Tokyu Railways Co., Ltd.

The business is inseparable from suburban land development. Its ultimate ancestor, Den-en Toshi Co., Ltd. (田園都市株式会社), was founded in September 1918 by the industrialist Shibusawa Eiichi to build an ideal residential "garden city" in Ebara District southwest of Tokyo, selling house lots at Senzoku from 1922 and in the Tamagawadai area — the later Den-en-chōfu — from 1923. To connect these estates with the government railway network, its railway department was spun off on 2 September 1922 as the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway (目黒蒲田電鉄), and treating the railway as one component of comprehensive urban development has defined the company ever since. Kobayashi Ichizō, the Hankyu founder then effectively managing Den-en Toshi, recommended Gotō Keita, a former Railway Ministry official involved with the still-unopened Musashi Electric Railway; Gotō joined Meguro-Kamata as senior managing director in October 1922, became president of both electric railways in 1936, and is regarded as Tokyu's de facto founder. The first section, Meguro–Maruko (today's Numabe), opened on 11 March 1923, and the Mekama Line through from Meguro to Kamata was completed on 1 November the same year.

The sister company, the (old) Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway — the Musashi Electric Railway renamed in October 1924 — opened Marukotamagawa–Kanagawa in February 1926 and Shibuya–Marukotamagawa on 28 August 1927, creating the through route named the Tōyoko Line, completed to Sakuragichō in Yokohama on 31 March 1932. Following Kobayashi's Hankyu formula that "passengers are created by the train," the railways raised the value of their corridor: Tokyo Institute of Technology moved to Ōokayama through a 1924 land exchange, Keio University received donated land at Hiyoshi in 1929, and the Tōyoko Department Store opened at Shibuya in November 1934. Gotō also absorbed competitors — the Ikegami Electric Railway, merged on 1 October 1934 after an overnight 1933 purchase of the Kawasaki zaibatsu's shareholding, and the Tamagawa Electric Railway, ancestor of the Setagaya Line, in April 1938 — an aggressiveness that earned him the nickname "Gōtō (robber) Keita." On 1 October 1939 Meguro-Kamata absorbed the old Tokyo-Yokohama company and on 16 October took the name (new) Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway, unifying the core of the present network under one management.

Under wartime transport-coordination control the company merged with the Keihin Electric Railway and the (old) Odakyu Electric Railway on 1 May 1942 and was renamed Tōkyō Kyūkō Dentetsu, absorbing the Keiō Electric Tramway on 31 May 1944. With more than 30 companies brought under its control and a rail network of roughly 320 km stretching from the Chūō Line to the Miura Peninsula and Hakone, the empire became known as the "Dai-Tōkyū" (Great Tokyu); Gotō left the presidency in February 1944 to serve as Minister of Transport and Communications. After the war it was unwound: most shareholdings in companies such as Sagami Railway and Shizuoka Railway were released in 1947, the department-store arm was separated in May 1948, and the corporate reorganization of 1 June 1948 established the Keihin Kyūkō Electric Railway (Keikyu), Odakyu Electric Railway and Keiō Teito Electric Railway (today's Keio Corporation) as independent companies. The slimmed-down Tōkyō Kyūkō Dentetsu relisted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 16 May 1949.

The postwar decades were defined by the den-en-toshi development model on a far larger scale. Gotō Keita, back from the postwar purge in 1951, proposed building a "second Tokyo" for the swelling capital: the Jōseinan district development plan announced in January 1953 called for acquiring five million tsubo (16.5 million square metres) along the Ōyama Kaidō (today's Route 246) in central Kawasaki and northern Yokohama and building a string of small new cities — the project that became the Tama Den-en Toshi. The Ōimachi Line was renamed the Den-en-toshi Line in October 1963 and extended from Mizonokuchi to Nagatsuta on 1 April 1966, reaching Chūō-Rinkan on 9 April 1984 to complete the new town's basic infrastructure; the New Tamagawa Line from Shibuya, successor to the tram line abolished in 1969, opened on 7 April 1977 and carried Den-en-toshi Line trains through to the Hanzōmon Line from August 1979. Gotō's son Gotō Noboru, president from 1954, refocused the group on rail and related businesses while expanding into aviation, construction, advertising and hotels; at its late-1980s peak the group counted some 400 companies and 80,000 employees, before post-bubble group debts of more than three trillion yen (March 1999) forced consolidation back to roughly 220 companies.

