This article is about the JR branding and design, not train operations. The title may be overstating the case, but the content is definitely not drawing over generalized conclusions about railroads in Japan.
Not to mention the idea that JR is only 7% of Japanese railroad makes little sense in real life. JR carries a majority of rail passengers in Japan. The long tail of non JR railroad companies in Japan are small, regional operators owning maybe one or two lines with infrequent services. Many of them are also private only in the sense that they are incorporated in the same way as private companies. But if you dig a little around you will find out they are actually owned by local governments.
JR is big, but 62% of passenger volume is not JR and that remaining 38% is split by 7 companies
Further, in the big metro areas, the private trains do just fine.
JR East is #1, Tokyo Metro is #2, JR West is #3, Tokyu is #4, ... the next JR, JR Central is down at #9 with #5 #6 #7 #8 all private. Tokyo Metro is private, Toei (is the city run subway, it has 4 lines as is far down the list).
At least where i live, subways and railways aren't really considered to be the same thing
Japan operates a kind of hybrid system where the subway (at least in Tokyo) mostly consists of tracks that connect to private operators on either end, and a train will just run through from the private parts of the track to the subway parts with no interruption whatsoever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_through_trains_in_Japa...
In the United States, probably the best comparison would be BART in San Francisco Bay Area and WMATA in Washingon, D.C. area. They act like a subway in city center, and like a (commuter) railway outside. As a stretch, also look at SF Muni Metro which acts like a tramway/streetcar outside the dense areas, else like a "light subway" in the dense areas.
The line gets really blurry in some places in Tokyo.
Asakusa (one of "my" lines!) line, is definitely a subway inside central Tokyo, but you can stay on the same physical train going all the way from Narita to Haneda (think RER in Paris?) — I think it would be qualified as "light rail" anywhere else in the world.
Agree. The title is partly misleading. I feel they Carefully left out the logo part from the title.