[resolutebat]

In major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, J(N)R is far from the only player in town, there are numerous "really" private railways like Keikyu, Odakyu, Keio, Tokyu etc. And they all followed the same very profitable playbook of snapping up rural land, building a train line to it, and then building/selling off rights to build apartments, shopping malls etc on the now much more valuable land.