title: Colombo crime family

text: Shortly after the Colombo shooting, a meeting of the high-ranking members of the family was held. At the meeting, underboss Salvatore “Charlie Lemons” Mineo was asked to take over as interim boss, but Mineo refused, citing his advanced age and failing health, and instead recommended that consigliere Joseph “Joey Yack” Yacovelli become acting boss.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Although the leadership of the Colombo family believed that Gallo was the mastermind behind the attempt on Colombo's life, Yacovelli opted not to pursue vengeance against Gallo right away. The New York Police Department may have contributed to Yacovelli's hesitation: although the police believed that Gallo was not involved in the Colombo shooting, they were aware that many members of the Colombo family did and would likely attempt to take revenge. Therefore, the police had assigned officers to follow Gallo around and ensure he was not harmed, making it nearly impossible for the Colombo family to get to Gallo. Killing Gallo so soon after the attempt on Colombo would also likely give the police the impression that a full-scale mob war was ensuing on the streets of New York and would therefore draw too much heat.


title: Colombo crime family

text: By early 1972, however, most of the publicity surrounding the Colombo shooting had faded away, and an open contract was subsequently placed on Gallo's head. On April 7, 1972, acting on a quick tip, four gunmen walked into Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy and killed Joe Gallo as he was dining with his family. Looking for revenge, Albert Gallo sent a gunman from Las Vegas to the Neapolitan Noodle restaurant in Manhattan, where Yacovelli, Alphonse Persico, and Gennaro Langella were dining one day. However, the gunman did not recognize the mobsters and shot four innocent diners instead, killing two of them.


title: Colombo crime family

text: After this assassination attempt, Yacovelli, fearing further attempts at reprisal from the Gallo crew, fled New York. With Yacovelli, the family's consigliere, now on the run and its underboss, Mineo, having previously made it clear that he had no interest in stepping up to the top position, the door appeared to be wide open for Persico, now a capo and the leader of a powerful faction within the family, to permanently take over as boss.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Persico, however, had been sent to prison on federal hijacking charges in January earlier that year, so another capo named Vincenzo Aloi, a son of well-respected former capo Sebastiano “Buster” Aloi as well as the godson of Carlo Gambino, became the new acting boss. Aloi's tenure as acting boss was to be short-lived as well, however, as he was convicted of perjury on June 26, 1973, for lying to a grand jury when he claimed he had not visited a Colombo family safe house in Nyack, New York prior to the Gallo murder. After his conviction, Aloi, who was free on bail pending an appeal, stepped down as acting boss.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Joseph “Joey” Brancato, acting capo for John “Sonny” Franzese while the latter was serving a 50-year sentence at Leavenworth for bank robbery, then stepped up and became acting boss. Brancato, however, had no interest in a permanent leadership position and only took the job of acting boss for the purpose of finally negotiating an end to the war with the Gallo crew, which by then had split itself into two groups that had started fighting each other. To finally resolve the conflict, Brancato and the bosses of the other New York families negotiated an agreement in which Albert Gallo and his remaining crew left the Colombo family and peacefully joined the Genovese family. The Gallo wars were finally over.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Having successfully negotiated a peaceful resolution to the Gallo wars, Brancato stepped down as acting boss and returned to running his Long Island crew. With no other viable candidates standing in his way, the imprisoned Persico officially took over the Colombo family by the end of 1973, placing Thomas DiBella in charge of the family as acting boss and promoting his brother Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico to consigliere and Anthony “Tony Shots” Abbatemarco to underboss.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Following the high-profile media exposure of Joseph Colombo and the murderous excesses of Joe Gallo, the Colombo family entered a period of comparative calm and stability. With Colombo in a coma, the family leadership went to Thomas DiBella, a man adept at evading the authorities since his sole bootlegging conviction in 1932. However, DiBella was unable to prevent the Gambino family from chipping away at Colombo rackets, and the Colombos declined in power. Poor health forced DiBella to retire in 1977, and Colombo died in 1978. The Colombo family was facing another power vacuum.


title: Colombo crime family

text: During the 1970s, Carmine Persico had grown in stature within the family and was considered to be the clear successor as boss. However, in 1973, Persico was imprisoned on hijacking and loan-sharking charges, and sentenced to eight years in prison. His incarceration coincided with the release of his brother Alphonse from 17 years in prison. Persico designated Alphonse as acting boss with support as underboss from Gennaro Langella and Carmine's other brother, Theodore. Langella supervised various labor rackets for the family, including their stake in "Concrete Club", and exerted control over various labor unions, including Cement and Concrete Workers District Council, Local 6A.


title: Colombo crime family

text: In 1979, Carmine was released from federal prison. In November 1981, he was convicted of conspiracy and racketeering charges, and sentenced to five years in prison.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On February 25, 1985, nine New York Mafia leaders, including Langella, followed by Persico, were indicted for narcotics trafficking, loansharking, gambling, labor racketeering and extortion against construction companies, as part of the Mafia Commission Trial. Prosecutors aimed to strike at all the crime families at once using their involvement in the Commission. Seven of the defendants were convicted of racketeering on November 19, 1986, with Persico and Langella each sentenced on January 13, 1987, to 100 years' imprisonment. In the separate Colombo Trial, Persico was sentenced to 39 years' imprisonment, Langella to 65 years' imprisonment, and Alphonse Persico to 12 years, on November 17, 1986.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Mafia historian and "The New York Times" organized-crime reporter Selwyn Raab later wrote that the Colombos suffered more long-term damage than any other family as a result of the Commission Trial. Raab pointed out that Persico was by far the youngest boss in New York and "at the peak of his abilities." Although he was 53 years old at the time of the Commission Trial, he had already headed the family for 14 years. In contrast, the other New York bosses were in their seventies and likely would have ceded power to mafiosi of Persico's generation even if they had not been sent to prison. Raab believed that Persico would have had a long reign ahead of him had the trial not intervened.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Although Persico knew he would never resume active control of the family, he was determined to ensure that his take of the family's illicit gains would continue to flow to his relatives. He had already named Alphonse as acting boss before his arrest, and retained Alphonse in that post after his arrest. However, not long afterward, Alphonse skipped bail from a loansharking arrest. Persico then named a three-man ruling panel to run the family. In 1988, he dissolved the panel and named Victor Orena, the capo of Little Allie Boy's former crew in Brooklyn, as temporary acting boss. Persico made clear that Orena was merely a placeholder until Little Allie Boy could return to the streets. However, Persico empowered Orena to induct new members and order murders on his own authority–two prerogatives rarely granted to an acting boss.


title: Colombo crime family

text: By 1991, Orena had come to believe Persico was out of touch and causing the family to miss out on lucrative opportunities. He was also alarmed at Persico's plans for a made-for-television biography, fearing that prosecutors could use it as evidence in the same way they had used Joe Bonanno's tell-all book as evidence in the Commission Trial. He therefore decided to take over the family himself.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Using his strong ties to Gambino boss John Gotti, Orena petitioned the Mafia Commission to recognize him as boss. Unwilling to cause more conflict, the Commission refused. Orena then instructed consigliere Carmine Sessa to poll the capos on whether Orena should replace Persico. Instead, Sessa alerted Persico that Orena was staging a palace coup. An enraged Persico ordered a hit on Orena. On June 21, 1991, when Orena arrived at his home in Cedarhurst on Long Island, he found gunmen under Sessa's leadership waiting for him. However, Orena managed to escape before the gunmen could strike. The third Colombo war had begun.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Orena sent his younger brother Michael "Mickey Brown" Orena's two sons—Michael and younger son William "Willy Boy" Orena—into Brooklyn on a murder mission. It is unclear what roles the two brothers played in the murders during the war, but F.B.I agents are certain they were responsible for the disappearance of 15 associates and business partners of the Orena clan. William "Willy Boy" Orena was picked up getting off of the Fire Island Ferry in Sayville Long Island, with eight pistols believed to be used in the bloodshed and $43,000 in cash in his possession. During Willy Boy's stay at the Riverhead County Jail, all eight of the firearms disappeared from the evidence locker.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Twelve people, including three innocent bystanders, died in this gang war, and 18 associates have never been seen again. More than 80 made members and associates from both sides of the Colombo family were convicted, jailed or indicted. These included Persico's brother Theodore "Teddy" Persico and his son Alphonse Persico, DeRoss, Orena's nephews William V. Orena, his older brother Micheal Orena, and Orena's two sons, Victor Jr. Orena and John Orena. While both sides appealed to the Commission for help, the war continued. In November 1991, Gregory Scarpa, a Persico loyalist, was driving his daughter and granddaughter home when several Orena gunmen ambushed them. Scarpa and his relatives managed to escape.


title: Colombo crime family

text: The war continued until 1992, when Orena was convicted of racketeering, the 1989 Ocera murder, and other related charges. He received three life sentences plus 85 years in federal prison. 58 soldiers and associates—42 from the Persico faction and 16 from the Orena faction—were sent to prison. Raab later wrote that Persico's attempts to keep control of the family from prison nearly destroyed it. By his estimate, 70 of the family's members and associates were convicted as a result of the war, and the family was down to around 75 made members.


