2015 Reports

Nagasaki Jidousya Co., Ltd.

Patrick, Hugh T.

I visited the head office of the Nagasaki Bus Company in Nagasaki City in May 2014. The company’s main business is providing regular bus services both within Nagasaki City and from the city throughout Nagasaki Prefecture. It also provides a variety of special bus services, such as to hospitals and for major Nagasaki companies. Furthermore, it holds extensive – and quite profitable – real estate holdings which are being developed into urban shopping centers, office buildings, condos, and hotels. The company’s challenge is that its bus service loses money, despite providing an essential public service making 4,000 trips a day, along with regular service to Osaka and to Nagoya, amounting to sales of $95.8 million in 2013. Moreover, the number of passengers has been declining ever since the 1980s when young people began buying cars, and will continue to decline as the Nagasaki City population, now 440,000, may decline to about 300,000 in the next 20 years. The company is attempting to address this challenge by developing special bus services for the elderly to hospitals, shopping, and tourist trips. For now, the company is profitable on the strength of its real estate holdings, but given these budgetary and demographic realities, the future is unclear.