On February 12 this year, officials from the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) and East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) met in Hsinchu City, northern Taiwan to conclude a twinning agreement between the TRA’s Hsinchu Station and JR East’s Tokyo Station. The accord seeks to highlight the historical importance of the two facilities through a series of marketing and tourism promotion efforts. The buildings, both of which are more than 100 years old and were designed by Japanese architects in a Renaissance style, are among the most culturally significant transportation hubs in their respective nations. “We’ve been experiencing a revival in interest in the country’s railways in recent years,” says Joe Chou (周永暉), director-general of the TRA under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC). “Railway lines and stations can serve as important tourist draws, and establishing international exchange programs is an excellent way to increase awareness of these attractions.”
The deal between Hsinchu and Tokyo stations is the latest in a range of efforts by public and private organizations in Taiwan to promote the island’s railways overseas. One of the nation’s first international railway agreements was signed in 1986, when the Alishan Forest Railway in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi County, which was launched in 1912 to serve the local logging industry and is now a major visitor attraction jointly administered by the TRA and the Forestry Bureau, became a sister line of the Oigawa Railway in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture.
Since that time, the TRA has markedly stepped up its efforts to boost international railway cooperation, often dubbed “railway diplomacy.” In August 2013, Hsinchu Station and Grand Central Terminal in New York City in the United States became sister stations. A similar twinning accord was concluded around two months later between the TRA’s Songshan Station in eastern Taipei and Ehime Prefecture’s Matsuyama Station, which belongs to JR Shikoku, another of the seven companies that comprise the Japan Railways Group. This agreement was sealed to highlight the fact that the Han characters comprising the names of the two facilities are the same. Indeed, Songshan Station’s predecessor, which was in operation during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945), was also called Matsuyama.
In total, there are 32 train stations in Taiwan that have the same Han characters in their names as facilities in Japan. In order to raise awareness of this link between the two country’s rail systems, 32 Japanese citizens whose names correspond to the titles of these stations were invited by the TRA to visit Taiwan in November last year to serve as honorary stationmasters for a day at their namesake facilities.
To date, the majority of the TRA’s international cooperation agreements have been concluded with Japanese companies. “As many of Taiwan’s railway lines were constructed during the Japanese colonial era, there are quite a few similarities between our rail systems,” Chou explains. Indeed, while the initial development of the island’s railway network dates back to the final years of Qing court rule over Taiwan (1684–1895), the approximately 400 kilometers of track that comprise the TRA’s main line on the western plains of the island were built during the Japanese colonial period.
The TRA’s CK124 and JR Hokkaido’s C11-171 (inset) steam locomotives became sister trains in 2012. (Photo courtesy of Taiwan Railways Administration)
Due to the similarities between the two systems, Taiwan and Japan have been collaborating on technical issues for some time. In recent years, these efforts have expanded to include cooperation on heritage preservation. For instance, the TRA’s CK124 and JR Hokkaido’s C11-171 steam locomotives, manufactured in Japan in 1936 and 1940 respectively, became sister trains in 2012 after both sides worked on restoring and maintaining the two engines. “Due to the long history of Taiwan-Japan exchanges on railway engineering, the more recent interactions in the service and tourism sectors have developed rapidly and smoothly,” the TRA director-general notes.
By March this year, in addition to the partnership agreements between stations, the TRA had concluded twinning deals between three of its lines—two spur lines and a section of the Yilan Line in northeastern Taiwan from Keelung City to Yilan County—and four lines in Japan. These accords include a one-day pass exchange program for the TRA’s 12.9-kilometer Pingxi mountain line in New Taipei City and Japan’s 10-kilometer Enoshima Electric Railway in Kanagawa Prefecture. The initiative enables passengers who have bought a ticket for one line to enjoy free travel on the other. From May 2013 to February this year, 7,708 tickets were redeemed by Taiwanese and Japanese tourists as part of this initiative, and both sides have agreed to extend the program until March 2016.
