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TOKYO -- Plans for a Japanese consortium to construct a Shinkansen
or "Bullet train" link between Taiwan's two biggest cities will
showcase Tokyo's technology and "railway diplomacy."
Both have been running virtually non-stop and on schedule since 1872
when the first line connecting Tokyo's Shimbashi station to Yokohama
opened.
Some alarmist analysts see Japan's new railway moves leading to a
resuscitance of Tokyo political power influence in Asia, even though a
no-war constitution deprives any such thrust of military protection.
The new line linking Taipei and Kaohsiung--345 kilometers in about
90 minutes when it goes into operation in 2005-- would cost about US$3
billion and would involve giant Japanese conglomerates Mitsui and Co.,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba Corp., and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
The decision has been made to award the contract to the Japanese
consortium but a European group claims it had been given word earlier that
it would get the job. A disastrous accident in 1998 involving a German
high-speed train and reconsideration of geographic features on the route
were said to have cooled Taiwan on the European entry.
The Kyodo News Agency reported that Taiwan media have said that the
decision to grant Taiwan Shinkansen Co. the priority rights was made
after President Lee Teng-hui received a promise that would allow him to
visit Japan after he leaves office in May. Presidential elections are
scheduled March 18.
Lee, who graduated from Kyoto University during Japan's colonial rule
of Taiwan, has been unable to visit Japan due to political pressure from
Beijing.
Transport Minister Toshihiro Nikai visited China for talks with Chinese
officials last week ostensibly to lobby for Japan's bid to build a high
speed Bullet train link between Beijing and Shanghai, a 1,310 kilometer
route that would cost US$12 billion. There was speculation that Nikai's
role was also to appease Beijing over Japan's deal with Taiwan.
The railway 100 years ago came to exemplify Japanese apprehensions of
the relationship between modernity in the West, Japan and the empire.
Soon the railway's expansion provided the spine and lifeline of Japan's
colonial empire in Asia and
infrastructure of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" which came
to an abrupt end in 1945.
The locomotive had emerged in the Meiji period as the symbolic icon of
civilization and progress.
"By the end of the Meiji period. the railway was regarded as the
preeminent agent of modernization," wrote Carol Gluck in "Japan's Modern
Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period" ( Princeton University
Press,1985).
In the early decades of colonial rule this Western import acquired an
imperial cachet, as Japan built
railways in Taiwan and Korea, and expanded the South Manchurian network
taken over from Russia.
There also have been dramatic setbacks. The legendary "Bridge Over
The River Kwai," part of the infamous "death railway" linking Burma and
Thailand was one. Japanese hopes to run a train "Pusan to Paris,"
from the tip of Korea, through Seoul and Pyongyang, connecting at
Beijing, never materialized and was set back further by the dividing of
the Korean Peninsula.
Magazines for railway buffs abound in Japan. There is one that
celebrates the possibility of linking Japan to the Asia mainland by way of
a tunnel from Fukuoka, Japan, to Pusan., South Korea. The line's strategic
aspects are a favorite arguing point among armchair pundits.
In the long run, Japan's "railway power" could play a role in Asia's
new century that will be more significant than that of China's missiles.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.