History
Asakusa Station opened on 30 December 1927 with the inaugural 2.2-kilometre Asakusa–Ueno line of the Tokyo Underground Railway — today's Tokyo Metro Ginza Line — East Asia's first full-scale subway, and roughly 100,000 people are said to have ridden the line on its opening day. On 25 May 1931 Tōbu Railway opened its own terminus alongside as Asakusa-Kaminarimon, with Matsuya Asakusa built into the station building as Tokyo's first terminal-style department store. The Tokyo Underground Railway was transferred to the Teito Rapid Transit Authority on 1 September 1941. The Tōbu station was renamed Asakusa on 1 October 1945, after wartime air-raids gutted the building. The Toei Subway Line 1 — renamed the Asakusa Line in 1978 — opened on 4 December 1960, making the site a three-operator interchange. Both the Tokyo Metro and Tōbu stations were included in the 100-best-stations-of-Kantō selection in October 1997.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Asakusa's Exit 4 "Red Gate", a tiled temple-style hood at the foot of Azuma Bridge, was chosen from a competition the original Tokyo Underground Railway ran for its station portals and is now listed both as a Modernisation Industrial Heritage site and a Tangible Cultural Property.