Tokyo Station was not called Tokyo Station while it was being built. The operator’s own history dates the start of construction to 1908 and describes the project as the Central Station; the name was changed to Tokyo Station when the building opened for business on 20 December 1914. Anyone searching for “Tokyo Central Station” is looking for the same building under the name it carried for the six years before it had passengers.
The building was begun in 1908 as the Central Station and opened as Tokyo Station in 1914
The chronology below is the one published by the Tokyo Station City operating council, the body that runs the information site for the station and the blocks around it. Two entries are worth reading twice. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 is recorded with the note that the station building in particular suffered no damage. The 1945 air raid, by contrast, burned the roof, and when the building was rebuilt in 1947 it came back with two storeys where it had had three. It stayed that way until the restoration finished in 2012, which by my own arithmetic on the two dates in the table is 65 years.
How the Meteorological Agency rates earthquake shaking today, and when its early warning goes out, is set out in our note on Japan’s two earthquake scales.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1872 | The railway between Shimbashi and Yokohama opens |
| 1908 | Construction of the Central Station begins |
| 1914 | Renamed Tokyo Station and opened for business |
| 1915 | The Tokyo Station Hotel opens |
| 1923 | The Great Kanto Earthquake; the station building in particular is undamaged |
| 1929 | The Yaesu exit is opened |
| 1945 | Fire from an air raid destroys the roof and other parts |
| 1947 | The three-storey building is completed as a two-storey building |
| 1964 | The Tokaido Shinkansen opens |
| 1988 | The Tokyo Station Gallery opens |
| 2003 | Designated a national Important Cultural Property |
| 2007 | Preservation and restoration work on the Marunouchi building begins |
| 2012 | Preservation and restoration work is completed |
| 2013 | The GranRoof is completed |
| 2014 | The station’s centenary |
| 2017 | The Marunouchi station plaza is completed |
Only eight of the twelve zodiac animals appear in the domes
The north and south domes of the Marunouchi building carry a set of zodiac reliefs, and the set is deliberately incomplete. Eight of the twelve signs are placed at eight corners inside the domes, each in the compass direction that belongs to it. The four that are missing are exactly the four cardinal points: the rat for north, the rabbit for east, the horse for south and the rooster for west. The sculptures are made of glass-fibre reinforced gypsum against a grey-green background.
Above them, in the octagonal corners under the dome, sit eight fierce eagles, all facing left, with wings spread about 2.1 metres across. Some of the plaster from 1914 survived behind the ceiling that post-war reconstruction had installed. Most of its surface had burned away, but the parts that could be saved were removed, impregnated with a strengthening agent and refitted into the arch relief of the south dome, where they are the darker sections.
The roof has its own sequence. The original pure-black natural slate was lost entirely in the war and replaced temporarily with sheet metal during the post-war reconstruction, then re-laid in natural slate in 1990. Slate still in good condition was reused in the 2007 to 2012 work, and domestically quarried slate was used for the two domes and the central section, laid by hand one thin sheet at a time. For the third floor, the restored structure is reinforced concrete faced with decorative brick, while on the second floor and below the original structural brick and the original decorative brick were kept.
The joints between the bricks were treated as part of the design rather than as filler. The operator records that the decorative brick was made to approximate the brick used in 1914, and that the original mortar joint was a fukurin finish, a rounded profile it describes as laborious to produce, which was preserved where it survived and reproduced where it did not. The shape of the third-floor columns was also returned to the form they had when the building was first put up.
Twenty-eight platforms, seventeen lines and two shinkansen companies
The operating council gives the station a total area of 182,000 square metres, which it compares to 3.9 Tokyo Domes, and counts 28 platforms including six for the Tokaido Shinkansen, about 4,000 train departures a day and an average of about 460,000 boarding passengers a day, all as of 1 January 2020.
JR Central’s own station page lists seventeen lines at Tokyo: the Tokaido, Tohoku, Yamagata, Akita, Hokkaido, Joetsu and Hokuriku shinkansen, and the Tokaido main line, Tohoku main line, Takasaki line, Joban line, Chuo main line, Sobu main line, Yokosuka line, Yamanote line, Keihin-Tohoku line and Keiyo line. Seven of the seventeen are shinkansen, and they belong to two different companies: the Tokaido Shinkansen is JR Central’s, the other six run on JR East’s network. That is why the station has more than one shinkansen ticket gate and why unreserved seating on the Tokaido Shinkansen follows the train type rather than the station.
A second passenger figure exists and does not match the first. JR East’s ranking of its own stations by average daily boarding passengers put Tokyo third in the 2024 fiscal year with 434,564. The two numbers are not comparable line for line: one is the operating council’s figure as of January 2020 for the station as a whole, the other is JR East’s count of boardings on JR East trains in the 2024 fiscal year. Neither includes the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line passengers who use the same name.
The ticket windows do not keep the same hours as the trains
JR Central publishes opening hours for its ticket offices at Tokyo, and they stop well short of the first and last trains. The Yaesu Central ticket office is open from 5:40 to 22:45. The Yaesu North ticket office is open from 8:30 to 19:00. The lost property office runs from 8:30 to 20:00. A passenger on a very early or very late shinkansen who wants to change a ticket in person has a window measured in hours, not around the clock.
The same company names two meeting points at the station, which is a useful thing to have agreed in advance in a building this size. One is the Silver Bell, a waiting plaza in the underground passage by the Central Exit inside the conventional-line concourse, marked by a silver bell in a glass case. The other is the set of landmark pillars near each shinkansen ticket gate, blue columns carrying a large sign and a clock.