title: Colombo crime family

text: While the Colombo war raged, the Commission refused to allow any Colombo member to sit on the Commission and considered dissolving the family. Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso proposed to merge the family with his own to end the war, while in 2000 plans were proposed to split its manpower and resources among the remaining families. In 2002, with the help of Bonanno family boss Joseph Massino, the other families finally allowed the Colombos to rejoin the Commission.


title: Colombo crime family

text: With Orena out of the picture, the way was clear for "Little Allie Boy" to become acting boss after his release in 1994. In 1994, Carmine Persico appointed Andrew Russo as acting boss. When Russo went to prison in 1996, Alphonse Persico took over as acting boss. In 1999, he was arrested in Fort Lauderdale after being caught in possession of a pistol and shotgun; as a convicted felon he was barred from carrying guns.


title: Colombo crime family

text: Shortly afterward, he ordered the murder of underboss William "Wild Bill" Cutolo, an Orena supporter during the Third Colombo War. Cutolo's son, vowing revenge, offered to wear a wire and pose as a prospective Colombo associate. Based on evidence from this wire, Little Allie Boy was indicted on RICO charges. Realizing he stood no chance of acquittal, he pled guilty to the state charges in February 2000 and to the RICO charges in December 2001. In 2004, Alphonse Persico and underboss John "Jackie" DeRoss were indicted for the Cutolo murder. In December 2007, both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Family consigliere Joel "Joe Waverly" Cacace took over running the family until 2003, when he was imprisoned on murder and racketeering charges.


title: Colombo crime family

text: The family then came under the influence of Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, who took over as street boss. In June 2008, Gioeli, underboss John "Sonny" Franzese, former consigliere Joel Cacace, captain Dino Calabro, soldier Dino Saracino and several other members and associates, including Orlando "Ori" Spado, were indicted on multiple racketeering charges, including loansharking, extortion and three murders dating back to the Colombo Wars. Alphonse Persico was sentenced to life imprisonment on February 27, 2009, for the Cutolo murder.


title: Colombo crime family

text: After Gioeli was imprisoned, Ralph F. DeLeo, who operated from Boston, Massachusetts, became the family's street boss. On December 17, 2009, the FBI charged DeLeo and Colombo family members with drug trafficking, extortion and loansharking in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Florida and Arkansas.


title: Colombo crime family

text: With DeLeo imprisoned, Andrew "Andy Mush" Russo once again took control of the family. On January 20, 2011, street boss Andrew Russo, acting underboss Benjamin Castellazzo, consigliere Richard Fusco, and others were charged with murder, narcotics trafficking, and labor racketeering. In September 2011, Castellazzo and Fusco pleaded guilty to reduced charges. In December 2011, it was revealed that capo Reynold Maragni wore a wire for the FBI and gained information about Thomas Gioeli's role in the 1999 murder of William Cutolo.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On July 11, 2018, four associates and members of the Colombo crime family were part of a 32-count indictment charging then with a number of crimes, including money laundering, racketeering, illegal gambling and extortion. The crimes allegedly took place between December 2010 and June 2018, predominantly in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Two made members of the Colombo family, Vito DiFalco and Jerry Ciauri, were among the accused. Gambino crime family soldier Anthony Licata was also indicted.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On March 7, 2019, Colombo family boss Carmine Persico died in prison. With Carmine Persico's death, his son Alphonse Persico was passed over and his cousin Andrew "Mush" Russo became the official boss of the Colombo family. Russo's inner circle included underboss Benjamin "Benji" Castellazzo, consigliere Ralph DiMatteo, capo Vincent "Vinny Unions" Ricciardo, capo Richard Ferrara and capo Theodore "Teddy" Persico Jr.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On October 3, 2019, capo Joseph Amato along with Daniel Capaldo and Thomas Scorcia were indicted on 2014 Staten Island extortion and loansharking charges. On March 22, 2021, Amato pleaded guilty.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On August 13, 2020, an indictment charged Colombo family associate Frangesco "Frankie" Russo, Genovese family soldier Christopher Chierchio, attorney Jason "Jay" Kurland and securities broker Frank Smookler with conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering. The indictment accused the "lottery attorney" Kurland, along with Russo, Chierchio and Smookler, of swindling $80 million from jackpot winners in an illegal scheme which involved siphoning money from the winners' investments. Frangesco "Frankie" Russo has been identified as the son of former Colombo captain Joseph “JoJo” Russo, and the grandson of Andrew "Mush" Russo, the reputed boss of the Colombo family.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On September 14, 2021, an indictment was served that included the Colombo family's official boss, Andrew "Mush" Russo, underboss Benjamin "Benji" Castellazzo, consigliere Ralph DiMatteo, captains Vincent Ricciardi, Richard Ferrara and Theodore "Teddy" Persico Jr., soldier Michael Uvino, and associates Thomas Costa and Domenick Ricciardo. The indictment charged these members of the Colombo family with infiltrating and taking control of a Queens-based labor union and its affiliated health care benefit program, as well as conspiring to commit fraud in connection with workplace safety certifications. Ralph DiMatteo was not present when the indictment was served and was declared a fugitive, but surrendered to the FBI on September 17, 2021.


title: Colombo crime family

text: On April 20, 2022, Andrew Russo's lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman announced that Russo died at the age of 87 on April 18, 2022. On April 23, 2022, Andrew Russo's funeral was attended by 100 mourners in Brooklyn.


title: Shinkansen

text: The , colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Initially, it was built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond long-distance travel, some sections around the largest metropolitan areas are used as a commuter rail network. It is operated by five Japan Railways Group companies.


title: Shinkansen

text: Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus-year history, carrying over 10 billion passengers, there has been not a single passenger fatality or injury on board due to derailments or collisions.


title: Shinkansen

text: Starting with the Tokaido Shinkansen () in 1964, the network has expanded to currently consist of of lines with maximum speeds of , of Mini-Shinkansen lines with a maximum speed of , and of spur lines with Shinkansen services. The network presently links most major cities on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu, and Hakodate on northern island of Hokkaido, with an extension to Sapporo under construction and scheduled to commence in March 2031. The maximum operating speed is (on a 387.5 km section of the Tōhoku Shinkansen). Test runs have reached for conventional rail in 1996, and up to a world record for SCMaglev trains in April 2015.


title: Shinkansen

text: The original Tokaido Shinkansen, connecting Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, three of Japan's largest cities, is one of the world's busiest high-speed rail lines. In the one-year period preceding March 2017, it carried 159 million passengers, and since its opening more than five decades ago, it has transported more than 6.4 billion total passengers. At peak times, the line carries up to 16 trains per hour in each direction with 16 cars each (1,323-seat capacity and occasionally additional standing passengers) with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen network of Japan had the highest annual passenger ridership (a maximum of 353 million in 2007) of any high-speed rail network until 2011, when the Chinese high-speed railway network surpassed it at 370 million passengers annually, reaching over 2.3 billion annual passengers in 2019.


title: Shinkansen

text: in Japanese means 'new trunk line' or 'new main line', but this word is used to describe both the railway lines the trains run on and the trains themselves. In English, the trains are also known as the bullet train. The term originates from 1939, and was the initial name given to the Shinkansen project in its earliest planning stages. Furthermore, the name , used exclusively until 1972 for trains on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, is used today in English-language announcements and signage.


title: Shinkansen

text: Japan was the first country to build dedicated railway lines for high-speed travel. Because of the mountainous terrain, the existing network consisted of narrow-gauge lines, which generally took indirect routes and could not be adapted to higher speeds due to technical limitations of narrow-gauge rail. For example, if a standard-gauge rail has a curve with a maximum speed of , the same curve on narrow-gauge rail will have a maximum allowable speed of . Consequently, Japan had a greater need for new high-speed lines than countries where the existing standard gauge or broad gauge rail system had more upgrade potential.


title: Shinkansen

text: Among the key people credited with the construction of the first Shinkansen are Hideo Shima, the Chief Engineer, and Shinji Sogō, the first President of Japanese National Railways (JNR) who managed to persuade politicians to back the plan. Other significant people responsible for its technical development were Tadanao Miki, Tadashi Matsudaira, and Hajime Kawanabe based at the Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), part of JNR. They were responsible for much of the technical development of the first line, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. All three had worked on aircraft design during World War II.


title: Shinkansen

text: The popular English name "bullet train" is a literal translation of the Japanese term , a nickname given to the project while it was initially discussed in the 1930s. The name stuck because of the original 0 Series Shinkansen's resemblance to a bullet and its high speed.


title: Shinkansen

text: The "Shinkansen" name was first formally used in 1940 for a proposed standard gauge passenger and freight line between Tokyo and Shimonoseki that would have used steam and electric locomotives with a top speed of . Over the next three years, the Ministry of Railways drew up more ambitious plans to extend the line to Beijing (through a tunnel to Korea) and even Singapore, and build connections to the Trans-Siberian Railway and other trunk lines in Asia. These plans were abandoned in 1943 as Japan's position in World War II worsened. However, some construction did commence on the line; several tunnels on the present-day Shinkansen date to the war-era project.


