OSAKA -- Two women made their first runs as shinkansen operators Friday, tearing down the gender barrier in an occupation that has traditionally been filled entirely by men.
Rumi Yamashita, 27, of Osaka, and Miyuki Fukuzawa, 29, of Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, took the driver's seat on two separate bullet trains that left Shin-Osaka Station. Yamashita pulled train 619 out of Shin-Osaka on the Sanyo Shinkansen line at 10:16 a.m. bound for Hakata in Fukuoka, while Fukuzawa, whose father is also a bullet train driver, was at the controls of train 635 on the Sanyo line, also bound for Hakata, when it departed at 2:16 p.m.
Both Yamashita and Fukuzawa, who received their shinkansen operating licenses on the same day from West Japan Railway, will operate trains between Shin-Osaka and Hiroshima.
In 1997, Yamashita became the first female conductor on a shinkansen.