THE END OF JAPAN'S INTERURBAN ERA.

Once upon a time, electric interurban railroads offered cheap, frequent service linking hamlets, small towns, cities, and stopping at rural crossroads to pick up passengers or parcels, including milk cans and nursery stock.  A number of those companies also offered city streetcar service in communities that these days are lucky to have a ride-share provider or two.  Hicks Car Works devotes a section to such companies just in Illinois.  City cars in Dixon or Belvidere or Peoria?  Yes.

So, too, are there interurban railroads in Japan, for now.

Like many small railway lines across Japan's countryside, the 60-year-old trains that ply this route are a loss-maker, but [Katsunori] Takemoto has found a way to keep the business afloat.

With a combination of savvy marketing partnerships with pop stars and branded souvenirs, the president of the Choshi Electric Railway navigated the firm into the black in 2021, while helping promote the local region.

"I feel strongly that this is the mission of all local trains. We want to serve as advertising vehicles for communities," Takemoto told AFP.

The same sorts of internal migration and infrastructure spending that appeared in the United States a century ago, when the interurban network began to decline, manifested themselves more recently in Japan.

The rural lines are legacies of Japan's economic boom through the 1970s but failed to adapt to rural depopulation, as younger people left for cities and some villages emptied altogether.

Infrastructure like city halls and hospitals is increasingly built along main roads, with visitors expected to drive rather than take trains.

Did you think those Japanese companies built those Toyotas and the like solely for export? Or that town plans would forever be a central business district on an electric line?  On the other hand, as we noted a few years ago, the Japanese interurbans are able to invest in real estate and deal in services unrelated to their railroad business, which is contrary to several national policies in the United States.

For now though, lines like Takemoto's are turning to alternatives to stay afloat.

His Choshi Electric Railway makes 80 percent of its revenue from non-train operations, including baking and selling its popular soy sauce-soaked crackers.

The company has sold everything from corn puffs to slices of railway track, and Takemoto aggressively promotes the line on television, joking about his cash-strapped firm with well-rehearsed self-deprecating puns.

Choshi Electric have even run haunted trains, in the fashion of our preservation railways. They're not yet ready to quit.  Meanwhile, it's possible our transportation policy poobahs will rediscover the interurbans.