title: Shinkansen

text: Following the end of World War II, high-speed rail was forgotten for several years while traffic of passengers and freight steadily increased on the conventional Tōkaidō Main Line along with the reconstruction of Japanese industry and economy. By the mid-1950s the Tōkaidō Line was operating at full capacity, and the Ministry of Railways decided to revisit the Shinkansen project. In 1957, Odakyu Electric Railway introduced its 3000 series SE Romancecar train, setting a world speed record of for a narrow gauge train. This train gave designers the confidence that they could safely build an even faster standard gauge train. Thus the first Shinkansen, the 0 series, was built on the success of the Romancecar.


title: Shinkansen

text: In the 1950s, the Japanese national attitude was that railways would soon be outdated and replaced by air travel and highways as in the United States and many countries in Europe. However, Shinji Sogō, President of Japanese National Railways, insisted strongly on the possibility of high-speed rail, and the Shinkansen project was implemented.


title: Shinkansen

text: Government approval came in December 1958, and construction of the first segment of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka started in April 1959. The cost of constructing the Shinkansen was at first estimated at nearly 200 billion yen, which was raised in the form of a government loan, railway bonds and a low-interest loan of US$80 million from the World Bank. Initial estimates, however, were deliberately understated and the actual cost was about 400 billion yen. As the budget shortfall became clear in 1963, Sogo resigned to take responsibility.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Tōkaidō Shinkansen began service on 1 October 1964, in time for the first Tokyo Olympics. The conventional Limited Express service took six hours and 40 minutes from Tokyo to Osaka, but the Shinkansen made the trip in just four hours, shortened to three hours and ten minutes by 1965. It enabled day trips between Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest metropolises in Japan, significantly changed the style of business and life of the Japanese people, and increased new traffic demand. The service was an immediate success, reaching the 100 million passenger mark in less than three years on 13 July 1967, and one billion passengers in 1976. Sixteen-car trains were introduced for Expo '70 in Osaka. With an average of 23,000 passengers per hour in each direction in 1992, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen was the world's busiest high-speed rail line. As of 2014, the train's 50th anniversary, daily passenger traffic rose to 391,000 which, spread over its 18-hour schedule, represented an average of just under 22,000 passengers per hour.


title: Shinkansen

text: The first Shinkansen trains, the 0 series, ran at speeds of up to , later increased to . The last of these trains, with their classic bullet-nosed appearance, were retired on 30 November 2008. A driving car from one of the 0 series trains was donated by JR West to the National Railway Museum in York, United Kingdom in 2001.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Tōkaidō Shinkansen's rapid success prompted an extension westward to Okayama, Hiroshima and Fukuoka (the San'yō Shinkansen), which was completed in 1975. Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was an ardent supporter of the Shinkansen, and his government proposed an extensive network paralleling most existing trunk lines. Two new lines, the Tōhoku Shinkansen and Jōetsu Shinkansen, were built following this plan. Many other planned lines were delayed or scrapped entirely as JNR slid into debt throughout the late 1970s, largely because of the high cost of building the Shinkansen network. By the early 1980s, the company was practically insolvent, leading to its privatization in 1987.


title: Shinkansen

text: Development of the Shinkansen by the privatised regional JR companies has continued, with new train models developed, each generally with its own distinctive appearance (such as the 500 series introduced by JR West). Since 2014, Shinkansen trains run regularly at speeds up to on the Tōhoku Shinkansen, only the Shanghai maglev train and China Railway High-speed networks have commercial services that operate faster.


title: Shinkansen

text: Since 1970, development has also been underway for the Chūō Shinkansen, a planned maglev line from Tokyo to Osaka. On 21 April 2015, a seven-car L0 series maglev trainset set a world speed record of .


title: Shinkansen

text: To enable high-speed operation, Shinkansen uses a range of advanced technology compared with conventional rail, achieving not only high speed but also a high standard of safety and comfort. Its success has influenced other railways in the world, demonstrating the importance and advantages of high-speed rail.


title: Shinkansen

text: Shinkansen routes are completely separate from conventional rail lines (except Mini-shinkansen which goes through to conventional lines). Consequently, the shinkansen is not affected by slower local or freight trains (except for Hokkaido Shinkansen while traveling through the Seikan Tunnel), and has the capacity to operate many high-speed trains punctually. The lines have been built without road crossings at grade. Tracks are strictly off-limits with penalties against trespassing strictly regulated by law. The routes use tunnels and viaducts to go through and over obstacles rather than around them, with a minimum curve radius of 4,000 meters (2,500 meters on the oldest Tōkaidō Shinkansen).


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen uses standard gauge in contrast to the narrow gauge of older lines. Continuous welded rail and swingnose crossing points are employed, eliminating gaps at turnouts and crossings. Long rails are used, joined by expansion joints to minimize gauge fluctuation due to thermal elongation and shrinkage.


title: Shinkansen

text: A combination of ballasted and slab track is used, with slab track exclusively employed on concrete bed sections such as viaducts and tunnels. Slab track is significantly more cost-effective in tunnel sections, since the lower track height reduces the cross-sectional area of the tunnel, reducing construction costs up to 30%.


title: Shinkansen

text: However, the smaller diameter of Shinkansen tunnels, compared to some other high-speed lines, has resulted in the issue of tunnel boom becoming a concern for residents living close to tunnel portals.


title: Shinkansen

text: The slab track consists of rails, fasteners and track slabs with a cement asphalt mortar. On the roadbed and in tunnels, circular upstands, measuring 400–520 mm in diameter and 200 mm high, are located at 5-metre intervals. The prefabricated upstands are made of either reinforced concrete or pre-stressed reinforced concrete; they prevent the track slab from moving latitudinally or longitudinally. One track slab weighs approximately 5 tons and is 2220–2340 mm wide, 4900–4950 mm long and 160–200 mm thick.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen employs an ATC (Automatic Train Control) system, eliminating the need for trackside signals. It uses a comprehensive system of Automatic Train Protection. Centralized traffic control manages all train operations, and all tasks relating to train movement, track, station and schedule are networked and computerized.


title: Shinkansen

text: Shinkansen uses a 25 kV AC overhead power supply (20 kV AC on Mini-shinkansen lines), to overcome the limitations of the 1,500 V direct current used on the existing electrified narrow-gauge system. Power is distributed along the train's axles to reduce the heavy axle loads under single power cars. The AC frequency of the power supply for the Tokaido Shinkansen is 60 Hz.


title: Shinkansen

text: Shinkansen trains are electric multiple units, offering fast acceleration, deceleration and reduced damage to the track because of the use of lighter vehicles compared to locomotives or power cars. The coaches are air-sealed to ensure stable air pressure when entering tunnels at high speed.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen has used the electric multiple unit configuration from the outset, with the 0 Series Shinkansen having all axles powered. Other railway manufacturers were traditionally reluctant or unable to use distributed traction configurations (Talgo, the German ICE 2 and the French (and subsequently South Korean) TGV (and KTX-I and KTX-II) use the locomotive (also known as power car) configuration with the AVE Class 102 and continues with it for the Talgo AVRIL because it is not possible to use powered bogies as part of Talgo's bogie design, which uses a modified Jacobs bogie with a single axle instead of two and allows the wheels to rotate independently of each other, on the ICE 2, TGV and KTX it is because it easily allows for a high ride quality and less electrical equipment.) In Japan, significant engineering desirability exists for the electric multiple unit configuration. A greater proportion of motored axles permits higher acceleration, so the Shinkansen does not lose as much time if stopping frequently. Shinkansen lines have more stops in proportion to their lengths than high-speed lines elsewhere in the world.


title: Shinkansen

text: In practice, the Tokaido, San'yō, and Kyushu lines form a contiguous west/southbound line from Tokyo, as train services run between the Tokaido and San'yō lines and between the San'yō and Kyushu lines, though the lines are operated by different companies.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Tokaido Shinkansen tracks are not physically connected to the lines of the Tohoku Shinkansen at Tokyo Station, as they are operated by separate companies and have separate platforms. Therefore, there is no through service between those lines. All northbound services from Tokyo travel along the Tohoku Shinkansen until at least Ōmiya.


title: Shinkansen

text: Two further lines, known as "Mini-shinkansen", have also been constructed by re-gauging and upgrading existing sections of line:


title: Shinkansen

text: There are two standard-gauge lines not technically classified as Shinkansen lines but run Shinkansen trains as they use tracks leading to Shinkansen storage/maintenance yards:


title: Shinkansen

text: The following lines are under construction. These lines except Chuo Shinkansen, called or "planned Shinkansen", are the Shinkansen projects designated in the Basic Plan decided by the government.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Narita Shinkansen project to connect Tokyo to Narita International Airport, initiated in the 1970s but halted in 1983 after landowner protests, has been officially cancelled and removed from the Basic Plan governing Shinkansen construction. Parts of its planned right-of-way were used by the Narita Sky Access Line which opened in 2010, and the Keiyo Line reused space originally set aside for the Narita Shinkansen terminus at Tokyo Station. Although the Sky Access Line uses standard-gauge track, it was not built to Shinkansen specifications and there are no plans to convert it into a full Shinkansen line.


