History
Shin-Ōkubo Station opened on 15 November 1914 as a passenger-only halt on the Railway Board's Yamanote Line. It passed to JR East at JNR's privatisation on 1 April 1987, and automatic ticket gates were installed on 28 October 1992. On 26 January 2001 the Shin-Ōkubo Station accident took place: a Korean exchange student and a Japanese photographer were both struck and killed while trying to rescue a man who had fallen onto the tracks. The accident prompted JR East to fit fall-detection mats and below-platform refuge spaces, with construction starting on 21 June 2001 and the refuges completed on 22 December the same year; Suica IC cards were accepted from 18 November 2001. The Midori-no-Madoguchi ticket office closed on 23 January 2009. A lift between the concourse and platform entered service on 9 February 2020, and the station was placed under contract operation on 1 December 2020. The station has a single island platform on a viaduct and is one of only two Yamanote Line stops — along with Mejiro — that no other operator's line shares; its number is JY 16.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The 26 January 2001 accident at this station — in which Korean exchange student Lee Su-hyon and Japanese photographer Sekine Shiro both died trying to rescue a man who had fallen onto the tracks — prompted JR East to retrofit fall-detection mats and beneath-platform refuge spaces here, later rolled out across the network.