Tohoku Shinkansen, which suffered extremely severe damage by the 11 March disaster, resumed its pre-disaster operation schedule on 23 September. JR East distributed Shinkansen goods and local special products to passengers at major Shinkansen stations to celebrate full-scale restoration.
The newest Tohoku Shinkansen E5 series “HAYABUSA” started operation on 5 March, but because of the disaster on 11 March, JR East suffered a great amount of damage at various facilities such as posts carrying overhead lines and concrete pillars at more than 1,200 locations, forcing the suspension of all Shinkansen operation. A series of aftershocks suffered after 7 April also caused damages at approximately 550 sites. Tohoku Shinkansen resumed service along all sections on 29 April, after emergency stop-gap restoration. Because of this, it had been running on a special schedule with reduced frequency and speed between Nasu-Shiobara and Morioka station.

From immediately after the historic quake, JR East, together with its group companies, has been continuing efforts to restore its train network. Running speed between Nasu-shiobara and Fukushima, and Ichinoseki and Morioka resumed to normal on 9 July, and by continued efforts, reduced-speed operation was finally discontinued on 23 September.

The running time between Tokyo to Shin-Aomori by (max speed 300 km/h), went back to 3 hours 10 minutes (20 minutes shorter than reduced speed operation), for the first time in 6 months. Akita Shinkansen “KOMACHI”, part of which runs along the same track as Tohoku Shinkansen, also resumed its basic operation schedule. “KOMACHI” connects Tokyo to Akita with a minimum time of 3 hours 50 minutes, 28 minutes shorter than reduced speed operation. JR East intends to operate “HAYABUSA” at 320 km/h, which will be a national record for speed, by the spring of 2013.