title: Shinkansen

text: Many Shinkansen lines were proposed during the boom of the early 1970s but have yet to be constructed and have subsequently been shelved indefinitely.


title: Shinkansen

text: In addition, the Basic Plan specified that the Jōetsu Shinkansen should start from Shinjuku, not Tokyo Station, which would have required building an additional of track between Shinjuku and Ōmiya. While no construction work was ever started, land along the proposed track, including an underground section leading to Shinjuku Station, remains reserved. If capacity on the current Tokyo–Ōmiya section proves insufficient, at some point, construction of the Shinjuku–Ōmiya link may be reconsidered.


title: Shinkansen

text: In December 2009, then transport minister Seiji Maehara proposed a bullet train link to Haneda Airport, using an existing spur that connects the Tōkaidō Shinkansen to a train depot. JR Central called the plan "unrealistic" due to tight train schedules on the existing line, but reports said that Maehara wished to continue discussions on the idea. The current minister has not indicated whether this proposal remains supported. While the plan may become more feasible after the opening the Chuo Shinkansen (sometimes referred to as a bypass to the Tokaido Shinkansen) frees up capacity, construction is already underway for other rail improvements between Haneda and Tokyo station expected to be completed prior to the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, so any potential Shinkansen service would likely offer only marginal benefit beyond that.


title: Shinkansen

text: Originally intended to carry passenger and freight trains by day and night, the Shinkansen lines carry only passenger trains. The system shuts down between midnight and 06:00 every day for maintenance. The few overnight passenger trains that still run in Japan run on the older narrow gauge network that the Shinkansen parallels.


title: Shinkansen

text: Trains are up to sixteen cars long. With each car measuring in length, the longest trains are 400 m (1/4 mile) end to end. Stations are similarly long to accommodate these trains. Some of Japan's high-speed maglev trains are considered Shinkansen, while other slower maglev trains (such as the Linimo maglev train line serving local community near the city of Nagoya in Aichi, Japan) are intended as alternatives to conventional urban rapid transit systems.


title: Shinkansen

text: "Note that these trains were and currently are used only for experimental runs, though the L0 series could be a passenger train."


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen is very reliable thanks to several factors, including its near-total separation from slower traffic. In 2016, JR Central reported that the Shinkansen's average delay from schedule per train was 24 seconds. This includes delays due to uncontrollable causes, such as natural disasters. The record in 1997 was 18 seconds.


title: Shinkansen

text: Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus year history, carrying over 10 billion passengers, there have been no passenger fatalities due to train accidents such as derailments or collisions, despite frequent earthquakes and typhoons. Injuries and a single fatality have been caused by doors closing on passengers or their belongings; attendants are employed at platforms to prevent such accidents. There have, however, been suicides by passengers jumping both from and in front of moving trains. On 30 June 2015, a passenger committed suicide on board a Shinkansen train by setting himself on fire, killing another passenger and seriously injuring seven other people.


title: Shinkansen

text: There have been two derailments of Shinkansen trains in passenger service. The first one occurred during the Chūetsu earthquake on 23 October 2004. Eight of ten cars of the "Toki" No. 325 train on the Jōetsu Shinkansen derailed near Nagaoka Station in Nagaoka, Niigata. There were no casualties among the 154 passengers.


title: Shinkansen

text: Another derailment happened on 2 March 2013 on the Akita Shinkansen when the "Komachi" No. 25 train derailed in blizzard conditions in Daisen, Akita. No passengers were injured.


title: Shinkansen

text: In the event of an earthquake, an earthquake detection system can bring the train to a stop very quickly; newer trainsets are lighter and have stronger braking systems, allowing for quicker stopping. A new anti-derailment device was installed after detailed analysis of the Jōetsu derailment.


title: Shinkansen

text: Several months after the exposure of the Kobe Steel falsification scandal, which is among the suppliers of high-strength steel for Shinkansen trainsets, cracks were found upon inspection of a single bogie, and removed from service on 11 December 2017.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen has had a significant beneficial effect on Japan's business, economy, society, environment and culture beyond mere construction and operational contributions. The results in time savings alone from switching from a conventional to a high-speed network have been estimated at 400 million hours, and the system has an economic impact of per year. That does not include the savings from reduced reliance on imported fuel, which also has national security benefits. Shinkansen lines, particularly in the very crowded coastal Taiheiyō Belt megalopolis, met two primary goals:


title: Shinkansen

text: However, upon the introduction of the 1973 Basic Plan the initial prudence in developing Shinkansen lines gave way to political considerations to extend the mode to far less populated regions of the country, partly to spread these benefits beyond the key centres of Kanto and Kinki. Although in some cases regional extension was frustrated by protracted land acquisition issues (sometimes influenced by the cancellation of the Narita Shinkansen following fierce protests by locals), over time Shinkansen lines were built to relatively sparsely populated areas with the intent the network would disperse the population away from the capital.


title: Shinkansen

text: Such expansion had a significant cost. JNR, the national railway company, was already burdened with subsidizing unprofitable rural and regional railways. Additionally it assumed Shinkansen construction debt to the point the government corporation eventually owed some , contributing to it being regionalised and privatized in 1987. The privatized JRs eventually paid a total of to acquire JNR's Shinkansen network.


title: Shinkansen

text: Following privatization, the JR group of companies have continued Shinkansen network expansion to less populated areas, but with far more flexibility to spin-off unprofitable railways or cut costs than in JNR days. Currently, an important factor is the post bubble zero interest-rate policy that allows JR to borrow huge sums of capital without significant concern regarding repayment timing.


title: Shinkansen

text: A UCLA study found that the presence of a Shinkansen line had helped with housing affordability by making it more realistic for lower-income city workers to live in exurban areas much further away from the city, which tends to have cheaper housing options. That in turn helps the city to "decentralise" and thus reduce the city property prices from what they could have otherwise been.


title: Shinkansen

text: Traveling by the Tokaido Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka produces only around 16% of the carbon dioxide of the equivalent journey by car, a saving of 15,000 tons of per year.


title: Shinkansen

text: Noise pollution concerns have made increasing speed more difficult. In Japan, population density is high and there have been severe protests against the Shinkansen's noise pollution. Its noise is now limited to less than 70 dB in residential areas.


title: Shinkansen

text: Improvement and reduction of the pantograph, weight saving of cars, and construction of noise barriers and other measures have been implemented. Current research is primarily aimed at reducing operational noise, particularly the tunnel boom phenomenon caused when trains transit tunnels at high speed.


title: Shinkansen

text: Because of the risk of earthquakes in Japan, the Urgent Earthquake Detection and Alarm System (UrEDAS) (an earthquake warning system) was introduced in 1992. It enables automatic braking of Shinkansen trains in the event of large earthquakes.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Tōkaidō Shinkansen often experiences heavy snow in the area around Maibara Station between December and February, requiring trains to reduce speed thus disrupting the timetable. Snow-dispersing sprinkler systems have been installed, but delays of 10–20 minutes still occur during snowy weather. Snow-related treefalls have also caused service interruptions. Along the Jōetsu Shinkansen route, snow can be very heavy, with depths of two to three metres; the line is equipped with stronger sprinklers and slab track to mitigate the snow's effects. Despite having multiple days with delays longer than 30 minutes, the Tōhoku Shinkansen still presents a slight advantage in reliability compared to air travel on days with significant snowfall.


title: Shinkansen

text: Until 2011, Japan's high-speed rail system had the highest annual patronage of any system worldwide, China's HSR network's patronage reached 1.7 billion and is now the world's highest.


title: Shinkansen

text: Cumulative ridership since October 1964 is over 5 billion passengers for the Tokaido Shinkansen Line alone and 10 billion passengers for Japan's entire shinkansen network. Nevertheless, China's share is increasing fast, as close to 9.5 billion passengers in that nation have been served by the end of 2018 and is projected to pass Japan's cumulative numbers by as early as 2020.


title: Shinkansen

text: E5 series trains, capable of up to , initially limited to 300 km/h, were introduced on the Tōhoku Shinkansen in March 2011. Operation at the maximum speed of 320 km/h between and on this route commenced on 16 March 2013. It reduced the journey time to around 3 hours for trains from Tokyo to Shin-Aomori, a distance of .


title: Shinkansen

text: Extensive trials using the Fastech 360 test trains have shown that operation at is not currently feasible because of problems of noise pollution (particularly tunnel boom), overhead wire wear, and braking distances. On 30 October 2012, JR East announced that it was pursuing research and development to increase speeds to 360 km/h on the Tohoku Shinkansen by 2020. The ALFA-X is currently undergoing testing.


