is a major railway station in Tokyo, Japan, that serves as the main connecting hub for rail traffic between central/eastern Tokyo (the special wards) and Western Tokyo on the inter-city rail, commuter rail, and subway lines. The station straddles the boundary between the Shinjuku and Shibuya special wards. In Shinjuku, it is in the Nishi-Shinjuku and Shinjuku districts; in Shibuya, it is in the Yoyogi and Sendagaya districts.
The station was used by an average of 3.59 million people per day in 2018, making it the world's busiest railway station by far (and registered as such with Guinness World Records). The main East Japan Railway Company (JR East) station and the directly adjacent private railways have a total of 35 platforms, an underground arcade, above-ground arcade and numerous hallways with another 17 platforms (52 total) that can be accessed through hallways to five directly connected stations without surfacing outside. The entire above/underground complex has well over 200 exits.
Shinjuku Station opened in 1885 as a stop on Nippon Railway's Akabane-Shinagawa line (now part of the Yamanote Line). The kanji "æ°宿" shin juku literally stand for "new (relay-)station". Shinjuku was still a quiet community at the time and the station was not heavily trafficked at first. When the Kobu Railway (now a part of the Chà «à  Main Line) opened between Shinjuku and Tachikawa Station in 1889, farms were still present near the station. The Keià  Line connected to the station from the west in 1915. Around this period, the east side of the station, where the , a former Shukuba existed, was bustling with people. When the 1923 Great Kantà  earthquake happened, the area located in the east side of the station received relatively small damage compared to Nihonbashi. Since the station was a convenient place to travel, many stores relocated near the station after the earthquake. Odakyu Electric Railway opened the Odakyà « Odawara Line from Shinjuku to Odawara in 1927. As the platforms of the station were at the west side of the station, traffic in the west exit increased, although it did not compare to that of the east exit.
Japanese government urban planner Kensaburo Kondo designed a major revamp of the station in 1933, which included a large public square on the west side completed in 1941. Kondo's plan also called for extending the Tokyu Toyoko Line to a new underground terminal on the west side of the station and constructing an eastâÂÂwest underground line that would be served by the Seibu Railway and the Tokyo Kosoku Railway (forerunner of Tokyo Metro), while the Keio and Odakyu lines would use above-ground terminals to the west of the JR station. These plans were suspended upon the onset of World War II but influenced the current layout of the station area. During World War II, American bombings damaged the substation Keio used to power the railway line, resulting in reduced voltage. This prevented Keio services from using the bridges at the former Kà Âshà « Kaidà Â. The Keio Shinjuku Station's platforms were forced to relocate to the west side of the station as a result.
The Seibu Shinjuku Line was extended from Takadanobaba Station to Seibu Shinjuku Station in 1952. Seibu Shinjuku was built as a temporary station pending a planned redevelopment of the east side of Shinjuku Station, which was to feature a large station building that would house a new Seibu terminal on its second floor. Seibu abandoned its plan to use the building due to a lack of space for trains longer than six cars; the building is now known as Lumine Est and retains some design features originally intended to accommodate the Seibu terminal (in particular, a very high ceiling on the first floor and a very low ceiling on the second floor). In the late 1980s, Seibu planned to build an underground terminal on the east side of Shinjuku but indefinitely postponed the plan in 1995 due to costs and declining passenger growth.
On 8 August 1967, a freight train carrying jet fuel bound for the U.S. air bases at Tachikawa and Yokota collided with another freight train and caught fire on the Chà «à  Rapid tracks. The incident stoked ongoing political controversy in Japan regarding the Vietnam War. The station was a major site for student protests in 1968 and 1969, the height of civil unrest in postwar Japan. On 21 October 1968, 290,000 marchers participated in International Anti-War Day, taking over Shinjuku station and forcing trains to stop. In May and June 1969, members of the antiwar group Beheiren carrying guitars and calling themselves "folk guerrillas" led weekly singalongs in the underground plaza outside the west exit of the station, attracting crowds of thousands. Participants described it as a "liberated zone" and a "community of encounter." In July, riot police cleared the plaza with tear gas and changed signs in the station to read "West Exit Concourse" instead of "West Exit Plaza."
