History
Asakusa Station opened on 30 December 1927 with the inauguration of the 2.2-kilometre Asakusa–Ueno line of the Tokyo Underground Railway, today's Tokyo Metro Ginza Line — East Asia's first full-scale subway. On 25 May 1931 Tōbu Railway opened its own terminus alongside, then called Asakusa-Kaminarimon, with the Matsuya Asakusa department store built into the same building as Tokyo's first terminal-style retail station. The Tokyo Underground Railway was transferred to the Teito Rapid Transit Authority on 1 September 1941 under wartime transport rationalisation. The Tōbu station was renamed Asakusa on 1 October 1945. The Toei Subway Line 1 — renamed the Asakusa Line in 1978 — opened on 4 December 1960. The Tokyo Metro and Tōbu stations were both included in the 100-best-stations-of-Kantō selection in October 1997.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
The opening of the original 2.2-kilometre Tokyo Underground Railway segment between Asakusa and Ueno on 30 December 1927 was East Asia's first full-scale subway, and roughly 100,000 people rode the line on its first day.