title: Shinkansen

text: Upon commencement of services in 2016, the maximum speed on the approximately 82 km dual gauge section of the Hokkaido Shinkansen (including through the Seikan Tunnel) was , which was increased to by March 2019. There are approximately 50 freight trains using the dual gauge section each day, so limiting the travel of such trains to times outside of Shinkansen services is not an option. Because of this and other weather-related factors cited by JR East and JR Hokkaido, the fastest journey time between Tokyo and Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto is currently 3 hours, 57 minutes.


title: Shinkansen

text: During the 2020-21 New Year Holiday period, certain Shinkansen services were operated at on the dual gauge section and was proposed again for the Golden Week Holiday period from 3-6 May 2021, due to fewer freight trains operating.


title: Shinkansen

text: To achieve the full benefit of Shinkansen trains travelling on the dual gauge section at (the maximum speed proposed through the tunnel), alternatives are being considered, such as a system to automatically slow Shinkansen trains to when passing narrow-gauge trains, and/or loading freight trains onto special "Train on Train" standard-gauge trains (akin to a covered piggyback flatcar train) built to withstand the shock wave of oncoming Shinkansen trains traveling at full speed. This would enable a travel time from Tokyo to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto of 3 hours and 45 minutes, a saving of 12 minutes on the current timetable.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Hokuriku Shinkansen is being extended from Kanazawa to Tsuruga (proposed for completion by fiscal year 2024) at an estimated cost of 3.04 trillion yen (in 2012 currency).


title: Shinkansen

text: There are further plans to extend the line from Tsuruga to Osaka, with the Obama-Kyoto route chosen by the government on 20 December 2016, after a government committee investigated the five nominated routes.


title: Shinkansen

text: Construction of the extension beyond Tsuruga is not expected to commence before 2030, with a projected 15-year construction period. On 6 March 2017 the government committee announced the chosen route from Kyoto to Shin-Osaka is to be via Kyotanabe, with a station at Matsuiyamate on the Katamachi Line.


title: Shinkansen

text: To extend the benefits of the Hokuriku Shinkansen to stations west of Tsuruga before the line to Osaka is completed, JR West was working in partnership with Talgo on the development of a Gauge Change Train (CGT) capable of operating under both the 25 kV AC electrification used on the Shinkansen and the 1.5 kV DC system employed on conventional lines. A trial of the proposed bogie was undertaken on a purpose-built gauge-changer at Tsuruga, but it was unsuccessful and the plans were abandoned.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Hokkaido Shinkansen forms an extension of the Tohoku Shinkansen north of to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station (north of the Hokkaido city of Hakodate) through the Seikan Tunnel, which was converted to dual gauge as part of the project, opening in March 2016.


title: Shinkansen

text: JR Hokkaido is extending the Hokkaido Shinkansen from Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to to open by March 2031, with tunnelling work on the 5,265 m Murayama tunnel, situated about 1 km north of Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station, commencing in March 2015, and due to be completed by March 2021. The 211.3 km extension will be approximately 76% in tunnels, including major tunnels such as Oshima (~26.5 km), Teine (~18.8 km) and Shiribeshi (~18 km).


title: Shinkansen

text: Although an extension from Sapporo to Asahikawa was included in the 1973 list of planned lines, at this time it is unknown whether the Hokkaido Shinkansen will be extended beyond Sapporo.


title: Shinkansen

text: JR Kyushu opened the Nishi Kyushu Shinkansen from to (built to full Shinkansen standard) on 23 September 2022, with the existing narrow gauge section between Shin-Tosu and Takeo Onsen proposed to be upgraded as part of this project.


title: Shinkansen

text: This proposal initially involved introducing Gauge Change Trains (GCT) travelling from Hakata to Shin-Tosu () on the existing Kyushu Shinkansen line, then passing through a specific gauge changing (standard to narrow) section of track linking to the existing Nagasaki Main Line, along which it would travel to Hizen Yamaguchi (), then onto the Sasebo Line to Takeo-Onsen (), where another gauge changing section (narrow to standard) would lead onto the final Shinkansen line to Nagasaki (). However, significant technical issues with the axles of the GCT resulted in its cancellation.


title: Shinkansen

text: On 28 October 2020, JR Kyushu announced it would utilize a 6-car version of the N700S for the isolated Shinkansen section from Nagasaki, with 'cross platform' change to a relay service at Takeo Onsen station to connect to Hakata. JR Kyushu also announced the service would continue to use the name 'Kamome' for the Hakata-Nagasaki service, which has been in use since 1961.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Shinkansen line shortens the distance between Hakata and Nagasaki by 6.2% (), and while only 64% of the route is built to full Shinkansen standards, it eliminated the slowest sections of the previous narrow gauge route.


title: Shinkansen

text: As part of the GCT proposal, the current section of single track between Hizen Yamaguchi and Takeo Onsen was proposed to be duplicated. However, due to the issues with the development of the GCT, the proposal has not advanced.


title: Shinkansen

text: Maglev trains have been undertaking test runs on the Yamanashi test track since 1997, running at speeds of over . As a result of this extensive testing, maglev technology is almost ready for public usage. An extension of this test track from to was completed in June 2013, enabling extended high-speed running trials to commence in August 2013. This section will be incorporated into the Chūō Shinkansen which will eventually link Tokyo to Osaka. Construction of the Shinagawa to Nagoya section began in 2014, with 86% of the route to be in tunnels.


title: Shinkansen

text: The CEO of JR Central originally announced plans to have the maglev Chūō Shinkansen operating from Tokyo to by 2027, with a subsequent extension to Osaka by 2037. However, as of 2022, continuing controversy over routing across the Ōi River has prevented the start of construction in Shizuoka, and there is currently no target date for opening.


title: Shinkansen

text: Following the shortest route (through the Japanese Alps), JR Central estimates that it will take 40 minutes to run from Shinagawa to Nagoya. The planned travel time from Shinagawa to Shin-Osaka is 1 hour 7 minutes. Currently the Tokaido Shinkansen has a minimum connection time of 2 hours 19 minutes.


title: Shinkansen

text: While the government has granted approval for the shortest route between Tokyo and Nagoya, some prefectural governments, particularly Nagano, lobbied to have the line routed farther north to serve the city of Chino and either Ina or . However, that would increase both the travel time (from Tokyo to Nagoya) and the cost of construction. JR Central has confirmed it will construct the line through Kanagawa Prefecture, and terminate at Shinagawa Station.


title: Shinkansen

text: The route for the Nagoya to Osaka section is also contested. It is planned to go via Nara, about 40 km south of Kyoto. Kyoto is lobbying to have the route moved north and be largely aligned with the existing Tokaido Shinkansen, which services Kyoto and not Nara.


title: Shinkansen

text: is the name given to the routes where former narrow gauge lines have been converted to standard gauge to allow Shinkansen trains to travel to cities without the expense of constructing full Shinkansen standard lines.


title: Shinkansen

text: Two mini-shinkansen routes have been constructed: the Yamagata Shinkansen and Akita Shinkansen. Shinkansen services to these lines traverse the Tohoku Shinkansen line from Tokyo before branching off to traditional main lines. On both the Yamagata/Shinjo and Akita lines, the narrow gauge lines were regauged, resulting in the local services being operated by standard gauge versions of 1,067 mm gauge suburban/interurban rolling stock. On the Akita line between Omagari and Akita, one of the two narrow gauge lines was regauged, and a section of the remaining narrow gauge line is dual gauge, providing the opportunity for Shinkansen services to pass each other without stopping.


title: Shinkansen

text: The maximum speed on these lines is , however the overall travel time to/from Tokyo is improved due to the elimination of the need for passengers to change trains at Fukushima and Morioka respectively.


title: Shinkansen

text: As the Loading gauge (size of the train that can travel on a line) was not altered when the rail gauge was widened, only Shinkansen trains specially built for these routes can travel on the lines. At present they are the E3 and E6 series trains.


title: Shinkansen

text: As some of the E3 series on the Yamagata Shinkansen will be retiring soon, they will be replaced by the new E8 Series Shinkansen trains from Spring 2024 with an increased speed of 300km/h, up from the current 275km/h on the E3 Series trains.


title: Shinkansen

text: Whilst no further Mini-shinkansen routes have been proposed to date, it remains an option for providing Shinkansen services to cities on the narrow gauge network.


title: Shinkansen

text: Construction of a Base tunnel on the Yamagata Shinkansen is proposed, with JR East having undertaken a survey of a planned route from Niwasaka to Sekine, just south of Yonezawa station. of the proposed line would be in tunnel, mostly to the north of the existing Fukushima – Yamagata section. To be built on an improved alignment, the tunnel would lower journey times between Fukushima and Yamagata by ~10 min due to a proposed line speed of up to 200 km/h.


