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, trading as , is a Japanese private railway company that provides commuter and interurban service to the northern
Kansai region The or the lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropol ...
. It is one of the flagship properties of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings Inc., in turn part of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group (which includes H2O Retailing Corporation and
Toho is a Japanese entertainment company that primarily engages in producing and distributing films and exhibiting stage plays. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. ...
Co., the creator of ''
Godzilla is a fictional monster, or ''kaiju'', that debuted in the eponymous 1954 film, directed and co-written by Ishirō Honda. The character has since become an international pop culture icon, appearing in various media: 33 Japanese films p ...
''). The railway's main terminal is at
Umeda Station is a major railway station in Kita-ku, Osaka, Kita-ku in the northern commercial center of Osaka, Japan. It is the busiest station in western Japan, serving 2,343,727 passengers daily in 2005. Umeda Station is served by the following railways: ...
in Osaka. The signature color of Hankyu cars is
maroon Maroon ( , ) is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word , meaning chestnut. ''Marron'' is also one of the French translations for "brown". Terms describing interchangeable shades, with overlapping RGB ranges, inc ...
. The Hankyu network serves 1,950,000 people every weekday and offers several types of express service with no extra charge. The head offices of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc. and Hankyu Corporation are at 1-16-1, Shibata,
Kita-ku, Osaka is one of 24 wards of Japan, wards of Osaka in Japan. Incidents and accidents * 1970 Tenroku gas explosion * 2021 Osaka building fire Notable locations Kita-ku, particularly the Umeda area surrounding Osaka Station, is one of the main comm ...
; both companies' registered headquarters are at Ikeda Station, 1-1, Sakaemachi, Ikeda,
Osaka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Nara ...
. The Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theatre performance company, is well known as a division of the Hankyu railway company; all of its members are employed by Hankyu.


History


Etymology

The name is an abbreviation of . refers to the area served by Hankyu trains, comprising the cities of , and , along with the suburbs that connect them to each other. means "express train(s)".


Foundation

In 1907, the , a forerunner of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc., was established by Ichizō Kobayashi (precisely, he was one of the "promoters" of the tramway). On 10 March 1910, Minoo Arima Tramway opened the rail lines from Umeda to Takarazuka (the Takarazuka Main Line) and from Ishibashi to Minoo (the Minoo Line). The tramway was popular due to Kobayashi's pioneering act to develop housing around stations along the line (a first in Japan), a forerunner to
transit-oriented development In urban planning, transit-oriented development (TOD) is a type of Real estate development, urban development that maximizes the amount of Residential area, residential, business and leisure space within Pedestrian, walking distance of public t ...
s.


Expansion to Kobe

On February 4, 1918, Minoo Arima Tramway was renamed . On July 16, 1920, the Kobe Main Line from Jūsō to Kobe (later, renamed Kamitsutsui) and the Itami Line from Tsukaguchi to Itami were opened. On April 1, 1936, the Kobe Main Line was extended from Nishi-Nada (present-day Ōji-kōen) to the new terminal in Kobe (present-day Kobe-Sannomiya Station), and the Kobe Main Line from Nishi-Nada to Kamitsutsui was named the Kamitsutsui Line, which was abandoned on May 20, 1940. In 1936, Hankyu established a
professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in baseball league, leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Moder ...
team and in 1937 the Nishinomiya Stadium as the team's home field was completed near
Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi Station is a junction passenger railway station located in the city of Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It is operated by the private transportation company Hankyu Railway. It is one of the main stations in Nishinomiya City, with Hanshin Nishin ...
. The Hankyu Braves (named in 1947) played until the 1988 season and became the predecessors of the present-day
Orix Buffaloes The are a Nippon Professional Baseball team formed as a result of the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment by the merger of the Orix BlueWave of Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes of Osaka, Osaka Prefecture ...
.


Merger and separation with Keihan

On October 1, 1943, under the order of the government, Hanshin Kyūkō and Keihan Electric Railway were merged, and renamed . The merged lines included the Keihan Main Line, the Uji Line, the Shinkeihan Line (present-day Kyoto Main Line), the Senriyama Line (present-day Senri Line), the Jūsō Line (part of Kyoto Main Line), the Arashiyama Line, the Keishin Line and the Ishiyama Sakamoto Line. The Katano Line was also added in 1945. On December 1, 1949, the Keihan Main Line, the Katano Line, the Uji Line, the Keishin Line, and the Ishiyama-Sakamoto Line were split off to become part of the newly established Keihan Electric Railway Co., Ltd. Although this revived the former Keihan Electric Railway, Keihan was now smaller than before the 1943 merger, because the Shinkeihan Line and its branches were not given up by Keihanshin. The present structure of the Hankyu network with the three main lines was fixed by this transaction. The abbreviation of Keihanshin Kyūkō Railway was changed from "Keihanshin" to "Hankyū".


