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| EMU JR East 185 series travels on the Izu-Hakone Railway (January, 2017) |
On March 13th, 2021, a new timetable started on the JR East line. Synchronizing the new timetable, an old EMU 185 series was retired from the track.
The 185 series was launched in 1981 by Japanese National Railways. 227 cars in total were built by Nippon Sharyo, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and others. The specification of the 185 series was rather old, as a classic rheostatic electric control system with DC motors was applied; however, the 185 series was long lived as its mechanism was simple and hardly breakable.
The 185 series was mainly operated between Tokyo and Izu Peninsula as a limited express train, "Odoriko". Odoriko means "a dancing girl" in Japanese. The name of the train comes from the famous novel, "Izu no Odoriko (The Dancing Girl of Izu)" by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. The Dancing Girl of Izu was published in 1926 as the first work of his literature to achieve great popularity. The story is about a youth's transitory love. A twenty-year-old young man, who was feeling lonely because he was an orphan, met a dancing girl in Izu Peninsula while he was travelling there. Through the meeting and heart-to-heart exchange with her, he was healed and was eventually drawn out of his loneliness.
After the retirement of the 185 series, the limited express Odoriko was succeeded by the E257 -2000 series. Thank you and good-bye, the EMU 185 series. You were the star on the Tokaido main line.
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| EMU JR East 185 series passes through Takanawa-gateway station (April, 2020) Official memorial website, the EMU 185 series (in Japanese): Official memorial movies, the EMU 185 series (in Japanese): |