By contrast, the evidence of the Tokyo-Osaka route is of continuing, ever heavier industrial investment.
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The original Tokyo-Osaka shinkansen, serving the largest and most stable demand in the world, soon became profitable despite the huge investment.
The country has been forced to deal with environmental issues not only because the Japanese care about nature, but also because they increasingly live in ever-closer quarters in Tokyo, Osaka and a handful of other big cities.
To put it yet another way, coastal Californians would have to live cheek-by-jowl as Japanese people in the megalopolis that stretches from Tokyo to Osaka do to have any chance of a high-speed rail service that offered at least half a dozen trains an hour and did not require huge tax-payer subsidies.
Having worked for many years in Tokyo, with family in Osaka, your correspondent has made the two-and-a-half hour journey on the Tokaido bullet-train many times.
She says she will not go head-to-head with the shinkansen (though her airline will fly between Tokyo and Osaka).
Reports suggest the Tokyo and Osaka governors, Shintaro Ishihara and Toru Hashimoto, are in talks over a potential link-up in the polls.
The most prominent is the Japan Restoration Party led by two political mavericks - Toru Hashimoto, the Mayor of Osaka, and 80-year-old Shintaro Ishihara, the former governor of Tokyo.
He is backing away from a fervently anti-nuclear stance and he needs to mollify politicians in Tokyo to get their backing for sweeping administrative changes in Osaka.
And Japan, the nation that unveiled the first high-speed rail system, is already at work building the next: a line that will connect Tokyo with Osaka at speeds of over 300 miles per hour.
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