Meihan Expressway


The Meihan Expressway is a national expressway in Mie Prefecture and Nara Prefecture, Japan. The expressway is also known as the Meihan National Highway. Together with the Nishi-Meihan Expressway and Higashi-Meihan Expressway, it is the central portion of a corridor linking the greater Nagoya and Osaka areas. It is owned and operated by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and is signed as an auxiliary route of National Route 25 as well as E25 under their "2016 Proposal for Realization of Expressway Numbering."

Naming

Meihan is a kanji acronym of two characters. The first character represents Nagoya and the second character represents Osaka.

History

Construction on the Meihan Expressway began in March 1962, with an intended construction period of only one thousand days. The rapid construction of expressways in Japan at the time was spearheaded by Minister of Construction Ichirō Kōno in preparation for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. It was opened as a two-lane expressway in December 1965.