East Japan Railway Company (東日本旅客鉄道株式会社, Higashi-Nihon Ryokaku Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha?) is the largest passenger railway company in the world and one of the seven JR companies. The company incorporated on April 1, 1987 after being spun off from the government-run Japanese National Railways. Although this was a nominal "privatization," the company was actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the government-owned JNR Settlement Corporation for several years, and was not completely sold to the public until 2002.