title: Shinkansen

text: The tunnel would avoid the Itaya Toge pass through the Ou mountains west of Fukushima. Gradients range from 3.0% to 3.8% and the line reaches an altitude of . The curvature and steep grades limit train speeds to or less, and the line is vulnerable to heavy rain and snowfall as well as high winds. Between 2011 and 2017 a total of 410 Yamagata mini-Shinkansen services were either suspended or delayed, and 40% of these incidents occurred on the line over the Itaya Toge pass.


title: Shinkansen

text: If the base tunnel is authorised, detailed design would take five years and construction another 15 years. The cost could increase by if the tunnel were to be built with a cross-section large enough to permit the line to be upgraded to the full Shinkansen loading gauge.


title: Shinkansen

text: This is the name for the concept of using a single train that is specially designed to travel on both narrow gauge railway lines and the standard gauge used by Shinkansen train services in Japan. The trucks/bogies of the Gauge Change Train (GCT) allow the wheels to be unlocked from the axles, narrowed or widened as necessary, and then relocked. This allows a GCT to traverse both standard gauge and narrow gauge tracks without the expense of regauging lines.


title: Shinkansen

text: Three test trains have been constructed, with the second set having completed reliability trials on the Yosan Line east of Matsuyama (in Shikoku) in September 2013. The third set was undertaking gauge changing trials at Shin-Yatsushiro Station (on Kyushu), commencing in 2014 for a proposed three-year period, however testing was suspended in December 2014 after accumulating approximating 33,000 km, following the discovery of defective thrust bearing oil seals on the bogies. The train was being trialled between Kumamoto, travelling on the narrow gauge line to Shin-Yatsushiro, where a gauge changer has been installed, so the GCT could then be trialled on the Shinkansen line to Kagoshima. It was anticipated the train would travel approximately 600,000 km over the three-year trial.


title: Shinkansen

text: A new "full standard" Shinkansen line is under construction from Takeo Onsen to , with the Shin-Tosu – Takeo Onsen section of the Kyushu Shinkansen branch to remain narrow gauge. GCTs were proposed to provide the Shinkansen service from the line's scheduled opening in fiscal 2022, however with the GCT now being cancelled, JR Kyushu has announced it will provide an interim 'relay' service.


title: Shinkansen

text: Compared with air transport, the Shinkansen has several advantages, including scheduling frequency and flexibility, punctual operation, comfortable seats, and convenient city-centre terminals.


title: Shinkansen

text: Shinkansen fares are generally competitive with domestic air fares. From a speed and convenience perspective, the Shinkansen's market share has surpassed that of air travel for journeys of less than 750 km, while air and rail remain highly competitive with each other in the 800–900 km range and air has a higher market share for journeys of more than 1,000 km.


title: Shinkansen

text: During snowy weather, the Shinkansen is known to face fewer delays compared to air travel due to snow. One study done in 2016 concluded that the Tohoku Shinkansen between Tokyo and Aomori had substantially fewer days with delays longer than 30 minutes compared to air travel.


title: Shinkansen

text: The first Shinkansen type exported outside Japan. Taiwan High Speed Rail operates 700T Series sets built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries. 12-car trains based on 700 series entered service in 2007, with a maximum speed of .


title: Shinkansen

text: The China Railways CRH2, built by CSR Sifang Loco & Rolling stocks corporation, with the license purchased from a consortium formed of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Hitachi, is based on the E2-1000 series design.


title: Shinkansen

text: Class 395 EMUs were built by Hitachi based on Shinkansen technology for use on high-speed commuter services in Britain on the High Speed 1 line.


title: Shinkansen

text: In 2014, it was announced that Texas Central Railway would build a ~300-mile (~480 km) long line using the N700 series rolling stock. The trains are proposed to operate at over 320 km/h (200 mph).


title: Shinkansen

text: In December 2015, India and Japan signed an agreement for the construction of India's first high speed rail link connecting Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Funded primarily through Japanese soft loans, the link is expected to cost up to US$18.6 billion and should be operational in about 6 years.


title: Shinkansen

text: This followed India and Japan conducting feasibility studies on high-speed rail and dedicated freight corridors.


title: Shinkansen

text: The Indian Ministry of Railways' white-paper Vision 2020 submitted to Indian Parliament by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on 18 December 2009 envisages the implementation of regional high-speed rail projects to provide services at 250–350 km/h.


title: Shinkansen

text: During Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Tokyo in December 2006, Japan assured cooperation with India in creating a high-speed link between New Delhi and Mumbai. In January 2009, the then Railway Minister Lalu Prasad rode a bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto.


title: Shinkansen

text: In December 2013 a Japanese consortium was appointed to undertake a feasibility study of a ~500 km high-speed line between Mumbai and Ahmedabad by July 2015. A total of 7 high-speed lines are in planning stages in India, and Japanese firms have now succeeded in winning contracts to prepare feasibility studies for three of the lines.


title: Shinkansen

text: The National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRC) was incorporated in 2017 to manage all HSR related activities in India. Under its management, a High Speed Rail Training Institute is being developed with Japanese assistance in Vadodara, Gujarat. After the laying of the foundation stone for the Mumbai and Ahmedabad by the Prime Ministers of India and Japan in September 2017, work began on preparatory surveys along the route. The route consists of approximately elevated viaduct through 11 districts of Gujarat and four districts of Maharashtra, a deep-sea tunnel starting from BKC in Mumbai, and approximately of at-grade alignment near the other terminus at Sabarmati, near Ahmedabad. Most of the civil works for the elevated viaduct shall be handled by Indian companies, while the deep-sea tunnel at Mumbai will be handled by a Japanese consortium (along with other technical aspects, such as safety, electricals, communication systems, signaling, and rolling stock). BHEL of India and Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan have entered into a technology collaboration agreement to build and assemble the rolling stock (of E5 series) in India. Other potential joint ventures are being explored under the patronage of NHSRC. The line is expected to be operational by 2026.


title: Shinkansen

text: Japan will provide Shinkansen technology for a high-speed rail link between Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai under an agreement reached with Thailand on 27 May 2015. Total project costs are estimated in excess of 1 trillion yen ($8.1 billion). Several hurdles remain, however, including securing the funding. If the project is realized, it would mark the fifth time Shinkansen technology has been exported.


title: Shinkansen

text: A private organisation dedicated to aiding the Australian Government in delivering high speed rail, Consolidated Land and Rail Australia, has considered purchasing Shinkansen technology or SC Maglev rolling stock for a potential Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney-Brisbane line. A business case has been prepared for the government by Infrastructure Australia, and was awaiting confirmation of the project within the 2018 federal budget.


title: Shinkansen

text: As part of the Ireland 2040 infrastructural upgrade scheme, a high-speed rail network using Shinkansen technology is being investigated along the Cork-Dublin-Belfast axis, spanning the island of Ireland from north to south.


title: Shinkansen

text: The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration was in talks with a number of countries concerning high-speed rail, notably Japan, France and Spain. On 16 May 2009, FRA Deputy Chief Karen Rae expressed hope that Japan would offer its technical expertise to Canada and the United States. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood indicated interest in test riding the Japanese Shinkansen in 2009.


title: Shinkansen

text: On 1 June 2009, JR Central Chairman, Yoshiyuki Kasai, announced plans to export both the N700 Series Shinkansen high-speed train system and the SCMaglev to international export markets, including the United States and Canada.


title: Shinkansen

text: Japan had promoted its Shinkansen technology to the Government of Brazil for use on the once planned high-speed rail set to link Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Campinas. On 14 November 2008, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Tarō Asō and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva talked about this rail project. President Lula asked a consortium of Japanese companies to participate in the bidding process. Prime Minister Aso concurred on the bilateral cooperation to improve rail infrastructure in Brazil, including the Rio–São Paulo–Campinas high-speed rail line. The Japanese consortium included the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Mitsui & Co., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Toshiba. Nothing was implemented.


title: Shinkansen

text: Vietnam Railways was considering the use of Shinkansen technology for high-speed rail between the capital Hanoi and the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, citing an interview with Chief Executive Officer Nguyen Huu Bang. The Vietnamese government had already given basic approval for the Shinkansen system, although it still requires financing and formal consent from the prime minister. Vietnam rejected a funding proposal in 2010, so funding for the $56 billion project is uncertain. Hanoi was exploring additional Japanese funding Official Development Assistance as well as funds from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. The line would replace the current colonial-era rail line. Vietnam hoped to launch high-speed trains by 2020 and planned to start by building three sections, including a 90-kilometre stretch between the central coastal cities of Da Nang and Huế, seen as potentially most profitable. Vietnam Railways had sent engineers to Central Japan Railway Company for technical training.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's 1955 novel "Lolita" ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century works of literature. Nabokov's "Pale Fire", published in 1962, was ranked 53rd on the same list. His memoir, "Speak, Memory", published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth on Random House's ranking of 20th century works. Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. He also was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old Style) in Saint Petersburg to a wealthy and prominent family of the Russian nobility. His family traced its roots to the 14th-century Tatar prince Nabok Murza, who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived. His father was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov (1870–1922), a liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist, and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovna "née" Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of a millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov. His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov (1827–1904), was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of Alexander II. His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff (1842–1926). Through his father's German ancestry, Nabokov was related to the composer Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–1759).


