the power industry should come under the control of the state. As a result, Kinugawa Hydro-Electricity Company, the parent company of Odawara, had to close down and merge with its subsidiary to form Odakyu Electric Railway Company (Odakyu) in 1941. As the war continued and its ferocity intensified, the government took further steps to establish the land transport infrastructure. In 1944, Odakyu was merged with three other railroad companies, now known as Keio Electric Co., Ltd., Keihin Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd., and Tokyu Corporation. The new company, Tokyo Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd., was headed by Keita Grotoh, previously the third president of Odawara Express Electric Railway Company, who had had experience in many other electric railroad companies and was to become Minister of Transport and Communications. The unification of private railways in the southwestern suburbs of Tokyo was thus completed by the newly named Tokyo Express Electric Railway Co., Ltd.

The end of World War II made it possible for those railroad companies that had been forced to amalgamate during the state of emergency to become independent again, and in June 1948 they started to go their separate ways. In October 1948, the newly born Odakyu introduced a non-stop special express between Shinjuku and Odawara, and in 1950 it fulfilled its long-cherished dream by opening a new direct line to Hakone-Yumoto, one of Japan's best-known hot spa resorts. In 1957, it launched the epoch-making Romance Car SE, which set the world speed record on the narrow-gauge track. In 1960, it completed the Golden Course, a round-trip route around the Hakone area. In order to strengthen the company's grip on tourist transport, it put new strategies into practice.