While a 2013 study by Didier M. van de Velde for the Delft University of Technology cited a "reduced readiness of the public sector to unconditionally inject money in the railway" in the Netherlands as a core obstacle to becoming more Japanese, another core difference with Japan was the Dutch separation between "train operations and infrastructure."
While the Netherlands' railway network is managed by one entity, the trains running on it are operated by various companies. Their reliance on the same network makes it difficult for single operators to distinguish themselves by offering speedier or more reliable services.
On both points, the U.S. railway system is closer to the Dutch example than to the Japanese. Its publicly owned infrastructure is chronically underfunded and while the Netherlands relies on private operators - a model U.S. public railway critics have repeatedly advocated for - U.S. Amtrak services rely on a publicly (under-)funded infrastructure as much as their Dutch counterparts.
Some other lessons the Dutch tried to learn include "the attitude of the railway personnel, which was perceived by the interviewees to be exemplarly precise and dedicated in Japan," wrote van de Velde. For his research, he interviewed numerous Dutch railway service operators and stakeholders who had been in touch with their Japanese counterparts to exchange lessons learned.
"The picture of the Japanese train drivers regularly checking their watch and comparing by the second their difference with the timetable has deeply impressed all participants to the study tours," van de Velde wrote. There was disagreement whether Dutch railway operators could overcome such cultural differences, however.
When it comes to punctuality, the researcher observed, the differences may also be due to decades-old practices that are difficult to disrupt. While the Japanese are focused on allowing more trains to stop at stations in higher frequency, the Dutch are all about flexibility and higher speed (that can ultimately end up disrupting the punctuality of other trains, as it turns out.) Less speed and more reliability is sometimes better, the Japanese experience appears to show.
Perhaps more importantly, however, the Dutch research project found that managers in charge of railway services had vastly different experience in Europe, compared to Japan. While European (and U.S.) train services are often overseen "by people 'passing by'" on their way up the career ladder, "senior Japanese managers spent a very substantial time in operational duties."
In other words: Japanese railway bosses know what sort of catastrophe a 25-second deviation from the schedule really is - and they won't hesitate to apologize.