Somewhere beneath the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture, a train holds the world speed record for a manned vehicle on rails. The L0 Series maglev, developed by Central Japan Railway Company, reached 603 kilometers per hour on 21 April 2015 -- levitating on superconducting magnets with no wheels touching the track. That run happened on a test line nestled between the cities of Otsuki and Tsuru, where over 200,000 residents and officials have ridden the prototype since the 1990s. The test track is not a curiosity. It is the foundation of the Chuo Shinkansen, a commercial maglev line that will connect Tokyo's Shinagawa Station to Nagoya in 40 minutes and eventually reach Osaka in 67 minutes, slicing through the Japanese Alps in tunnels that will make up roughly 90 percent of the route.
Japan has been developing maglev technology since the 1970s, when the project was a government-funded collaboration between Japan Airlines and Japanese National Railways. Central Japan Railway Company, known as JR Central, inherited the research after privatization. A test track was first built in Miyazaki Prefecture, and once those results proved promising, a far more ambitious facility was constructed in Yamanashi -- complete with tunnels, bridges, and slopes to simulate real operating conditions. On 2 December 2003, the three-car MLX01 set a world speed record of 581 kilometers per hour. A year later, it set another record when two trains passed each other at a combined speed exceeding 1,000 kilometers per hour. In 2010, JR Central unveiled the L0 Series, designed for commercial service, and by 2020 had introduced an improved version that draws power directly from the track rather than relying on onboard gas generators.
The Chuo Shinkansen's route is not the one most passengers would expect. Rather than following the heavily populated coastal corridor of the existing Tokaido Shinkansen, the line plunges inland through the sparsely populated Akaishi Mountains -- the Japanese Alps. JR Central chose directness over population centers, reasoning that speed mattered more than intermediate stops and that a separate inland route would provide resilience if an earthquake ever knocked out the coastal line. About 86 percent of the Tokyo-to-Nagoya section will be underground. Construction began on 17 December 2014, with one of the first major contracts covering a tunnel beneath Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures. A deeper tunnel under the southern Alps, penetrating to extraordinary depths, commenced in December 2015 and is expected to become the deepest railway tunnel in Japan, surpassing the Daishimizu Tunnel on the Joetsu Shinkansen. The total cost has ballooned from an original 5.1 trillion yen estimate in 2007 to over 9 trillion yen by 2011.
A single 9-kilometer stretch of tunnel through Shizuoka Prefecture has stalled the entire project. Shizuoka officials raised concerns that tunneling would divert water from the Oi River, lowering water levels that communities depend on. JR Central acknowledged that while water could be returned to the river after construction, there was no feasible method to prevent all leakage during the digging itself -- though the amount would likely be insignificant. Governor Kawakatsu refused to budge, formally blocking construction in June 2020. Political observers suspected the water issue was partly a bargaining chip: Shizuoka is the only prefecture along the route that will not receive a new station, and the prefecture has long lobbied for a Tokaido Shinkansen stop beneath Shizuoka Airport. The deadlock held until April 2024, when Kawakatsu resigned after a separate controversy. In the May 2024 by-election, voters chose Yasutomo Suzuki, whom Nikkei Asia called a 'maglev proponent.' Preliminary construction work was approved and underway by October 2024.
The first segment will run from Shinagawa Station in Tokyo to Nagoya Station, with intermediate stops in Sagamihara (Kanagawa), Kofu (Yamanashi), Iida (Nagano), and Nakatsugawa (Gifu) -- one station per prefecture along the route, except Shizuoka. The Shinagawa terminal is being built beneath the existing Shinkansen station, a ten-year construction project designed to avoid disrupting the 150,000 passengers who use the Tokaido Shinkansen above it daily. JR Central estimates fares will be only slightly higher than the current bullet train -- about 700 yen more to Nagoya. The line will eventually extend to Osaka via Nara, cutting that journey to 67 minutes. Kyoto lobbied to be included on the route in 2012, but the Transport Ministry confirmed the line would pass through Nara instead. State-backed loans accelerated the Osaka extension from a 2045 target to as early as 2037. The economic impact of shrinking travel times across Japan's three largest cities has been estimated between 5 and 17 trillion yen over the line's first fifty years.
The SCMaglev system works by generating a levitating force between superconducting magnets on the trains and coils embedded in the guideway. Without wheel friction, the trains achieve higher speeds and faster acceleration than any conventional rail system. The tradeoff is energy: because the Chuo Shinkansen runs almost entirely in tunnels, air resistance is dramatically higher than on open-air high-speed lines. But the L0 Series is fully electric, making it compatible with a future powered by low-carbon energy. Seen from above the Yamanashi test track, the guideway cuts a narrow line through forested mountains -- a surprisingly modest scar for a technology that promises to reshape Japanese geography. When the full line opens, the Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka megaregion will effectively compress into a single commuting zone, connected by a train that floats on magnetic fields at the speed of a regional jet.
The Yamanashi test track is centered near 35.58N, 138.93E, running between Otsuki and Tsuru in a valley flanked by forested mountains. The guideway is visible from 3,000-5,000 feet AGL as a thin line cutting through the terrain. Nearby airports include RJTO (Chofu Airport, approximately 50 nm east) and RJAF (Matsumoto Airport, approximately 60 nm northwest). Mount Fuji is visible to the south-southeast. The route corridor of the Chuo Shinkansen follows a roughly east-west alignment from Tokyo through the Akaishi Mountains toward Nagoya.