History
Chigasaki Station (JT 10) is on JR East's Tōkaidō Line in Motomachi, Chigasaki, Kanagawa — a major junction with the Sagami Line, of which it is the southern terminus. The Tōkaidō side opened on 15 June 1898, and the Sagami Railway Sagami Line (then privately owned) opened on 28 September 1921. The Sagami Line was nationalised on 1 June 1944. The current bridge-style station was completed on 15 December 1984, with the 'Chigasaki Lumine' commercial complex opening on 19 April 1985 (renamed 'Chigasaki Lasca' in 2006). The Tōkaidō ride lengths-Shōnan Liner platforms were added as Tracks 3-4 on 3 December 1994; these later carried the express 'Shōnan'. The departure melody on Tracks 5-6 was changed to Southern All Stars' 'Kibō no Wadachi' on 1 October 2014, after a citizen petition collected over 10,000 signatures to honour the local heroes — the band's Keisuke Kuwata is a Chigasaki native.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
Chigasaki Station's claim to fame is that its 1–2 and 5–6 platforms play music by hometown heroes Southern All Stars (Keisuke Kuwata) and Yūzō Kayama: 'Kibō no Wadachi' on platforms 5/6 since October 2014 (after 10,000-plus signatures), and 'Umi sono Ai' on platforms 1/2 from September 2021 to March 2022 (suspended when the Sagami Line went one-man-operation).