The Shinkansen’s first serious safety breach in over 50 years.

>The recent woes that have gripped Japan’s train networks are due to structural issues related to ageing equipment, as well as the national lack of young engineers, Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii said on Tuesday (Dec 19).

>His comments came a week after a shinkansen bullet train was pulled out of service 3½ hours into its five-hour journey due to a crack in an undercarriage and an oil leak.

>The steel frame of the undercarriage was just 3cm away from snapping into two, train operator West Japan Railway Company (JR West) said on Tuesday, admitting that this could have caused a major high-speed derailment.

>This was the shinkansen’s first serious safety breach in over 50 years.

>In another incident last Saturday, three train services in Yokohama, half an hour south of Tokyo, were suspended for as long as seven hours after an overhead wire snapped.

Also there's been falsified data about Kobe Steel's materials which were used in the manufacturing of some bullet trains.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Kobe-Steel-quality-scandal-spreads-to-bullet-trains

these things are basically death traps if they lose control and fly off the rails at 400 km/h