Prototype 01 · Free Preview
JAPAN’S BULLET TRAIN × UKIYO-E
Discover Japan by bullet train — and see its landscapes through artists’ eyes, about 200 years ago. Choose two stations, then explore historic prints beside photographs of the places today.
Choose your journey
Major-city overview · schematic connection, not railway track geometry. Hakata is in Fukuoka.
PLACES BECOME PICTURES
Explore a place ↓Historic places and regional connections. Each print explains its link to today’s station.
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Train: Artem.G · CC BY 4.0 · resized / WebP / display crop. Map: Natural Earth, public domain. Art: The Met, CC0.
NEW TO JAPAN? START HERE
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Its modern trains connect cities whose mountains, bridges and streets inspired artists long before railways existed. This museum brings those two worlds together.
Shinkansen is Japan’s high-speed railway, often called the bullet train. The first line opened in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka. These are electric trains running on rails, not flying vehicles.
Streamlined shapes help trains move through air. Railway engineering brings together electricity, track design and control systems. Our journey follows the Tokaido and Sanyo lines from Tokyo to Hakata, a station in Fukuoka.
Explore the railway · JR Central ↗Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world”. It is Japanese art that flourished from the 1600s to the 1800s, especially during the Edo period. Edo is the former name of Tokyo.
Artists pictured actors, everyday life and famous places. Many works were woodblock prints: a designer drew the picture, a carver cut wooden blocks, and a printer pressed colours onto paper. A separate block could print each colour.
Learn about woodblock prints · The Met ↗Choose your boarding and arrival stations. Move along the route to see an old artwork connected to each place and a photograph of the area.
Compare the two: what has changed, and what remains? The prints show historic places, not modern stations. Some links are regional; each caption explains the connection. Where a verified print is still missing, a labelled photograph fills the window.
Choose a route and explore ↓Hokusai explored Mount Fuji, waves and ordinary people at work. His Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji includes the famous Great Wave. Look for bold shapes and changing viewpoints.
Hiroshige depicted journeys, rain, snow and changing seasons. His Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido shows stopping places on the old road between Edo and Kyoto. These road stations were not railway stations.
Landscape history: Library of Congress · Bristol Museum. Individual works have their own artist and date in the gallery.
Craft and precision turn a landscape into layers of colour.
Science and engineering connect the places in those pictures.
Two kinds of ingenuity, one journey: explore Japan’s advanced railway technology alongside its historic art.
FIND YOUR WAY
Our art journey covers Tokyo → Shin-Osaka → Hakata: the Tokaido and Sanyo corridor. Japan has other Shinkansen routes too.
Akita and Yamagata are mini-Shinkansen branches. Services can run through shared sections towards Tokyo. Nishi Kyushu requires a conventional-line connection; the dashed link is not high-speed track.
Network reference: JR Group’s English Shinkansen map (March 2026) ↗. Our diagrams are independent illustrations.
SEE THE REAL TRAINS
Official videos introduce the trains in English. Links open YouTube; nothing plays or contacts YouTube until you follow a link.
The high-speed railway along our Tokyo–Osaka corridor.
Watch “Don’t leave Japan without it” ↗A premium cabin introduction on JR East’s Shinkansen routes. These northern and eastern routes are outside this museum’s Tokyo–Hakata journey.
Watch JR East’s official English video ↗The Bullet Train (1975), directed by Junya Sato, was also released in France as Super Express 109. Overseas distributor’s film page ↗
Bullet Train Explosion (2025), directed by Shinji Higuchi, is a Netflix reboot of the 1975 film. View on Netflix ↗ · Official English teaser ↗
These are fictional danger stories, not railway safety lessons. Film images are not reproduced here because permission for this site has not been confirmed. Check local age ratings before watching.
This station does not yet have a rights-verified artwork in this preview.
Illustrative journey simulation — not live train location or a timetable. Approximate timing uses equal station intervals and a 5-hour full-route baseline. Service stopping patterns are not represented. Speed changes affect playback only.
AN HONEST FIRST EDITION
These prints show historical towns, landscapes and regional stories. They do not depict modern Shinkansen stations. Each artwork states its connection to the station, including when that connection is regional.
All 35 stations are selectable. Verified station photographs fill stops awaiting an ukiyo-e. Woodblock prints and photographs are labelled separately, with individual sources and licences.