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child, with four younger siblings: Sergey (1900–45), Olga (1903–78), Elena (1906–2000), and Kirill (1912–64). Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. Writer Ayn Rand recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics. Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985. She was an important source for later biographers of Nabokov.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya, south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first English book his mother read to him was "Misunderstood" (1869) by Florence Montgomery. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In his memoir "Speak, Memory", Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall in vivid detail memories of his past was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that runs from his first book "Mary" to later works such as "". While the family was nominally Orthodox, it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhdestveno, next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in "Speak, Memory"). He lost it in the October Revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's adolescence was the period in which he made his first serious literary endeavors. In 1916, he published his first book, "Stikhi" ("Poems"), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had criticized his literary accomplishments. Some time after the publication of "Stikhi", Zinaida Gippius, renowned poet and first cousin of his teacher, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: After the 1917 February Revolution, Nabokov's father became a secretary of the Russian Provisional Government in Saint Petersburg.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: After the October Revolution, the family was forced to flee the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya, at the time part of the Ukrainian Republic. Nabokov's father became a minister of justice in the Crimean Regional Government.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: After the withdrawal of the German Army in November 1918 and the defeat of the White Army (early 1919), the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe, along with many other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England, where Nabokov gained admittance to the University of Cambridge, one of the world's most prestigious universities, where he attended Trinity College and studied zoology and later Slavic and Romance languages.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: His examination results on the first part of the Tripos exam, taken at the end of his second year, were a starred first. He took the second part of the exam in his fourth year just after his father's death, and feared he might fail it. But his exam was marked second-class. His final examination result also ranked second-class, and his BA was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels "Glory" and "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight".


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: At Cambridge, one journalist wrote in 2014, "the coats-of-arms on the windows of his room protected him from the cold and from the melancholy over the recent loss of his country. It was in this city, in his moments of solitude, accompanied by "King Lear", "Le Morte d’Arthur", "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" or "Ulysses", that Nabokov made the firm decision to become a Russian writer."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper "Rul"' ("Rudder"). Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In March 1922, Russian monarchists Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky shot and killed Nabokov's father in Berlin as he was shielding their target, Pavel Milyukov, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to Prague. Nabokov drew upon his father's death repeatedly in his fiction. On one interpretation of his novel "Pale Fire", an assassin kills the poet John Shade when his target is a fugitive European monarch.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become a recognised poet and writer in Russian within the émigré community; he published under the "nom de plume" "V. Sirin" (a reference to the fabulous bird of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons. Dieter E. Zimmer has written of Nabokov's 15 Berlin years, "he never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert, but she broke the engagement off early in 1923 when her parents worried whether he could provide for her. In May 1923, he met Véra Evseyevna Slonim, a Russian-Jewish woman, at a charity ball in Berlin. They married in April 1925. Their only child, Dmitri, was born in 1934.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In the course of 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly anti-Semitic environment; Sergey Taboritsky was appointed deputy head of Germany's Russian-émigré bureau; and Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In 1937, Nabokov left Germany for France, where he had a short affair with Irina Guadanini, also a Russian émigrée. His family followed him to France, making en route their last visit to Prague, then spent time in Cannes, Menton, Cap d'Antibes, and Fréjus, finally settling in Paris. This city also had a Russian émigré community.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In 1939, in Paris, Nabokov wrote the 55-page novella "The Enchanter", his final work of Russian fiction. He later called it "the first little throb of "Lolita"."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In May 1940, the Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops, reaching the United States via the SS "Champlain". Nabokov's brother Sergei did not leave France, and he died at the Neuengamme concentration camp on 9 January 1945.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: The Nabokovs settled in Manhattan, and Vladimir began volunteer work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidoptery. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The Nabokovs resided in Wellesley, Massachusetts, during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942, they moved to nearby Cambridge, where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian. At the same time he was the "de facto" curator of lepidoptery at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: After being encouraged by Morris Bishop, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University, where he taught until 1959. Among his students at Cornell was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov wrote "Lolita" while traveling on the butterfly-collection trips in the western U.S. that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of "Lolita", Véra stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In June 1953, Nabokov and his family went to Ashland, Oregon. There he finished "Lolita" and began writing the novel "Pnin". He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called "Lines Written in Oregon". On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to Ithaca, where he later taught the young writer Thomas Pynchon.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: After the great financial success of "Lolita", Nabokov returned to Europe and devoted himself to writing. In 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his life. From his sixth-floor quarters, he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov died on 2 July 1977 in Montreux. His remains were cremated and buried at Clarens cemetery in Montreux.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: At the time of his death, he was working on a novel titled "The Original of Laura". Véra and Dmitri, who were entrusted with Nabokov's literary executorship, ignored Nabokov's request to burn the incomplete manuscript and published it in 2009.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century; his first writings were in Russian, but he achieved his greatest fame with the novels he wrote in the English language. As a trilingual (also writing in French, see "Mademoiselle O") master, he has been compared to Joseph Conrad; Nabokov, however, disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the critic Edmund Wilson, "I am too old to change Conradically" – which John Updike later called, "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year. Later, in a November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my solecisms, but neither does he scale my verbal peaks." Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his art.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov himself translated into Russian two books that he had originally written in English, "Conclusive Evidence" and "Lolita". The "translation" of "Conclusive Evidence" was made because Nabokov felt that the English version was imperfect. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English and to spend time explaining things that are well known in Russia; he decided to rewrite the book in his native language before making the final version "Speak, Memory" (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak, Mnemosyne"). Nabokov was a proponent of individualism, and rejected concepts and ideologies that curtailed individual freedom and expression, such as totalitarianism in its various forms, as well as Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Poshlost, or as he transcribed it, "poshlust", is disdained and frequently mocked in his works. On translating "Lolita", Nabokov writes, "I imagined that in some distant future somebody might produce a Russian version of Lolita. I trained my inner telescope upon that particular point in the distant future and I saw that every paragraph, pock-marked as it is with pitfalls, could lend itself to hideous mistranslation. In the hands of a harmful drudge, the Russian version of Lolita would be entirely degraded and botched by vulgar paraphrases or blunders. So I decided to translate it myself."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds of index cards, which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels, a process that many screenwriters later adopted.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov published under the pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin" in the 1920s to 1940s, occasionally to mask his identity from critics. He also makes cameo appearances in some of his novels, such as the character "Vivian Darkbloom" (an anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), who appears in both "Lolita" and "Ada, or Ardor", and the character Blavdak Vinomori (another anagram of Nabokov's name) in "King, Queen, Knave". Sirin is referenced as a different émigré author in his memoir and is also referenced in "Pnin".


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, clever word play, daring metaphors, and prose style capable of both parody and intense lyricism. He gained both fame and notoriety with his novel "Lolita" (1955), which tells of a grown man's devouring passion for a twelve-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly "Pale Fire" (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century. His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is "" (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of this novel than any of his others. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story "The Vane Sisters" is famous in part for its acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave. In another of his short stories, "Signs and Symbols" (1958), Nabokov creates a character suffering from an imaginary illness called "Referential Mania," in which the afflicted is faced with a world of environmental objects exchanging coded messages.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume translation and commentary for Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin", published in 1964. That commentary ended with an appendix titled "Notes on Prosody", which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin's iambic tetrameters had been a part of Russian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by the Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words:I have been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", an object that boils down to very little—in comparison to the forced preliminaries—namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and to "Eugene Onegin" in particular.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's lectures at Cornell University, as collected in "Lectures on Literature", reveal his controversial ideas concerning art. He firmly believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathize with characters but that a 'higher' aesthetic enjoyment should be attained, partly by paying great attention to details of style and structure. He detested what he saw as 'general ideas' in novels, and so when teaching "Ulysses", for example, he would insist students keep an eye on where the characters were in Dublin (with the aid of a map) rather than teaching the complex Irish history that many critics see as being essential to an understanding of the novel. In 2010, "Kitsch" magazine, a student publication at Cornell, published a piece that focused on student reflections on his lectures and also explored Nabokov's long relationship with "Playboy". Nabokov also wanted his students to describe the details of the novels rather than a narrative of the story and was very strict when it came to grading. As Edward Jay Epstein described his experience in Nabokov's classes, Nabokov made it clear from the very first lectures that he had little interest in fraternizing with students, who would be known not by their name but by their seat number.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: The Russian literary critic Yuly Aykhenvald was an early admirer of Nabokov, citing in particular his ability to imbue objects with life: "he saturates trivial things with life, sense and psychology and gives a mind to objects; his refined senses notice colorations and nuances, smells and sounds, and everything acquires an unexpected meaning and truth under his gaze and through his words." The critic James Wood argues that Nabokov's use of descriptive detail proved an "overpowering, and not always very fruitful, influence on two or three generations after him", including authors such as Martin Amis and John Updike. While a student at Cornell in the 1950s, Thomas Pynchon attended several of Nabokov's lectures and alluded to "Lolita" in chapter six of his novel "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966), in which Serge, countertenor in the band the Paranoids, sings:


