Welcome to the Forum from the BBC World Service.
I'm Izzy Lawrence.
You may have seen the striking image of a streamlined electric train zooming past the iconic mountain in Japan.
Mount Fuji,
the ancient mountain and the high speed train known variously as the Bullet train,
the Dream Super Express or the Shinkansen, have combined into a powerful symbol of modern Japan.
The first high speed train entered passenger on the line between Tokyo and Osaka
just days before the start of October 1964's Olympics in a well documented ceremony.
But I have found what may be the oldest audio recording of the Shinkansen.
It's from a test run the previous year.
It may just be a few seconds long,
but that sound marked a profound change in the way the world regarded rail transport.
What in the 1950s was seen as a sunset industry that will soon give way to cars and aeroplanes was suddenly given a new lease of life.
In fact, one of today's forum panelists, consultant editor of Railway Gazette Murray Hughes,
calls it the second age of rail in his book.
But what exactly changed?
That's one of the issues we'll be looking at in this forum.
I'm also joined by Professor Jessamine Abel,
a historian of modern Japan at Penn State, the United States,
and the author of the Dream Super Express that chronicles the social and cultural impact of the Shinkansen.