Sagami Railway Corporation

The Sagami Railway Corporation is one of the nine large-scale private railway companies and operates exclusively within Kanagawa Prefecture. Like many other private railway companies, the railway division forms the center of a group of many other smaller corporations that run anything from buses to real estate.

What is currently known as the Sagami Railway was originally two companies known as Jinchu Railways and Sagami Railway both established in the the 1910s. Both were bought out by the Tokyu Corporation in 1943 and were then combined under the name of Sagami Railway. In 1944, the Sagami Line, which was built by the original Sagami Railway, was requisitioned by the government and incorporated into the Japanese National Railways. Even after the war, the government did not return this line and it was later incorporated into JR East in 1987. Sagami Railways gained its independance from the Tokyu Corporation in 1947.

The Sagami Railway Corporation is often referred to as Sotetsu for short. The So comes from a separate reading of the first character in Sagami while the Tetsu comes from the Japanese term Tetsudo, which means railway. At the moment, it is the only large-scale private railway company that does not operate trains into the Tokyo area.