The Tokyo Olympics And The First Shinkansen
- Date
- 1964
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- East Asia (Japan)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
In October 1964 Japan announced its postwar recovery to the world, opening the first high-speed Shinkansen railway on 1 October and hosting the Olympic Games in Tokyo from 10 October.
The Tōkaidō Shinkansen, running 515 kilometres between Tokyo and Osaka, was the fastest train on earth and enabled same-day travel between Japan's two largest metropolitan regions, revolutionising business and daily life and pioneering a model of high-speed rail later adopted worldwide; over six decades it would carry more than ten billion passengers without a single fatality from derailment or collision. The Tokyo Olympics, the first held in Asia and the first broadcast internationally by satellite, showcased a nation transformed from wartime devastation into a modern industrial power. Together the two events symbolised Japan's re-entry onto the global stage as a technological and economic leader and a template of development that neighbouring Asian economies would emulate. The "bullet train" in particular became an enduring emblem of Japanese engineering precision and of the promise that advanced infrastructure could reshape how modern societies move and work.
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Empires active in 1964
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Dutch Empire1581 CE – 1975 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Green Revolution Transforms South Asian Agriculturec. 1966 (peak adoption mid-1960s onward)
- Apollo 11 Moon landing20 July 1969 (mission 16–24 July 1969)
- Invention of the integrated circuit1958–1959
- Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor1971
- Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite4 October 1957
- Discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA25 April 1953
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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