Seikan Tunnel

undersea railway tunnel in Japan connecting Hokkaido and Honshu

AI overview

The Seikan Tunnel is an underwater railway that connects Japan's northern island of Hokkaido to the main island of Honshu, allowing trains to travel between them without needing a ferry. It was a major engineering achievement that improved transportation and trade between the two regions.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~13 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The Seikan Tunnel (Japanese: 青函トンネル, Seikan Tonneru or 青函隧道, Seikan Zuidō) is a 53.85-kilometre (33.5-mile) dual-gauge railway tunnel in Japan, with a 23.3-kilometre (14.5-mile) segment running beneath the seabed of the Tsugaru Strait, which separates Aomori Prefecture on Honshu, Japan's main island, from the northern island of Hokkaido. The tunnel's track level lies approximately 100 metres (330 ft) below the seabed and 240 metres (790 ft) below sea level. Following several decades of planning and construction, the tunnel opened on 13 March 1988.

The Seikan Tunnel forms part of the standard-gauge Hokkaido Shinkansen as well as the narrow-gauge Kaikyō Line operated by the Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido). Its name, "Seikan," is derived from the on'yomi readings of the first characters of Aomori (青森), the nearest major city in Honshu, and Hakodate (函館), the nearest major city in Hokkaido.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Seikan Tunnel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.