Shinjuku Station (???, Shinjuku-eki) is a major railway station in Shinjuku and Shibuya wards in Tokyo, Japan.
Serving as the main connecting hub for rail traffic between Tokyo's special wards and Western Tokyo on inter-city rail, commuter rail, and subway lines, the station was used by an average of 3.64 million people per day in 2007, making it, by far, the world's busiest transport hub (and registered as such with Guinness World Records). The station itself has 36 platforms, including an underground arcade, above ground arcade and numerous hallways. There are well over 200 exits. Another 17 platforms (51 total) can be accessed through hallways to 5 directly connected stations without surfacing outside.
Video Shinjuku Station
Lines
Shinjuku is served by the following railway systems:
- JR East:
- JY Yamanote Line
- ?Chuo Main Line (Limited Express)
- JC Chuo Line (Rapid)
- JB Chuo-Sobu Line
- JS Shonan-Shinjuku Line
- JA Saikyo Line
- Odakyu Electric Railway:
- Odakyu Odawara Line
- Keio Corporation:
- Keio Line
- Keio New Line
- Tokyo Metro:
- M Marunouchi Line
- Toei Subway:
- S Toei Shinjuku Line
- E Toei Oedo Line
Maps Shinjuku Station
Station facilities
JR East
The station is centered around facilities servicing the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) lines. These consist of eight ground-level island platforms (16 tracks) on a north-south axis, connected by two overhead and two underground concourses. Most JR services here are urban and suburban mass transit lines, although JR's long-distance express services to K?fu and Matsumoto on the Ch?? Main Line, Narita Express to Narita Airport, and joint operations with Tobu Railway to Nikk? and Kinugawa Onsen also use this station. The JR section alone handles an average of 1.5 million passengers a day.
Odakyu
The terminus for the private Odakyu Odawara Line is parallel to the JR platforms on the west side, and handles an average of 490,000 passengers daily. This is a major commuter route stretching southwest through the suburbs and out towards the coastal city of Odawara and the mountains of Hakone. The ten platforms are built on two levels beneath the Odakyu department store; three express service tracks (six platforms) on the ground level and two tracks (four platforms) on the level below. Each track has platforms on both sides in order to completely separate boarding and alighting passengers.
Chest-high platform screen doors were added to platforms 4 and 5 in September 2012.
Ground level
Underground level
Keio
Keio Line
The Keio Line concourse is located to the west of the Odakyu line concourse, two floors below ground level under Keio department store. It consists of three platforms stretching north to south. Approximately 720,000 passengers use this section daily, which makes it the busiest amongst the non-JR Group railways of Japan. This suburban commuter line links Shinjuku to the city of Hachi?ji to the west. Chest-high platform edge doors were introduced on the Keio Line platforms in March 2014. The doors are different colours for each platform. The doors on platform 2 are green.
The shared facilities for the Toei Shinjuku subway line and the Kei? New Line are distinctively called Kei? New Line Shinjuku Station (?????, Shinsen Shinjuku-eki) and consist of two platforms stretching east-west five floors beneath the K?sh? Kaid? avenue to the southwest of the JR section. The concourse is managed by Keio Corporation but is in a separate location to the main Keio platforms. Further south (and deeper underground) are the two north-to-south Toei ?edo subway line platforms.
Keio New Line and Toei Shinjuku Line
Toei Subway
Toei ?edo Line
Tokyo Metro
Tokyo Metro's two Marunouchi Line underground platforms stretch east-west to the north of the JR and Odakyu facilities, directly below the Metro Promenade underground mall.
Commercial facilities
Many department stores and shopping malls are built directly into the station. These include
- Lumine Est - above JR's east exit
- Odakyu department store - above the Odakyu line concourse
- Odakyu Mylord - above the southern end of Odakyu line concourse
- Lumine 1 shopping mall - above the Keio Line concourse
- Lumine 2 shopping mall - above JR's south and Lumine exits
- Keio Department store - above the Keio Line concourse
- Keio Mall - underground mall to the southwest of the Keio Line concourse
- Odakyu Ace - underground malls beneath the bus terminal by the west exit.
In addition to the above, the Metro Promenade, which is an underground mall owned by Tokyo Metro, extends eastwards from the station beneath Shinjuku-dori avenue, all the way to the adjacent Shinjuku-sanch?me station with 60 exits along the way. The Metro Promenade in turn connects to Shinjuku Subnade, another underground shopping mall, which leads onto Seibu Railway's Seibu-Shinjuku station.
Shinjuku Station is connected by underground passageways and shopping malls to:
- Nishi-Shinjuku Station (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line)
- Seibu Shinjuku Station (Seibu Shinjuku Line)
- Shinjuku-nishiguchi Station (Toei ?edo Line)
- Shinjuku-sanch?me Station (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line, Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line, and Toei Shinjuku Line)
- Toch?mae Station (Toei ?edo Line)
Nearby non-connected stations (within 500 meters of an underground passageway or station) include:
- Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station
- Yoyogi station
- Higashi-Shinjuku Station
- Okubo Station
- Shin-Okubo Station
- Minami-Shinjuku Station
Bus terminals
There is a bus terminal at the west exit servicing both local and long-distance buses, and a JR Highway Bus terminal at the New South Gates.
On April 4, 2016, the new bus terminal and commercial facilities nearby south exit, named Busta Shinjuku (????? (in Japanese)), opened for service. Considerable numbers of the coaches and the airport buses depart from this new terminal.
Passenger statistics
The figures below are the official number of passengers entering and exiting (except for JR East) each day released by each train operator. The figure for JR East only includes entering passengers.
