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Most (if not all?) of the transit in Tokyo is private. When you build densely enough, transit becomes highly profitable on its own, and someone will do it.

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They are private in ways specific to Japan that, what I know, you pretty much won't find anywhere else.

Public-private partnership is not so "specific to Japan". The transit/retail connection is definitely a uniquely bright idea but it's something that many other jurisdictions could emulate.

Having that work is specific to Japan. If there is a single example of someone managing to do that successfully, especially with multiple companies, I would like to hear about it. Transit/retail or rail plus property is used in other places, like Hong Kong, but with government owned operators.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...

Can you elaborate?

Transit as retail and real-estate play: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/05/secret-tokyos...

The end to end control over development of these networks+districts was still more centralized, though not by a government, compared to the rather uncoordinated mess that has been US public transit development.

Operated privately is very different from built privately.

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