Ever wondered why Shinagawa Station, one of the oldest stations, is actually located in Minato Ward not Shinagawa Ward? And why Kita (North) Shinagawa station is located south of Shinagawa Station. And why Meguro Station is not in Meguro Ward but is actually in Shinagawa Ward? Well read on…
At the beginning of the Meiji era, one of the things that appeared in Tokyo, along with all the other stuff foreigners already had, was the railway. British engineers were invited in order to make plans for the first line connecting Tokyo and Yokohama.
Shinagawa is a town that prospered during the Edo period as the first post station on the 53 stations of the Tokaido. But the residents and business owners worried that having a station nearby would render their post station obsolete and they would lose their jobs They didn’t seem to think that it would bring more people to the area and make it even more prosperous which is what what people would think today. But then worrying about new technologies disrupting the old ways is still around. What were they to know?
Because of the opposition by the residents it became impossible to secure land. Shigenobu Ōkuma (大隈 重信), who was promoting the plan, had a novel idea. It was Ōkuma who came up with the innovative idea of constructing the railway over the sea. This led to the creation of the Takamatsu Embankment (高輪築堤), a railway built over reclaimed land in the sea. (The embankment was constructed under the guidance of British engineer Edmund Morel). At low tide land reclamation work could be carried out day and night and the station was created for away from Shinagawa post station on the reclaimed land. Immediately to the south of it would be the beach.
June 12, 1872, the Shinagawa to Yokohama section of the line was completed, and the railway was provisionally opened for business. In its initial days, the line made two round trips a day, each taking 35 minutes. The official opening of the railway line, which ran between Tokyo (Shimbashi Station) and Yokohama (Sakuragicho Station), took place later that year on October 14, 1872.
Then in 1902 (Meiji 35), Shinagawa Station was moved even further away; about 300 meters north of the original station.
And then in 1904 (Meiji 37), Keihin Electric Railway, before the current Keikyu Corporation, built another Shinagawa Station which was later was renamed “Kita-Shinagawa Station” in 1925 (Taisho 14) because it was located north of Shinagawa. That’s why when you get on a Keikyu local train at Shinagawa Station and head south, the next stop is Kita (North) Shinagawa Station.
As to why Meguro Station isn’t in Meguro Ward the reason was the same; people complaining, or was it?1. The Yamanote Line panned to be built between Shinagawa and Akabane in 1888 to transport raw silk；an important export item for Japan. Six stations were needed: Shinagawa Station, Meguro Station, Shibuya Station, Shinjuku Station, Mejiro Station, and Itabashi Station. During the early stages for the railway line, the original plan was to lay the railway along the lowlands of the Meguro River, which would have placed Meguro Station within Meguro Ward. However, local farmers strongly opposed this plan, fearing that the smoke and vibrations from the trains would cause significant damage to their fields. So instead it was built at the top of a hill where there was nothing, pushing the location of Meguro Station into the neighboring Shinagawa Ward, specifically in the Kamiōsaki district.
- The reason for the location of Meguro Station may be a myth. It’s known as the Meguro Station Catch-up Incident. (目黒駅追上事件). In 1962 the Meguro Ward Local Research Association published a magazine ‘Hometown Meguro’ that included a study of the “incident”. In discussions such as the editing of the ward history, some elders spoke of hearsay such as ‘sparrows gathering on the power lines and ravaging the crops’ and ‘railway soot damaging the fields’, while others said they ‘knew nothing at all’. ↩︎
