Seibu

Seibu Railway Corporation

The Seibu Railway Corporation is one of the larger private rail companies in the Kanto region and is part of the Seibu Group. Altogether, this group owns hotels, real estate and also its own baseball team, the Seibu Lions.

Seibu Railway started out in 1892 as Kawagoe Railway and opened part of what is currently the Seibu Kokubunji Line in 1894. It opened a portion of what is now the Seibu Shinjuku Line the next year and was bought out by Musashi Suiden in 1920. The next year, it bought out Seibu Kido, a tram company in Tokyo and adopted their name of "Seibu" as their new name.

In 1945, Seibu merged with Musashino Railway, a company that operated what are currently portions of the Ikebukuro Line, to form what is now known as Seibu Railway. The name comes from the fact that their base of operations is west (Sei) of the Musashino Plains (Bu - another reading of the character for Mu).

Seibu is often associated with its yellow trains that it has operated for a good portion of the later 20th century, but in recent years it has started to operate unpainted stainless steel and aluminum alloy trains.