Every weekday morning, millions of Japanese commuters squeeze into train cars heading into the city centers of Japan’s major metropoli. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s (MLIT) latest “FY2025 Urban Railway Congestion Survey” published in late July 2026, the average congestion rate of Tokyo’s busiest rush-hour sections of railway hit 143%. While in Osaka it reached 117% and Nagoya 126%. What does these numbers all mean? Are the bodies of commuters in a Japanese urban(e) train pressed so tightly together that personal space becomes a distant memory. Last month I discussed the standards of crowding between various cities across the world. Basically, 100% capacity means very different things in different countries. Surprisingly for Japan 100% capacity it doesn’t mean very much crowding. Armed with that knowledge, today we can look into the MLIT report to put those numbers in context of Japanese train congestion history.
The star of the show of this article is (no, it is not Guangzhou Metro Line 3) the latest MLIT Urban Railway Congestion Survey. Instead now you are armed with the perspective of what those crowding percentages mean in a global context. So to start, the MLIT’s survey provides charts of each metropolis with three general data points: crowding, ridership and scheduled service capacity. Average crowding (thick red line) is shown as a percentage and calculated as explained in my previous article. Ridership (green line) and scheduled service capacity (dotted blue line) are both an aggregate sum indexed to 100 on conditions in Year 50 of the Showa Era (1975) or peak Japan.
The charts show an average of crowding (thick red line), ridership (green line) and scheduled service capacity (dotted blue line) metrics from a collection of the busiest urban railway sections serving Japan’s three major metropoli. Data is shown, from left to right, for Greater Tokyo or Kanto (31 sections), Greater Osaka or Kansai (20 sections) and Greater Nagoya (8 sections).
