Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train hosts first onboard wrestling match

Bullet train

TOKYO — Since December 2022, the Central Japan Railway Co. has offered personalized “chartered car packages” on its Nozomi bullet trains of the Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed line. Designed to cater private events, such as graduation and employee trips, the new service has caught the attention of onboard wrestling, a world first.

According to the Japan News by the Yomiuri Shimbun, a match was held on Sept. 18, 2023, inside a chartered coach car of the Nozomi as it traveled up to 285 kilometers per hour (177 mph) between Tokyo and Nagoya. The Tokyo-based professional wrestling group, DDT Pro-Wrestling, organized the event as wrestlers Minoru Suzuki and Sanshiro Takagi fought in the narrow aisle during the trip. No damage was done to the interior of the railcar, and the match lasted 30 minutes with Suzuki as the victor.

The Sept. 19, 2023, article also reports that 75 seats in the coach were completely sold out by spectators within 30 minutes of ticket release by DDT.

Charter services – ranging from a single coach to the entire Nozomi train set between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka – were announced during a Dec. 15, 2022, press conference by Central Japan Railway’s president, Shin Kaneko, according to a JAPAN Forward article. “I want to raise the value of the entire trip by letting our customers start their events on the train even before they arrive at their destination,” he stated.