They are called Shindaisha in Japanese. It means “sleeper train”.
A couple of days ago, in our morning Asahi Shimbun, the paper ran a front page article about diminishing ridership on these train lines. The trains which, with the exception of the opulent Casseiopea Train which runs from Ueno to Sapporo, are normally blue. Thus the name “Blue Train.”
Significantly slower than the more famous Shinkansen, or bullet train, these trains nonetheless have a certain ambiance to them and were, in earlier times, the way the working Citizen Sato saved some yen when trying to go from one end of this long country to another. The lines ran between the major cities in Japan , and as you can probably guess, ran at night. The two I have ridden on left Tokyo at 6pm and 10:30pm respectively.
The article, in Japanese, noted that ridership has dropped 80% since 1989.
(Translation of the caption-North Star line Tokyo departing trains. 1987 represents 100%. Figures from JR East….).
