Salient Features of Human Resource Development

East Japan Railway Company (JR East) was founded in 1987 and has played an instrumental role in providing efficient transportation services in the eastern part of Japan. The company currently operates a total network of 7,457 kilometers comprising interregional high-speed rail, regional trains, and trains in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The company transports about 17.8 million passenger per day and operates approximately 12,200 trains per day. The railway sector is an open and complex sociotechnical system, which is undoubtedly influenced by the socioeconomic changes in its operating environment. The railway companies in Japan are also going through a set of challenges, which, sooner or later, many other countries are going to face—that is, aging and rapidly evolving disruptive technologies. This chapter describes the key challenges confronting the railway business in aging Japan and JR East’s approach to tackling these challenges