1.5 Euro Tokaido Shinkansen

Spain's Real Casa de la Moneda has issued a long-running series of coins commemorating international engineering and transport achievements, and this piece honoring the Tōkaidō Shinkansen fits squarely within that program. The Tōkaidō line — connecting Tokyo and Osaka — opened in October 1964, timed deliberately to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics, and immediately broke world speed records for regular passenger rail service.

The line was not merely an engineering project but a political one: proof that Japan had fully rebuilt itself nineteen years after the war. It remains the world's busiest high-speed rail corridor by ridership.