Through-running knitted the network into the metropolitan system. The Tōyoko Line began through services onto the Hibiya Line on 29 August 1964; the Mekama Line — the company's first line — was reorganized on 6 August 2000 into the Meguro Line and the Tokyu Tamagawa Line, the Meguro Line running through to the Namboku and Toei Mita lines from September 2000 and the Saitama Rapid Railway line from 2001; the Tōyoko Line joined the Minatomirai Line on 1 February 2004; and on 16 March 2013 a new underground alignment at Shibuya linked the Tōyoko Line to the Fukutoshin Line — and through it the Tōbu Tōjō Main Line and Seibu Ikebukuro Line — ending 49 years of Hibiya Line through service. Since the 2019 split the railway company has completed platform doors or sensor-equipped fixed platform fences at every station outside the Setagaya and Kodomonokuni lines (March 2020, a first among Japan's major private railways) and opened the Tōkyū Shin-Yokohama Line on 18 March 2023, sending Tōyoko and Meguro line trains through to the Sōtetsu network. The railway network totals 110.7 operating kilometres (as of 31 March 2025), tenth among the sixteen major private railways — though before the split the company's revenue per operating kilometre was about 1.5 times that of Tokyo Metro (fiscal 2011). Tokyu also operates the Kodomonokuni Line as a Category 2 railway business over infrastructure owned by the Yokohama Minatomirai Railway Company, and runs Minatomirai Line trains under contract on that company's behalf.

• 19182 September: Den-en Toshi Co., Ltd. (田園都市株式会社) — the garden-city land developer founded by Shibusawa Eiichi and the ultimate ancestor of the Tokyu companies — was established.
• 19222 September: the railway department of Den-en Toshi Co. was spun off as the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway; on 2 October Gotō Keita, the company's de facto founder, joined as senior managing director.
• 192311 March: the first section, Meguro–Maruko (today's Numabe), opened; on 1 November the Mekama Line was completed through from Meguro to Kamata.
• 19391 October: the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway absorbed the (old) Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway and on 16 October was renamed the (new) Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway, unifying the core of the present Tokyu network.
• 19421 May: against the background of wartime transport-coordination control, the company merged with the Keihin Electric Railway and the (old) Odakyu Electric Railway and was renamed Tōkyō Kyūkō Dentetsu (Tokyo Express Electric Railway), opening the "Dai-Tōkyū" era.
• 19481 June: in the postwar corporate reorganization, the Keihin Kyūkō Electric Railway, Odakyu Electric Railway and Keiō Teito Electric Railway were established as independent companies, dissolving the Dai-Tōkyū.
• 1953January: the development plan for the Jōseinan district — Gotō Keita's concept of acquiring five million tsubo along the Ōyama Kaidō to build a "second Tokyo" — was announced, launching what became the Tama Den-en Toshi project.
• 19661 April: the Den-en-toshi Line — renamed from the Ōimachi Line in October 1963 as the arterial railway of the Tama Den-en Toshi development — opened between Mizonokuchi and Nagatsuta.
• 19849 April: the Tsukimino–Chūō-Rinkan section opened, completing the Den-en-toshi Line and the basic infrastructure of the Tama Den-en Toshi.
• 20006 August: with the completion of quadruple-tracking between Tamagawa and Musashi-Kosugi, the Mekama Line — the company's first line — was reorganized into the Meguro Line and the Tokyu Tamagawa Line; the Meguro Line began through services to the Namboku and Toei Mita lines that September.
• 20041 February: the Tōyoko Line began mutual through services onto the newly opened Minatomirai Line; its own Yokohama–Sakuragichō section had ended operation on 30 January.
• 201316 March: with the undergrounding of Shibuya–Daikanyama, the Tōyoko Line began through services with the Fukutoshin Line — and through it the Tōbu Tōjō Main Line and Seibu Ikebukuro Line — while ending its 49-year through service with the Hibiya Line.
• 20192 September: Tōkyō Kyūkō Dentetsu was renamed Tokyu Corporation (東急株式会社), and the split-preparation company incorporated on 25 April was renamed Tokyu Railways Co., Ltd. (東急電鉄株式会社); on 1 October the railway and tramway business was transferred to Tokyu Railways by an absorption-type company split.
• 202318 March: the Tōkyū Shin-Yokohama Line opened, and the Tōyoko and Meguro lines began mutual through services to the Sōtetsu Main and Izumino lines via the Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line.