JR East’s decision to remove toilet paper at some unmanned stations underscores the financial pressures on rural rail services
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenJulian RyallPublished: 5:55pm, 13 Apr 2026Cost-cutting on Japan’s already depleted railway network has hit a new low, with one of the nation’s largest network operators no longer providing toilet paper in a growing number of unmanned stations.JR East’s decision has been met with a mix of annoyance and resignation online, while underscoring the financial pressures bearing down on rural rail services.
A social media post from February 2 highlighted the growing frustration with JR East’s failure to provide toilet paper, condemning a message in the lavatories at Niigata prefecture’s Oshikiri station that said “no paper available”.
One reply said, “This isn’t a decline in service – it’s JR East’s final notice saying ‘You’re no longer profitable customers’.” The real message, it added, was that people needed to bring their own paper and the station might get shut down entirely soon anyway.
That is a legitimate concern. Railway firms have scrapped 1,366km of track, or 5 per cent, of the entire national network, in the last three decades. Citing transport ministry statistics, Kyodo News reported that scrapping routes had become more pronounced in the last decade, with 534km of track ripped up.
“The main reason for these tracks being decommissioned is that the population in many rural areas around the country is declining and these routes are not being used enough,” said Yoshitsugu Hayashi, a professor of train transport policy and systems at Chubu University in Aichi prefecture.
“The railway firms cannot keep unprofitable lines and in many areas they are being replaced by BRT [bus rapid transport] routes with lower infrastructure costs,” he told This Week in Asia.