There have been plans at various points in history to connect Shinjuku to the Shinkansen network, and the 1973 Shinkansen Basic Plan, still in force, specifies that the station should be the southern terminus of the Jà Âetsu Shinkansen line to Niigata. While construction of the à Âmiya-Shinjuku link never started and the Jà Âetsu line presently terminates in Tokyo Station, the right of way, including an area underneath the station, remains reserved.
On 5 May 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult attempted a chemical terrorist attack by setting off a cyanide gas device in a toilet in the underground concourse, barely a month after the gas attack on the Tokyo subway (which had killed 13, left 6,252 people with non-fatal injuries, severely injured 50 people, and caused 984 cases of temporary vision problems). The attack was thwarted by staff who extinguished the burning device.
The station facilities on the Marunouchi Line were inherited by Tokyo Metro after the privatization of the Teito Rapid Transit Authority (TRTA) in 2004. Station numbering was introduced to the Odakyu terminal in 2014 with Shinjuku being assigned station number OH01. A major expansion of the JR terminal was completed in April 2016, adding a 32-story office tower, bus terminal, taxi terminal, and numerous shops and restaurants.
Station numbering was introduced to the JR East platforms in 2016 with Shinjuku being assigned station numbers JB10 for the Chà «à Â-Sobu line, JS20 for the Shonan-Shinjuku line, JA11 for the Saikyà  line, JC05 for the Chuo line rapid, and JY17 for the Yamanote line. At the same time, JR East assigned the station a 3-letter code to its major transfer stations; Shinjuku was assigned the code "SJK".
In 2020, the eastâÂÂwest free passageway was opened, shortening the time required for pedestrians to pass between the east and west exits by 10 minutes. A major redevelopment of the station and the surrounding area began in July 2021 with the aim of improving pedestrian flow and making it easier and faster to cut through the east and west sides of the station. Construction is expected to continue until 2047.
When the Keio Line extended to Shinjuku in 1915, its terminal was located several blocks east of the government railway (presently JR) station. The terminal was first named and was on the street near the Isetan department store. In 1927, the station was moved from the street to a newly built terminal adjacent to the original station. The station building housed a department store. The station name was changed to in 1930 and again to in 1937.
The tracks from the terminal were on the Kà Âshà « Kaidà  highway, which crosses the Yamanote Line and the Chà «à  Line in front of the south entrance of Shinjuku Station by a bridge. The Keià  Line had a station for access to Shinjuku Station, named and renamed in 1937 .
In July 1945, the terminal of the Keià  Line was relocated to the present location, though on the ground level, on the west side of Shinjuku Station. Keià  Shinjuku Station and Shà Âsen Shinjuku Ekimae Station were closed. This was because the trains faced difficulty in climbing up the slopes of the bridge over the governmental railway after one of the nearby transformer substations was destroyed by an air raid. The site of Keià  Shinjuku Station near Shinjuku-Sanchà Âme subway station is now occupied by two buildings owned by Keià Â: Keià  Shinjuku Sanchà Âme Building and Keià  Shinjuku Oiwake Building.
Shinjuku is served by the following railway systems:
The station is centered around facilities servicing the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) lines. These consist of eight ground-level island platforms (16 tracks) on a northâÂÂsouth axis, connected by two overhead and two underground concourses. Most JR services here are urban and suburban mass transit lines, although many limited express services to Kà Âfu and Matsumoto on the Chà «à  Main Line and to Nikkà  and Kinugawa Onsen via joint operations with the private Tà Âbu Railway also begin and end at this station, including Narita Express services to and from Narita International Airport. The JR section alone handles an average of 1.5 million passengers a day.
