History
Ikebukuro Station opened on 1 April 1903 as a Nippon Railway passenger stop, formed by upgrading the Ikebukuro signal post that had been established on 10 May 1902 to enable the new Yamanote Line branch between Ikebukuro and Tabata. The line was nationalised on 1 November 1906. Tōjō Railway, ancestor of today's Tōbu Tōjō Main Line, opened its adjoining terminus on 1 May 1914, and Musashino Railway — now the Seibu Ikebukuro Line — opened a third station alongside on 15 April 1915, turning the site into a major interchange. Wartime air-raids on 13 April 1945 burnt out the station building and destroyed scores of stranded vehicles in the adjacent depot. The Saikyō Line began running on 30 September 1985, the Shōnan-Shinjuku Line on 1 December 2001, and the underground Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line on 14 June 2008 — together producing the four-operator, eight-line super-terminus seen today.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
From 1 March 2024 the departure melody on the JR Yamanote Line platforms has been the jingle of electronics retailer Bic Camera, which has its flagship store at the east exit — a change Bic Camera itself proposed to JR — and on 14 November 2024 the platform signs were updated to add the secondary name "Bic Camera-mae".