Sunday saw the opening of the long-delayed Morioka-Hachinohe extension of the Tohoku Shinkansen (Northeast Japan bullet-train line). Local people will be happy. But don't expect great outbursts of joy elsewhere. Japan is into one of its periodic antipublic works moods.
I traveled the original Tohoku line the day it opened in 1982. As we streaked across this hitherto neglected area of Japan, even this jaded foreigner could not suppress a twinge of excitement. But arriving back in Tokyo that evening I found the media most unimpressed: "a waste of money," "a concrete dinosaur," "the Kakuei Tanaka Shinkansen" (a derisive reference to the former prime minister who had pushed hard for a network of expressways and shinkansen lines across Japan.)
Today, even the critics must realize the importance of the line, not just to the Tohoku region but to the nation. As for wasted money, the line now runs at close to full capacity and covers its costs easily. Even the Joetsu line to Niigata, which opened the same year and was much more vulnerable to criticism (since Tanaka was notorious for pushing public monies into his native Niigata Prefecture) is doing quite well financially.