Comment by strado

Exactly this. And the European case is the opposite starting point. Paris already had 2+ million people when the Metro opened in 1900. You're not building rail to create land value, you're building it because the existing density already demands it. Which is why European systems basically all require public subsidy while the Japanese private lines could turn a profit. The preconditions are just so different that copying either model somewhere else rarely works. IME the people pushing "just do what Tokyo does" tend to skip over this part.