The is a tramway in the cities of

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

and

Sakai is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It has been one of the largest and most important seaports of Japan since the medieval era. Sakai is known for its keyhole-shaped burial mounds, or kofun, which date from the fifth century and incl ...

Osaka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Hankai Tramway Co., Ltd. owns and operates the line. The line's name comes from (the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

character for ''saka'' is also pronounced ''han'') and (whose kanji contributed the ''kai'').

History

The Hankai Line has its origin in the Hankai Tramway Co., Ltd., founded in 1910. In 1915 the company merged with the

Nankai Railway is a private railway in Japan, founded in 1884. The name ''Nankai'' (which means "South Sea") comes from the company's routes along the Nankaidō, the old highway that ran south from the old capital, Kyoto, along the sea coast. Nankai predates a ...

which runs north and south in Osaka. The city's overall tram network was once extensive. As motorization developed as an alternative form of transportation along with the construction of subway lines underneath major routes, the trams lost their passengers, causing Osaka's once-extensive tram network to shrink, with the only the Hankai and Uemachi tram lines remaining. In 1980, Hankai split from Nankai.

Stations

Station numbers are in parentheses. All trams from Ebisucho go only as far as Abikomichi, while Uemachi Line trains go through from Tennoji-ekimae to Hamadera-ekimae.

References

External links

*
Hankai Line official site
Rail transport in Osaka Prefecture Railway lines in Japan Tram transport in Japan Railway lines opened in 1910 {{Japan-rail-line-stub

History

Stations

See also

References

External links