Postwar development

On April 7, 1968, the Kobe Main Line started through service to the Kobe Rapid Transit Railway Tozai Line and the Sanyo Electric Railway Main Line. On December 6, 1969, the Kyoto Main Line and the Senri Line started through service to the Osaka Municipal Subway Sakaisuji Line. In 1970, the Senri Line was one of access routes to the
Expo '70 The or Expo '70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, between 15 March and 13 September 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair ...
held in Senri area. On April 1, 1973, Keihanshin Kyūkō Railway Company assumed its current name. On April 1, 2005, former Hankyu Corporation became a holding company and was renamed . The railway business was ceded to a subsidiary, now named Hankyu Corporation (before the restructuring, the new company which reused a dormant company founded on December 7, 1989, was called until March 28, 2004, then from the next day). On October 1, 2006, Hankyu Holdings became the wholly owning parent company of Hanshin Electric Railway Co., Ltd. and the holdings were renamed Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.. Hankyu's stock purchase of Hanshin shares was completed on June 20, 2006.


Rail lines

Hankyu operates three main trunk lines, connecting Osaka with
Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...
, Takarazuka and
Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
respectively, and their branches. : : : : : : : The three groups of the lines, the Kobe Lines, the Takarazuka Lines and the Kyoto Lines, can be further grouped into two, the Kobe-Takarazuka Lines and the Kyoto Lines from a historical reason. Hankyu has two groups of rolling stock, one for the Kobe-Takarazuka Lines and the other for the Kyoto Lines.


Former lines


Abandoned lines

*Kitano Line (Umeda – Kitano) *Kamitsutsui Line (Nishi-Nada (Ōji-kōen) – Kamitsutsui)


Transferred lines

*Keihan Line ** Keihan Main Line ( – ) ** Katano Line ( – ) ** Uji Line ( – ) *Ōtsu Line ** Keishin Line (Sanjō – ) ** Ishiyama Sakamoto Line ( – ) The Keihan and Ōtsu Lines were transferred to Keihan Electric Railway Co., Ltd. which separated from Keihanshin Kyūkō (now Hankyu) on December 1, 1949.


Rolling stock

, Hankyu had 1,319 cars for passenger service. Standard cars have three pairs of doors per side and bench seating facing the center of the train (exceptions are noted below). The Kobe Line and Takarazuka Line use the same fleet. Some former Hankyu trains, such as the 2000 series and 3100 series, have been transferred to the Nose Electric Railway.


Kobe Line/Takarazuka Line

* 1000 series * 3000 series * 3100 series * 5000 series * 5100 series * 6000 series * 7000 series * 8000 series (includes small number of transverse seating cars) * 8200 series * 9000 series


Kyoto Line

* 1300 series (from spring 2014) * 2300 series * 3300 series * 5300 series * 6300 series (two doors per side, transverse seating) * 7300 series * 8300 series * 9300 series (transverse seating)


Fares

Single fare (adult) in Japanese Yen by travel distance is as follows. Fares for children (6–11 years old) are half the adult fare, rounded up to the nearest 10 yen. For fare collection, IC cards ( PiTaPa, ICOCA and others) are accepted. The fare rate was changed on April 1, 2014, to reflect the change in the rate of
consumption tax A consumption tax is a tax levied on consumption spending on goods and services. The tax base of such a tax is the money spent on Consumption (economics), consumption. Consumption taxes are usually indirect, such as a sales tax or a value-added ta ...
from 5% to 8%, and again on October 1, 2019, from 8% to 10%.


In popular culture

A 2-car Hankyu train was featured in the 1988 Japanese animated war drama '' Grave of the Fireflies''.http://my.opera.com/opera%20kanta/blog/2008/08/13/grave-of-the-fireflies-hankyu-train. 2008-08-13. Retrieved 2010-12-25. Hankyu trains appear in the Japanese animated series '' The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya''. One 2008 book by the Japanese writer Hiro Arikawa, , occurs entirely on the Hankyu–Imazu line, in the north-west suburbs of Osaka, where various characters meet and interact in the trains and at the various stations of the line. It was made into a film in 2011, titled '' Hankyu Railway: A 15-Minute Miracle''. The Hankyu 2000 is the locomotive of choice for Takumi Fujiwara, the main character in Densha de D, a parody of Initial D where the main characters race with trains instead of cars.


See also

* Transport in Keihanshin * Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group * Hankyu Hanshin Holdings


References


External links

* * {{Authority control Railway companies of Japan Companies based in Osaka Prefecture Standard-gauge railways in Japan * Railway lines opened in 1910 Midori-kai Japanese companies established in 1910 Hankyu Hanshin Holdings Railway companies established in 1910