The same page also lists the operators that connect at Tokyo, and the list is shorter than the station’s reputation suggests. Three railway companies are named besides JR Central: East Japan Railway Company, Tokyo Metro and the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation. Two JR highway bus companies are named, JR Tokai Bus and JR Bus Kanto, alongside one airport bus company, Tokyo Airport Transportation, and two route bus operators, the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation again and Tokyu Bus.
Only one of the five GRANSTA areas is inside the ticket gates
The shopping and eating areas inside and around Tokyo Station are branded GRANSTA, and the operator lists five of them: GRANSTA Tokyo, GRANSTA Marunouchi, GRANSTA Yaekita, GRANSTA Yaesu and GranAge. Only GRANSTA Tokyo is marked as being inside the ticket gates as well as outside; the other four are marked as outside the gates only. GRANSTA Tokyo spreads from the first floor down to the first basement level.
There is one further group of shops, which the operator lists separately rather than under a GRANSTA name, described as inside the gates and convenient for passengers using the Keiyo and Musashino lines. So the honest answer to whether there is food inside Tokyo Station is that there is, in two places: GRANSTA Tokyo, and the Keiyo and Musashino line area. Everything else with a GRANSTA sign on it requires leaving the gates and paying to come back in.
The art gallery is inside the station building and closes on Mondays
The Tokyo Station Gallery, which the chronology dates to 1988, is not near the station; it is in it. Its postal address, 1-9-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda ward, is the same address JR Central prints for the station itself.
It opens from 10:00 to 18:00, and until 20:00 on Fridays, with last admission 30 minutes before closing in both cases. It closes on Mondays as a rule, moving to the following weekday when the Monday is a public holiday, and staying open on Mondays in the final week of an exhibition and during the Golden Week, Obon and Silver Week periods. It also closes over the New Year and between exhibitions. Admission depends on the exhibition rather than being fixed: the rates shown at the time of writing were 1,600 yen for a general ticket, 1,100 yen for high school and university students, and no charge at all for anyone of junior high school age or younger.
Sources Checked
Tokyo Station City Operating Council — overview and history of Tokyo Station
Confirmed the construction start in 1908 under the name Central Station, the renaming and opening on 20 December 1914, every row of the chronology table above, the address in Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda ward, the total area of 182,000 square metres compared to 3.9 Tokyo Domes, the approximately 460,000 average daily boarding passengers, the approximately 4,000 daily train departures, and the 28 platforms including six for the Tokaido Shinkansen, all stated as of 1 January 2020.
https://www.tokyostationcity.com/learning/
Tokyo Station City Operating Council — points of interest in the Marunouchi station building
Confirmed the 1908 construction start and the December 1914 opening, the designation as a national Important Cultural Property and the 2012 restoration, the reinforced concrete third floor faced with decorative brick and the retention of the original brick on the second floor and below, the loss of the original natural slate roof in the war, the temporary sheet metal roof, the 1990 re-laying in natural slate, the reuse of sound slate and the use of domestic slate on the domes and central section, the eight left-facing eagles with wings about 2.1 metres across, the surviving 1914 plaster parts refitted into the south dome arch relief, the eight zodiac sculptures placed by compass direction with the rat, rabbit, horse and rooster omitted, the decorative brick made to approximate the original, the preservation and reproduction of the fukurin mortar joint described as a laborious finish, and the return of the third-floor column shapes to their original form.
https://www.tokyostationcity.com/learning/station_building/
Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) — Tokyo station guide
Confirmed the list of seventeen lines at the station, the address 1-9-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda ward, the ticket office hours of 5:40 to 22:45 at the Yaesu Central exit and 8:30 to 19:00 at the Yaesu North exit, the lost property office hours of 8:30 to 20:00, the two named meeting points, the Silver Bell in the Central Exit underground passage and the blue landmark pillars near each shinkansen ticket gate, and the connecting operators listed as East Japan Railway Company, Tokyo Metro and the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation for railways, JR Tokai Bus and JR Bus Kanto for JR highway buses, Tokyo Airport Transportation for airport buses, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation and Tokyu Bus for route buses.
https://railway.jr-central.co.jp/station-guide/shinkansen/tokyo/index.html
East Japan Railway Company (JR East) — press release of 12 September 2025 on station boarding figures for the 2024 fiscal year
Confirmed that Tokyo ranked third with a daily average of 434,564 boarding passengers in the 2024 fiscal year.
https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2025/20250912_ho03.pdf
JR East Cross Station — GRANSTA official site, list of commercial areas
Confirmed the five named areas GRANSTA Tokyo, GRANSTA Marunouchi, GRANSTA Yaekita, GRANSTA Yaesu and GranAge, that only GRANSTA Tokyo is marked as inside the ticket gates as well as outside, that GRANSTA Tokyo runs from the first floor to the first basement level, and that a separate group of shops inside the gates serves Keiyo and Musashino line passengers.
https://www.gransta.jp/mall/
East Japan Railway Culture Foundation — Tokyo Station Gallery
Confirmed the opening hours of 10:00 to 18:00 and to 20:00 on Fridays, last admission 30 minutes before closing, the Monday closing rule with its exceptions for public holidays, the final week of an exhibition and the Golden Week, Obon and Silver Week periods, the New Year and exhibition-change closures, the address 1-9-1 Marunouchi, and the admission shown at the time of writing of 1,600 yen general, 1,100 yen for high school and university students and free for junior high school age and under.
https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/gallery/
Last updated: September 2026