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Pynchon's prose style was influenced by Nabokov's preference for actualism over realism. Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's life, John Banville, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, and Edmund White were all influenced by him. The novelist John Hawkes took inspiration from Nabokov and considered himself his follower. Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols" was on the reading list for Hawkes's writing students at Brown University. "A writer who truly and greatly sustains us is Vladimir Nabokov," Hawkes said in a 1964 interview.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Several authors who came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s have also cited Nabokov's work as a literary influence. Aleksandar Hemon, whose wordplay and sense of the absurd are often compared to Nabokov's, has acknowledged the latter's impact on his writing. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon listed "Lolita" and "Pale Fire" among the "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them", and has said, "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language". Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides has said, "Nabokov has always been and remains one of my favorite writers. He's able to juggle ten balls where most people can juggle three or four." T. Coraghessan Boyle has said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing. Bilingual author and critic Maxim D. Shrayer, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from the USSR, described reading Nabokov in 1987 as "my culture shock": "I was reading Nabokov and waiting for America." "Boston Globe" book critic David Mehegan wrote that Shrayer's "Waiting for America" "is one of those memoirs, like Nabokov's "Speak, Memory", that is more about feeling than narrative."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: The song cycle "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album "Troika" comprises settings of Russian and English versions of three of Nabokov's poems by such composers as Jay Greenberg, Michael Schelle and Lev Zhurbin.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's interest in entomology was inspired by books by Maria Sibylla Merian he found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra. Throughout an extensive career of collecting, he never learned to drive a car, and depended on his wife to take him to collecting sites. During the 1940s, as a research fellow in zoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribe Polyommatini of the family Lycaenidae, has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described the Karner blue. The genus "Nabokovia" was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g., many species in the genera "Madeleinea" and "Pseudolucia" bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels). In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: The paleontologist and essayist Stephen Jay Gould discussed Nabokov's lepidoptery in his essay "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts: The Lepidoptery of Vladimir Nabokov" (reprinted in "I Have Landed"). Gould notes that Nabokov was occasionally a scientific "stick-in-the-mud". For example, Nabokov never accepted that genetics or the counting of chromosomes could be a valid way to distinguish species of insects, and relied on the traditional (for lepidopterists) microscopic comparison of their genitalia.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: The Harvard Museum of Natural History, which now contains the Museum of Comparative Zoology, still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," says museum staff writer Nancy Pick, author of "The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History". "He actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species that you would not think were different—by looking at their genitalia under a microscope six hours a day, seven days a week, until his eyesight was permanently impaired." The rest of his collection, about 4,300 specimens, was given to the Lausanne's Museum of Zoology in Switzerland.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Though professional lepidopterists did not take Nabokov's work seriously during his life, new genetic research supports Nabokov's hypothesis that a group of butterfly species, called the "Polyommatus" blues, came to the New World over the Bering Strait in five waves, eventually reaching Chile.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Many of Nabokov's fans have tried to ascribe literary value to his scientific papers, Gould notes. Conversely, others have claimed that his scientific work enriched his literary output. Gould advocates a third view, holding that the other two positions are examples of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. Rather than assuming that either side of Nabokov's work caused or stimulated the other, Gould proposes that "both" stemmed from Nabokov's love of detail, contemplation, and symmetry.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov was a classical liberal, in the tradition of his father, a liberal statesman who served in the Provisional Government following the February Revolution of 1917 as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party. In "Speak, Memory", Nabokov proudly recounted his father's campaigns against despotism and staunch opposition to capital punishment. Nabokov was a self-proclaimed "White Russian", and was, from its inception, a strong opponent of the Soviet government that came to power following the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. In a poem he wrote as a teenager in 1917, he described Lenin's Bolsheviks as "grey rag-tag people".


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Throughout his life, Nabokov would remain committed to the classical liberal political philosophy of his father, and equally opposed Tsarist autocracy, communism, and fascism.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's father Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov was the most outspoken defender of Jewish rights in the Russian Empire, continuing in a family tradition that had been led by his own father, Dmitry Nabokov, who as Justice Minister under Tsar Alexander II had successfully blocked anti-semitic measures from being passed by the Interior Minister. That family strain would continue in Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely denounced anti-semitism in his writings, and in the 1930s Nabokov was able to escape Hitler's Germany only with the help of Russian Jewish émigrés who still had grateful memories of his family's defense of Jews in Tsarist times.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: When asked, in 1969, whether he would like to revisit the land he had fled in 1918, now the Soviet Union, he replied: "There's nothing to look at. New tenement houses and old churches do not interest me. The hotels there are terrible. I detest the Soviet theater. Any palace in Italy is superior to the repainted abodes of the Tsars. The village huts in the forbidden hinterland are as dismally poor as ever, and the wretched peasant flogs his wretched cart horse with the same wretched zest. As to my special northern landscape and the haunts of my childhood – well, I would not wish to contaminate their images preserved in my mind."


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: In the 1940s, as an émigré in America, Nabokov would stress the connection between American and English liberal democracy and the aspirations of the short-lived Russian provisional government. In 1942 he declared: "Democracy is humanity at its best ... it is the natural condition of every man ever since the human mind became conscious not only of the world but of itself." During the 1960s, in both letters and interviews, he reveals a profound contempt for the New Left movements, describing the protesters as "conformists" and "goofy hoodlums." In a 1967 interview, Nabokov stated that he refused to associate with supporters of Bolshevism or Tsarist autocracy but that he had "friends among intellectual constitutional monarchists as well as among intellectual social revolutionaries." Nabokov supported the Vietnam War effort and voiced admiration for both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. Racism against African-Americans appalled Nabokov, who touted Alexander Pushkin's multiracial background as an argument against segregation.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov's wife Véra was his strongest supporter and assisted him throughout his life, but Nabokov admitted to having a "prejudice" against women writers. He wrote to Edmund Wilson, who had been making suggestions for his lectures: "I dislike Jane Austen, and am prejudiced, in fact against all women writers. They are in another class." But after rereading Austen's "Mansfield Park" he changed his mind and taught it in his literature course; he also praised Mary McCarthy's work and described Marina Tsvetaeva as a "poet of genius" in "Speak, Memory". Although Véra worked as his personal translator and secretary, he made publicly known that his ideal translator would be male, and especially not a "Russian-born female". In the first chapter of "Glory" he attributes the protagonist's similar prejudice to the impressions made by children's writers like Lidiya Charski, and in the short story "The Admiralty Spire" deplores the posturing, snobbery, antisemitism, and cutesiness he considered characteristic of Russian women authors.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov was a self-described synesthete, who at a young age equated the number five with the color red. Aspects of synesthesia can be found in several of his works. His wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle".


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: For some synesthetes, letters are not simply "associated with" certain colors, they "are themselves" colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In "Bend Sinister", Krug comments on his perception of the word "loyalty" as like a golden fork lying out in the sun. In "The Defense", Nabokov briefly mentions that the main character's father, a writer, found he was unable to complete a novel that he planned to write, becoming lost in the fabricated storyline by "starting with colors". Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov's writing that can be traced back to his synesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct "sensory appetite" reminiscent of synesthesia.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov was a religious agnostic. He was very open about, and received criticism for, his indifference to organized mysticism, to religion, and to any church.


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov was a notorious, lifelong insomniac who admitted unease at the prospect of sleep, once saying, "the night is always a giant". Later in life his insomnia was exacerbated by an enlarged prostate. Nabokov called sleep a "moronic fraternity", "mental torture", and a "nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius". Insomnia's impact on his work has been widely explored, and in 2017 Princeton University Press published a compilation of his dream diary entries, "Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov".


title: Vladimir Nabokov

text: Nabokov spent considerable time during his exile composing chess problems, which he published in Germany's Russian émigré press, "Poems and Problems" (18 problems) and "Speak, Memory" (one). He describes the process of composing and constructing in his memoir: "The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness". To him, the "originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity" of creating a chess problem was similar to that in any other art.


title: Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022

text: The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 was the 20th edition of the annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest. The contest took place in Yerevan, Armenia on 11 December 2022, following the country's victory at the with the song "" by Maléna. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Public Television Company of Armenia (AMPTV), the contest was held at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex. This was the second time that Armenia hosted the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, the first being in .


title: Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022

text: Sixteen countries participated in the contest. The returned after a sixteen-year absence, while , , and did not take part, with the latter's broadcasters having been indefinitely suspended from the EBU due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022

text: 's Lissandro was the winner of the contest with the song "". This was France's second victory in the contest, having last won in . Host country , , and the completed the top five, with this being the highest placement for Ireland to date. also achieved their highest placement, finishing eighth. Meanwhile, achieved their lowest placing to date.