History
Takasaki Station is a major junction on the JR East, JR Freight and Jōshin Electric Railway networks in Yashima-chō, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, and is the largest terminus in Gunma. It opened on 1 May 1884 as a Nippon Railway station on the Shimmachi–Takasaki section, became the junction toward Maebashi later that year, and saw the government-built line to Yokokawa (today's Shin'etsu Main Line) open on 15 October 1885. The Ueno Railway (now Jōshin Line) opened to Fukushima Station (now Jōshū-Fukushima) on 10 May 1897. Nippon Railway was nationalised on 1 November 1906; new station buildings were erected in 1900 and again in July 1917. Midori no Madoguchi opened on 1 October 1965, the east entrance opened on 18 November 1946. The station is the southern terminus of the Hokuriku Shinkansen and a stop on the Jōetsu Shinkansen; in total it hosts nine lines spanning conventional and high-speed services.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
About 4 km north of the station is the junction between the Jōetsu and Hokuriku Shinkansen, equipped with Japan's largest No. 38 swing-nose turnout — wholly Japanese-made and capable of 160 km/h on the diverging Nagano side and over 240 km/h on the straight Niigata side. Since 3 July 2021 the Shinkansen platforms have used a departure melody arranged from songs by Takasaki-born guitarist Hotei Tomoyasu, in collaboration with the G Messe Gunma convention centre and the prefectural mascot Gunma-chan.