First of all, passenger-distance per event (or its inverse) is the standard metric used when comparing transportation safety. You would be hard-pressed to find any broad, rigorous comparison that does not compare on that metric. It encodes the risk of a trip to a location of a certain distance. It is absolutely a fair comparison.
Second of all, even if we do use your metric which only cares about passenger-trips per event it still does not matter. The Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people since inception. As seen in the second link I provided above, US commercial aviation serves ~900 million passengers per year. So, that is 7 years of US commercial aviation to transport the same number of people the Shinkansen has ever transported. As seen on the third link the last 7 years (2016-2022) had ~6 fatalities and as seen on the fourth link the last 7 years (2015-2021) had 2 fatalities compared to the 1 fatality on the Shinkansen.
Third of all, given that the Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people, but averages 150 million people per year and ~60 billion passenger-miles per year, we can reasonably conclude that I overestimated at ~3.6 trillion passenger-miles and it would likely actually be ~2.4 trillion passenger miles or just 2.5 years of US aviation. From the third link that would be a mere 1 fatality and from the fourth link 0-1 fatalities.
If we extend our analysis to the last decade the third link indicates 15 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~2x the Shinkansen rate, and the fourth link indicates 2 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~50% the Shinkansen rate. Again, broadly comparable, but it is hard to truly tell which one is "safer" than the other. And again, they are clearly in the same ballpark and not dramatically different as you implied.
Second of all, even if we do use your metric which only cares about passenger-trips per event it still does not matter. The Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people since inception. As seen in the second link I provided above, US commercial aviation serves ~900 million passengers per year. So, that is 7 years of US commercial aviation to transport the same number of people the Shinkansen has ever transported. As seen on the third link the last 7 years (2016-2022) had ~6 fatalities and as seen on the fourth link the last 7 years (2015-2021) had 2 fatalities compared to the 1 fatality on the Shinkansen.
Third of all, given that the Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people, but averages 150 million people per year and ~60 billion passenger-miles per year, we can reasonably conclude that I overestimated at ~3.6 trillion passenger-miles and it would likely actually be ~2.4 trillion passenger miles or just 2.5 years of US aviation. From the third link that would be a mere 1 fatality and from the fourth link 0-1 fatalities.
If we extend our analysis to the last decade the third link indicates 15 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~2x the Shinkansen rate, and the fourth link indicates 2 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~50% the Shinkansen rate. Again, broadly comparable, but it is hard to truly tell which one is "safer" than the other. And again, they are clearly in the same ballpark and not dramatically different as you implied.