Watch Japan's railways bloom: every station, 1872 to today

Eki · 駅150 years of Japan, drawn in stations.On a June morning in 1872, Japan’s entire railway was a single line between Shimbashi and Yokohama. A century and a half later the map carries more than nine thousand stations. Press play and watch the country fill in — one opening at a time.9,321Stations mapped154Years1872First lineMeiji 明治Taishō 大正Shōwa 昭和Heisei 平成Reiwa 令和18726 of 9,321 stations open1872 — Japan's first railway. Shimbashi to Yokohama opens — 29 km of British-built track. The country's entire network begins as a single line.Play with the mapPick a kanji and the map repaints: every station carrying that character lights up. Japan’s rail map is secretly a map of rice paddies, rivers and mountains.How to read itOne dot, one stationEvery dot is a railway station, placed where it stands and lit at the year it opened. Drag the slider or press play to move through time; the counter and the chart below the map keep pace. The tall bars are the building booms — and the shape of Japan emerges not from a coastline but from the stations themselves.The boomA country laid down in forty yearsThe first decades are sparse: a spine up the Pacific coast, a few lines around Osaka. Then, between roughly 1900 and 1930, the map erupts. Private railways race the state to every valley and suburb, and Tokyo and Osaka thicken into the dense knots you can still see today. By the time the boom cools, the skeleton of modern Japan is already on the ground.The first line1872Shimbashi to Yokohama — the whole network begins as 29 km of trackBusiest year1929272 stations opened in a single yearOn the map today9,321stations with a recorded opening date, 1872 to the presentSource & methodStations, coordinates and opening dates come from Wikidata (CC0): every item that is a railway station in Japan with coordinates and a date of official opening, taking the earliest opening year per station.

A station blooms at its opening year and is never removed, so closed and relocated stations remain on the map. Of the source set, 96 stations were left off for a missing or unusable opening date, or coordinates outside Japan. The coastline is a simplified Natural Earth outline.Download the data (CSV, 9,321 stations).Words for the railsYou just watched 150 years of stations appear. These are the words you’d use to ride them today — from the 駅 you start at to the 乗り換え in the middle.駅えきstation電車でんしゃtrain路線ろせんline / route乗り換えのりかえtransfer切符きっぷticket新幹線しんかんせんbullet train開業かいぎょうopening (of a line)Learn the vocabulary of the rails →You just watched Japan’s rail map grow for 150 years — and the kanji riding on it are closer than they look:駅えきstation電車でんしゃtrain路線ろせんline新幹線しんかんせんbullet trainJIVX turns a fascination like this into real Japanese: short daily sessions of whole sentences, graded the way a teacher would — not flashcards. Free to start, at your own level.Start practising free →