The terminus for the private Odakyu Odawara Line is parallel to the JR platforms on the west side and handles an average of 490,000 passengers daily. This is a major commuter route stretching southwest through the suburbs and out towards the coastal city of Odawara and the mountains of Hakone. The ten platforms are built on two levels beneath the Odakyu department store; three express service tracks (six platforms) on the ground level and two tracks (four platforms) on the level below. Each track has platforms on both sides in order to completely separate boarding and alighting passengers.
Chest-high platform screen doors were added to platforms 4 and 5 in September 2012.
Keio operates two sections of Shinjuku Station, the traditional Keio Line stub terminal and a separate through station connecting the Keio New Line with the Toei Shinjuku Line. In 2019, 788,567 passengers used the Keio complex daily (Keio and Keio New Lines), which makes it among the busiest among the non-JR Group railways of Japan.
The Keio Line concourse is located to the west of the Odakyu line concourse, two floors below ground level under the Keio department store. It consists of three platforms stretching north to south. An additional thin platform between Platforms 2 and 3 is used for alighting only. This suburban commuter line links Shinjuku to the city of Hachià Âji to the west. Chest-high platform edge doors were introduced on the Keio Line platforms in March 2014. The doors are different colours for each platform; the doors on Platform 2 are green.
The shared facilities for the Toei Shinjuku subway line and the Keià  New Line are distinctively called and consist of two platforms stretching eastâÂÂwest five floors beneath the Kà Âshà « Kaidà  avenue to the southwest of the JR section. The concourse is managed by Keio Corporation but is in a separate location from the main Keio platforms. Further south (and deeper underground) are the two north-to-south Toei à Âedo subway line platforms.
Toei à Âedo Line's two underground platforms stretch northâÂÂsouth to the south of the Toei Shinjuku Line and Keio New Line facilities. This is on the 7th basement floor of Tokyo prefectural road 414(Yotsuya-Tsunohazu Ave.).
Tokyo Metro's two Marunouchi Line underground platforms stretch eastâÂÂwest to the north of the JR and Odakyu facilities, directly below the Metro Promenade underground mall.
Many department stores and shopping malls are built directly into the station, some operated by the railroads. These include:
In addition to the above, the Metro Promenade, which is an underground mall owned by Tokyo Metro, extends eastwards from the station beneath Shinjuku-dori avenue, all the way to the adjacent Shinjuku-sanchà Âme station with 60 exits along the way. The Metro Promenade in turn connects to Shinjuku Subnade, another underground shopping mall, which leads onto Seibu Railway's Seibu-Shinjuku station.
Shinjuku Station is connected by underground passageways and shopping malls to
Nearby non-connected stations (within 500 meters of an underground passageway or station) include
There is a bus terminal at the west exit servicing both local and long-distance buses and a JR Highway Bus terminal at the New South Gates.
On April 4, 2016, the new bus terminal and commercial facilities nearby the south exit, named (Shinjuku Expressway Bus Terminal), opened for service. Considerable numbers of coaches and airport buses depart from this new terminal.
The figures below are the official number of passengers entering and exiting (except for JR East) each day released by each train operator. The figure for JR East only includes entering passengers.
Average number of passengers per day by fiscal year for the JR East station (1913âÂÂ1935)
Average number of passengers per day by fiscal year for the JR East station (1953âÂÂ2000)
Average number of passengers per day by fiscal year for the JR East station (2001âÂÂpresent)
The station and other parts of the Toei à Âedo Line are referenced in the Digimon Adventure franchise. Contemporary British painter Carl Randall (who spent ten years living in Tokyo as an artist) depicted the station area in his large oil painting Shinjuku, exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2013.
Shinjuku also served as the backdrop to the finale of the manga/anime Jujutsu Kaisen from Chapters 223-267, in the âÂÂInhuman Makyo Shinjuku ShowdownâÂÂ.