The is a national

expressway Expressway may refer to: * Controlled-access highway, the highest-grade type of highway with access ramps, lane markings, etc., for high-speed traffic. * Limited-access road, a lower grade of highway or arterial road. *Expressway, the fictional s ...

Mie Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Mie Prefecture has a population of 1,781,948 () and has a geographic area of . Mie Prefecture is bordered by Gifu Prefecture to the north, Shiga Prefecture and Kyoto Prefecture to ...

and

Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...

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 ...

. The expressway is also known as the Meihan National Highway that is a literal translation of its Japanese name. Together with the

Nishi-Meihan Expressway is a national expressway in the Kinki region of Japan. It is owned and operated by West Nippon Expressway Company. Naming Meihan is a kanji acronym of two characters. The first character represents Nagoya (名古屋) and the second character r ...

and

Higashi-Meihan Expressway The is a four lane national expressway in the Tōkai region of Japan. It is owned and operated by Central Nippon Expressway Company. Naming Meihan is a kanji acronym of two characters. The first character represents Nagoya (名古屋) and the se ...

, it is the central portion of a corridor linking the greater

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...

and

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. ...

areas. It is owned and operated by

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism The , abbreviated MLIT, is a ministry of the Japanese government.国土交通省設置法 ...

and is signed as an auxiliary route of National Route 25 as well as E25 under their "Expressway Numbering System."

Naming

''Meihan'' is a Sino-Japanese pronunciation of two-character

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 ...

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for Nagoya and Osaka (名阪). The first character of three-character kanji that represents Nagoya (名古屋) is pronounced as ''mei'', whereas the second character of two-character kanji that represents Osaka (大阪) is pronounced as ''han''.

History

Construction on the Meihan Expressway began in March 1962, with an intended construction period of only one thousand days. The rapid construction of expressways in Japan at the time was spearheaded by Minister of Construction

Ichirō Kōno was a postwar Japanese politician and a member of the National Diet. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was the head of the powerful "Konō Faction" within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. Konō aspired to become prime minister, but alth ...

in preparation for the

1964 Summer Olympics The , officially the and commonly known as Tokyo 1964 ( ja, 東京1964), were an international multi-sport event held from 10 to 24 October 1964 in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this ho ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. It was opened as a

two-lane expressway A two-lane expressway or two-lane freeway is an expressway or freeway with only one lane in each direction, and usually no median barrier. It may be built that way because of constraints, or may be intended for expansion once traffic volumes ris ...

in December 1965.

Interchange list

References

{{Expressways of Japan Expressways in Japan Roads in Nara Prefecture Roads in Mie Prefecture