Tokyo Metro, the underground railway network that carries more than 6.5mn passengers a day through the Japanese capital at levels of punctuality and cleanliness envied around the world, will list its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday in the country’s biggest initial public offering in six years.

The listing, backed by an extensive TV advertising campaign and door-to-door sales efforts by bankers, has been supported by more than 30 brokerages. It is the first major IPO since the government significantly expanded a tax-protected individual savings scheme this year aimed at drawing millions of ordinary Japanese into the stock market.

The long-awaited listing, which was heavily oversubscribed and has raised ￥348bn ($2.3bn), is Japan’s first privatisation of a government-owned company since the IPOs of JR Kyushu, which raised $4bn in 2016, and of Japan Post a year earlier, which drew in $11.7bn.