History
Yokohama Station is a major interchange in Nishi-ku, Yokohama. The original Yokohama Station opened on 12 June 1872 (Gregorian) as one of Japan's first railway terminals; that station, near the harbour, was renamed Sakuragichō on 15 August 1915 when the second Yokohama Station opened to allow through-running of the Tōkaidō Main Line. The second station was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake fire and a temporary structure was rebuilt within days. The third (and current) Yokohama Station opened on 15 October 1928 on the present site. The Tōkyū Tōyoko Line connected on 18 May 1928, the Keihin Electric Railway (now Keikyu Main Line) on 5 February 1930, the Jinchū Railway (now Sotetsu Main Line) on 27 December 1933, the Yokohama City Subway on 4 September 1976, and the Yokohama Minatomirai Line on 1 February 2004 (the Tōyoko Line platforms having moved underground the day before). A 26-storey JR East West-Entrance Station Building opened in 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Yokohama is the busiest station in Kanagawa Prefecture and was reported as the fifth-busiest in the world in 2013, serving about 760 million passengers a year across its six operators. The Tōkaidō Shinkansen does not actually stop here—it bypasses to the inland Shin-Yokohama Station—even though every other major mainline service from JR East, JR West sleepers, Keikyu, Sotetsu, Tōkyū and Yokohama Minatomirai Railway terminates or passes through.