Founded in 1892 by Yoshigoro Obayashi in Osaka, Obayashi Corporation is one of Japan’s elite “Big Five” super-general contractors (zenikon). Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Nikkei 225) and headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, the corporation employs over 15,000 personnel worldwide across civil engineering, building construction, real estate development, and advanced engineering R&D divisions.

Obayashi has been a cornerstone builder of Japan’s railway infrastructure for over a century. The firm has delivered critical packages across the Tokaido, Sanyo, Tohoku, Hokuriku, and Hokkaido Shinkansen alignments, including high-speed viaducts, balanced cantilever railway bridges, and complex mountain tunnels excavated using the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM). Currently, Obayashi is heavily engaged in civil and subterranean tunneling packages for the Linear Chuo Shinkansen (SCMaglev), constructing deep launch shafts and mountain base tunnels under the Southern Alps.

Internationally, Obayashi has delivered landmark mass transit and heavy rail schemes. As a core member of the Japanese-led consortium, Obayashi constructed the Dubai Metro Red and Green Lines, delivering the world’s longest automated driverless metro network in a single phase. The company also constructed key civil packages for the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR), urban metro lines in Singapore (Downtown Line and Thomson-East Coast Line), and large-scale transit-oriented station developments such as the seismic retrofitting and base-isolation reconstruction of the historic Tokyo Station Marunouchi Building.