The development of the Japanese railway network commenced shortly after the country opened its borders to formal international contact after a shogunate-imposed isolation of about 250 years, and was initiated (along with many other changes to Japanese society at the time) so that Japan could achieve rapid modernization.[2]

Though rail transport had been known through limited foreign contact such as with Dutch traders in Dejima, Nagasaki, the impact of model railroads brought by foreigners such as Yevfimiy Putyatin and Matthew Calbraith Perry was huge. The British also demonstrated a steam locomotive in Nagasaki. Saga Domain, a Japanese feudal domain (han), made a working model and planned to construct a line. Bodies such as the Satsuma Domain and the Tokugawa shogunate reviewed railway construction from Edo to Kyoto via an inland route, but a line did not come to reality before the Meiji Restoration.

Whilst the Emperor of Japan, based in Kyoto, was the titular ruler of the country, since circa 1600 Japan had been effectively ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, based in Edo. In 1866 the shogunate proposed a railway from Edo to Kyoto via an inland route, but in 1868 the Meiji Restoration saw the Emperor returned as effective leader of the country, relocating his permanent residence to the renamed Tokyo ("Eastern Capital"). Just before the fall of the shogunate, the Tokugawa regime issued a grant to the American diplomat Anton L. C. Portman to construct a line from Yokohama to Edo (soon to be renamed Tokyo), but this grant was not continued by the new regime.[3]