On my first trip to Japan, I brought along a JR Rail Pass to take advantage of the subsidized rail transport for tourists. After riding the JR Yamanote Line and the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, I assumed JR must be a single national train system. But I soon learned it’s far from that. The Yamanote Line is run by the East Japan Railway Company — JR East — and the Tōkaidō Shinkansen by JR Central. And each of these JR companies is part of a group of associated but entirely separate companies — four now publicly traded, three overseen by a government agency — that each bear the JR mark. image credit So tens of thousands of vehicles across Japan carry this JR mark and often interoperate on each other’s routes, yet they’re run by independent systems. And the mark has remained unchanged for nearly 40 years, giving off the air of a stable institution. And the truth is that it didn’t need to happen this way. What was being dismantled Rail transport in Japan was originally run by Japanese National Railways (JNR).…