High-speed route
Akita Shinkansen
Tokyo → Akita · Japan
Akita Shinkansen in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 663 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 37 min
- Average speed
- 183 km/h
- Top speed
- 320 km/h
- Operator
- JR East
- Train
- E6 “Komachi”
- Countries
- Japan
- In service since
- 1997
- Runs
- ≈ hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Crimson “Komachi” units ride the Hayabusa at 320 km/h to Morioka, then swap to single-track mountain rails past Lake Tazawa: a bullet train on a branch-line stage.
Rather than drive a new line through the Ōu mountains, JR East re-gauged a country railway, so the same train that races the Tōhoku corridor finishes its journey at country-railway tempo, pausing at passing loops for oncoming locals. The Komachi name honours Ono no Komachi, the ninth-century poet whose legendary beauty these parts claim as their own. Out the window: Kakunodate’s samurai streets, Lake Tazawa, Japan’s deepest at 423 m, and the rice plains that fill Akita’s sake vats.
How this line was checked
- The 127 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 5361971 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 99.4% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 21 m); the longest stretch away from it is 2 km
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: JR East — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Mt. Iwate from Morioka
- Shizukuishi valley
- Lake Tazawa — Japan’s deepest
- Kakunodate samurai quarter
- Ōmagari — fireworks capital
- Akita rice plains
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