Furthermore, in March the TRA signed cooperation deals on tourism promotion with the Keikyu Group and Seibu Railway Co. as well as the latter’s parent company, Seibu Holdings, which has stakes in accommodations, real estate and tourism businesses. According to a press release announcing its collaboration with the TRA, Seibu Holdings, citing figures from the Japan National Tourism Organization, noted that it “regards Taiwan as an important region” as it accounted for the greatest number of overseas travelers to Japan last year, when around 2.82 million Taiwanese visited the nation. Meanwhile, statistics from the MOTC’s Tourism Bureau show that Japanese made more than 1.63 million trips to Taiwan in 2014. Notably, the TRA-Seibu deal also includes a provision on launching a joint natural disaster rescue system, marking the first time that the TRA has signed an international agreement in this area.
“Japan boasts the most advanced railway system in Asia,” says Chen Chien-chu (陳建竹), head of the Takao Railway Museum in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. “Plus, Taiwan and Japan share significant historical ties, so it makes sense that we would boost our cooperation with Japanese rail companies.” In addition to serving as director of the museum, Chen is a leading member of the Railway Culture Society, Taiwan (RCST), and a prominent figure in promoting railway cooperation between Taiwanese and international nongovernmental organizations.
The RCST is based in the Takao museum at the now-defunct Kaohsiung Port Station, formerly the largest freight transfer hub in the nation’s railway system. The facility was designated a historic site by the city government in 2003, and the RCST has been its operator since 2010. Beyond managing the museum, “one of the RCST’s primary goals is to help develop connections with other countries that have proud railway cultures, such as India, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Chen says.
The TRA’s Songshan Station and JR Shikoku’s Matsuyama Station sealed a partnership accord in 2013. The Han characters used in the names of the stations are identical. (Photo courtesy of Taiwan Railways Administration)
In February this year, Chen and other RCST members were invited to visit several renowned railway sites in India, including the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, one of three Indian mountain rail systems listed as World Heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the National Rail Museum in New Delhi. “Given Taiwan’s unique status in the international community, nongovernmental groups can play an important role in promoting exchanges,” Chen says.
The RCST is part of the Australia-based Asia Pacific Heritage and Tourist Rail Organization (APHTRO) and the UK-based World Association of Tourist Trams and Trains (WATTRAIN). The RCST members’ trip to India earlier this year was proposed last May during the APHTRO’s annual conference, which was held in Taiwan and organized by the RCST. Attendants included representatives of WATTRAIN and other railway organizations from such nations as India, Jordan and the United Kingdom. “We took our guests to see the country’s various rail systems, including the TRA lines, high-speed rail, Alishan line and the mass rapid transit systems in Kaohsiung and Taipei,” Chen notes. “We have a great diversity of railway resources to share with visitors.”
The museum director also represented the RCST at the 15th general assembly of The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) in Taipei in 2012. This event marked the first time that TICCIH, which helps assess potential UNESCO World Heritage sites, held its triennial conference in Asia. According to TICCIH’s declaration following the event, the organization’s decision to hold its assembly in Taipei highlights the growing attention that it is paying to Asian industrial heritage sites, which it noted are under increasing threat. During the congress, attendees visited a number of historical transportation facilities across the country, including the TRA’s Old Mountain Line in central Taiwan’s Miaoli County and Taichung City, which suspended operations in the late 1990s before reopening in 2010 as a tourist attraction.
Due in part to growing interactions with nations that have strong railway traditions, public and private groups in Taiwan have been increasing their efforts to promote the conservation of railway heritage sites. For Chen, this is a key benefit of railway diplomacy. His group was established in 1995 to advocate the preservation of historical railways and related facilities in Taiwan, and has become one of the most prominent groups in this area.
In March this year, members of the RCST and other activists celebrated the government’s decision to designate the Taipei Railway Workshop, a train maintenance depot that dates to the time of Qing court rule, as a national historic site—a hard-won result that came after years of heated debate. For Chen, this outcome is significant not simply because it protects a historical facility, but because it highlights the recent change in attitudes toward industrial heritage conservation. “There is agreement in the international community that preserving cultural heritage sites benefits a nation in the long-term,” Chen says. “Taiwan is now beginning to act in accordance with this consensus.”
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw