Tokyo Metropolitan Bus Day

What Is Tokyo Metropolitan Bus Day?

Every January 18th is "Tokyo Metropolitan Bus Day" (都バス記念日, To Basu Kinenbi) in Japan. On January 18, 1924, the Tokyo Municipal Bus (東京市営バス, later 都営バス/Toei Bus) began operations — providing the city with its first municipal bus service. The launch came just months after the Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1923 had devastated Tokyo's streetcar network, creating an urgent need for alternative surface transport while the rail system was rebuilt. The municipal bus was part of Tokyo's emergency recovery and reconstruction infrastructure, and it has served the city continuously for over a century.

The Great Kantō Earthquake and Tokyo's Recovery

The September 1, 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake dealt a heavy blow to the city-run streetcar network, and restoring it was expected to take a long time. As a stopgap, the city's Electric Bureau launched bus service on January 18, 1924, with two routes linking Tokyo Station with Nakashibuya and with Sugamo. The first buses had wooden bodies on Ford Model TT truck chassis and looked just like trucks; people nicknamed them "Entarō buses," after the horse-drawn omnibuses of the Meiji era. The service was meant to end once the streetcars recovered, but it had gained steady riders, and the city council decided to keep it running.

Toei Bus Today

Tokyo's metropolitan bus system (都営バス, Toei Bus), operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, runs more than 100 routes with about 1,450 buses, serving areas of Tokyo not well covered by the subway and JR networks. It carried about 231 million passengers in fiscal 2019 — over 600,000 a day on average — significant in absolute terms, though dwarfed by the subway system's millions of daily riders. Toei Bus is particularly important for serving Tokyo's older neighborhoods, where narrow streets and complex topography make subway construction difficult or impossible.

Bus Transport in Tokyo's Mobility Ecosystem

Tokyo's transportation system integrates buses, subways, JR railways, and private railways in a seamlessly connected network. IC cards (Suica, PASMO) allow passengers to transfer between modes without separate ticketing. In an era of autonomous vehicle development and growing interest in on-demand transit, Tokyo's bus system is undergoing evolution — with experimental autonomous bus services, AI-optimized routing, and app-based booking systems supplementing the traditional fixed-route network.

Fun Facts

• "Red-collar girls": In 1924 the municipal buses began hiring female conductors, who were nicknamed "akaeri-jō" (red-collar girls) after the red collars of their uniforms.
• Bus rapid transit potential: As Tokyo continues to develop its transportation infrastructure, dedicated bus lanes and BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) systems are being explored as cost-effective complements to the city's extensive rail network.