EVEN as it faces its worst volcano disaster in decades, in which dozens of hikers were killed on the slopes of an erupting Mount Ontake, Japan has managed to celebrate one of its technological triumphs. Fifty years ago this week the first Shinkansen bullet train pulled out of Tokyo station bound for Osaka, a flash of blue and white through what was still a grimy, beat-up megalopolis. At once it became emblematic of Japan’s regeneration and a glimpse of the future.

The train slashed the trip between Japan’s two great cities by three hours, bringing fast, reliable transport to millions a decade before high-speed trains in Europe. It has since whisked 5.6 billion passengers across the country without a single serious accident. Punctuality? The average delay is less than a minute.

Inevitably, the world caught up. High-speed trains now criss-cross Europe, sometimes topping the bullet train’s maximum 320 kilometres per hour (200 miles per hour). A decade ago, in a technological feat quietly mourned in Japan, China rolled out the world’s fastest train, the Shanghai maglev, with speeds of up to 430kph.

Today, Shinkansen staff no longer wear kimonos, but an air of old-world service persists, from elegant bento lunch boxes sold at every station to white-gloved conductors. But at over ¥14,000 ($130) for the Tokyo-Osaka run, competition is growing from no-frills airlines luring younger travellers away from the Shinkansen’s pampered embrace.

In a Promethean bid once again to run the fastest train on earth, Japan is developing its own maglev on a track running through the mountains of Yamanashi prefecture; it will reach speeds of over 500kph. The idea is to shrink the Tokyo-Osaka journey, via Nagoya, to about an hour—in effect rendering Japan’s industrial heartland a suburb of Tokyo. The Chuo-Shinkansen will not come cheap, as a new line must be dug deep underground. Somehow, a massively indebted state will have to help with at least some of the $47 billion price tag.