The passenger figures (boarding passengers only) for the JR East (formerly JNR) station in previous years are as shown below.
History
Shinjuku Station opened in 1885 as a stop on Japan Railway's Akabane-Shinagawa line (now part of the Yamanote Line). Shinjuku was still a quiet community at the time and the station was not heavily trafficked at first. The opening of the Ch?? Line (1889), Kei? Line (1915) and Odaky? Line (1923) led to increasing traffic through the station.
Japanese government urban planner Kensaburo Kondo designed a major revamp of the station in 1933, which included a large public square on the west side completed in 1941. Kondo's plan also called for extending the Tokyu Toyoko Line to a new underground terminal on the west side of the station, and constructing an east-west underground line that would be served by the Seibu Railway and the Tokyo Kosoku Railway (forerunner of Tokyo Metro), while the Keio and Odakyu lines would use above-ground terminals to the west of the JR station. These plans were suspended upon the onset of World War II but influenced the current layout of the station area. Subway service ultimately began in 1959.
The Seibu Shinjuku Line was extended from Takadanobaba Station to Seibu Shinjuku Station in 1952. Seibu Shinjuku was built as a temporary station pending a planned redevelopment of the east side of Shinjuku Station, which was to feature a large station building that would house a new Seibu terminal on its second floor. Seibu abandoned its plan to use the building due to a lack of space for trains longer than six cars; the building is now known as Lumine Est and retains some design features originally intended to accommodate the Seibu terminal (in particular, a very high ceiling on the first floor and a very low ceiling on the second floor). In the late 1980s, Seibu planned to build an underground terminal on the east side of Shinjuku, but indefinitely postponed the plan in 1995 due to costs and declining passenger growth.
In August 1967, a freight train carrying jet fuel bound for the U.S. air bases at Tachikawa and Yokota collided with a freight train and caught fire on the Ch?? Rapid tracks. The incident stoked ongoing political controversy in Japan regarding the Vietnam War. The station was a major site for student protests in 1968 and 1969, the height of civil unrest in postwar Japan. On October 21, 1968, 290,000 marchers participated in International Anti-War Day taking over Shinjuku station and forcing trains to stop. In May and June 1969, members of the antiwar group Beheiren carrying guitars and calling themselves "folk guerrillas" led weekly singalongs in the underground plaza outside the west exit of the station, attracting crowds of thousands. Participants described it as a "liberated zone" and a "community of encounter." In July, riot police cleared the plaza with tear gas and changed signs in the station to read "West Exit Concourse" instead of "West Exit Plaza." The incident represented a significant defeat for public activism in Tokyo.
There have been plans at various points in history to connect Shinjuku into the Shinkansen network, and the 1973 Shinkansen Basic Plan, still in force, specifies that the station should be the southern terminus of the J?etsu Shinkansen line to Niigata. While construction of the ?miya-Shinjuku link never started and the J?etsu line presently terminates in Tokyo Station, the right of way, including an area underneath the station, remains reserved.
On May 5, 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult attempted a chemical terrorist attack by setting off a cyanide gas device in a toilet in the underground concourse, barely a month after the gas attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 13, left 6,252 people with non-fatal injuries, severely injured 50 people, and caused 984 cases of temporary vision problems. This time the attack was thwarted by staff who extinguished the burning device.
A major expansion of the JR terminal was completed in April 2016, adding a 32-story office tower, bus terminal, taxi terminal, and numerous shops and restaurants.
Kei? Shinjuku Station
When the Keio Line extended to Shinjuku in 1915, its terminal was located several blocks east of the government railway (presently JR) station. The terminal was first named Shinjuku-Oiwake Station (?????) and was on the street near the Isetan department store. In 1927, the station was moved from the street to a newly built terminal adjacent to the original station. The station building housed a department store. The station name was changed to Yotsuya-Shinjuku Station (?????) in 1930 and again to Kei? Shinjuku Station (?????) in 1937.
The tracks from the terminal were on the K?sh? Kaid? highway, which crosses the Yamanote Line and the Ch?? Line in front of the south entrance of Shinjuku Station by a bridge. The Kei? Line had a station for the access to Shinjuku Station, named Teishaj?-mae Station (?????) and renamed in 1937 Sh?sen Shinjuku Ekimae Station (???????).
In July 1945, the terminal of the Kei? Line was relocated to the present location, though on the ground level, on the west side of Shinjuku Station. Kei? Shinjuku Station and Sh?sen Shinjuku Ekimae Station were closed. This was because the trains faced difficulty in climbing up the slopes of the bridge over the governmental railway after one of the nearby transformer substations was destroyed by an air raid. The site of Kei? Shinjuku Station near Shinjuku-Sanch?me subway station is now occupied by two buildings owned by Kei?: Kei? Shinjuku Sanch?me Building and Kei? Shinjuku Oiwake Building.
See also
- List of East Japan Railway Company stations
- List of railway stations in Japan
- Transport in Greater Tokyo
- Gare du Nord, the busiest railway station outside Japan
Cultural references
The station and other parts of the Toei ?edo Line are referenced in the Digimon Adventure franchise. Contemporary British painter Carl Randall (who spent 10 years living in Tokyo as an artist) depicted the station area in his large oil painting 'Shinjuku', exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London 2013.
References
External links
- JR map of Shinjuku Station
- map of Odakyu Shinjuku Station
- [1]
- map of Toei Subway Shinjuku Station (in Japanese)
- map of Tokyo Metro Shinjuku Station (in Japanese)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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