Nankai Electric Railway Co., Ltd. (南海電気鉄道株式会社, Nankai Denki Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a private railway in Japan. IC cards (PiTaPa and ICOCA) are accepted.
Nankai Railway Company (first) was founded on June 16, 1884, then became one of the companies that merge to form Kinki Nippon Railway Co., Ltd. (Kin-nichi, present Kintetsu Corp.) in 1944. However Kin-nichi transferred the former Nankai Railway Company Lines to present Nankai Electric Railway Co., Ltd. (formerly named Koyasan Electric Railway Co., Ltd. from March 28, 1925 until March 14, 1947) on June 1, 1947. Nankai predates all electric railways in the Tokyo region.
The Nankai network branches out in a generally southern direction from Namba Station in Osaka. The Nankai Main Line connects Osaka to Wakayama, with an important spur branching to Kansai International Airport. The rapi:t α express connects Kansai International Airport to Namba in 34 minutes, with the rapi:t β taking 39 minutes with two additional stops. The Koya Line connects Osaka to Mt. Koya, headquarters of the Buddhist Shingon sect and a popular pilgrimage site.
The name Nankai (lit. South Sea) comes from the company's routes along the Nankaidō, the old highway that ran south from the capital along the seacoast.
Famous quotes containing the words electric and/or railway:
“Flabby, bald, lobotomized,
he drifted in a sheepish calm,
where no agonizing reappraisal
jarred his concentration of the electric chair—
hanging like an oasis in his air
of lost connections. . . .”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)