The Tōkaidō Line (東海道本線) is a main line run by JR companies. It links Tokyo Station in Chiyoda, Tokyo, with Kobe Station in Chuo, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, and three passenger companies share its operation: East Japan Railway Company (JR East) from Tokyo to Atami, Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) from Atami to Maibara, and West Japan Railway Company (JR West) from Maibara to Kobe.
History
The government first planned a railway between Tokyo and Osaka in the early Meiji period. Two routes were possible, one by the Tokaido and one by the Nakasendo, and no route had been chosen. So the government first opened the Tokyo to Yokohama section as a branch line, where many people and goods moved. On 12 June 1872 a temporary service opened between Shinagawa and Yokohama. On 14 October 1872 the Shimbashi to Yokohama section opened for regular service, and Japanese Wikipedia calls it Japan's first railway. Freight trains began on 15 September 1873.
In the Kansai area, a temporary service opened between Osaka and Kobe in 1874. Regular service between Kyoto and Kobe began on 5 February 1877. In August 1883 the government decided to build the Tokyo to Osaka line by the Nakasendo. In July 1886 it changed the plan to the Tokaido route, because the Nakasendo route was expected to be hard to build and the Tokaido route would shorten construction. Work then sped up. On 1 July 1889 the whole route from Shimbashi to Kobe was open, a distance of 600.2 km. A through train made the trip in a little over 20 hours.
On 1 April 1895 the line was named the Tokaido Line (東海道線). In October 1895, trains began running through from Kobe onto the Sanyo Railway line, now the Sanyo Line. Express service between Shimbashi and Kobe began in 1896, with the trip taking 17 hours 22 minutes. Sleeping cars were added in 1900 and dining cars in 1901. By 1909 the trip took 12 hours 50 minutes. On 12 October 1909 the state railway line names were set, and this line became the Tokaido Main Line (東海道本線). In 1912 the fastest train became a special express (tokkyu) from Shimbashi to Shimonoseki on the Sanyo Line.
On 20 December 1914 Tokyo Station opened and became the start of the line. Electric trains began the same day between Tokyo and Takashima stations, now part of the Keihin-Tohoku Line. In 1921 the Osakayama section between Otsu and Kyoto was rebuilt with new tunnels, and the Tokyo to Kobe express trip then took 11 hours 45 minutes. The Izu-Hakone section also got a new route. The Kozu to Atami section opened as the Atami Line by 1925, but the Atami to Numazu section was delayed by the difficult work on the Tanna Tunnel. Electrification began on the Tokyo side and reached Atami by 1928, and electric locomotives replaced steam locomotives. In 1929 the named express trains Fuji and Sakura appeared, and in 1930 the super express Tsubame followed. The Tanna Tunnel opened in 1934, completing the present Kozu to Numazu route. The old route became the Gotemba Line. The electrified section then reached Numazu, and the Tsubame took 8 hours 37 minutes from Tokyo to Kobe. In the same year, electric local and express trains began in the Kansai area.
During the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, freight trains were added and made longer. In 1944 the timetable change of 1 April cut express trains entirely, and sleeping and dining cars were taken off. In 1945 Allied air raids and machine-gun strafing damaged stations, tracks and trains. After Japan's defeat in 1945, power and coal were in short supply and timetables were badly disrupted. At one point no express trains and no first- or second-class cars ran at all. Express trains returned in 1948. In 1949 Japanese National Railways (JNR) was formed as a public corporation, and the first postwar express, Heiwa, began running. It was later renamed Tsubame. Electrification began moving west again from Numazu. In 1950 the express Hato appeared, and travel times were back to prewar levels. On the Tokyo side, ordinary trains were converted to electric trains known as the Shonan trains.
In 1956 the whole line was electrified. Express trains Tsubame and Hato then ran from Tokyo to Osaka in 7 hours 30 minutes. In 1958 blue sleeper trains began running, with 20-series sleeping cars. The first electric limited express, Kodama, also began in 1958, using 151-series trains. It took 6 hours 50 minutes from Tokyo to Osaka and 7 hours 20 minutes to Kobe. In 1960 Tsubame and Hato also became electric trains. Economic growth and the decision to hold the 1964 Tokyo Olympics led to plans to add capacity. Construction of a separate standard-gauge line began in 1959, and it became the Tokaido Shinkansen. On 1 October 1964 the Tokaido Shinkansen opened from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. The fastest train, Hikari, took 4 hours at first and 3 hours 10 minutes from the next year. The main role in travel between Tokyo and the Keihanshin area (Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe) moved to the Shinkansen. Many daytime express trains on the conventional line were cut, and the line shifted toward local service.
In the 1970s the Keihanshin area added Shinkaisoku rapid trains to compete with parallel lines run by other companies. In 1980 the Shonan and Yokosuka line tracks were separated. On 1 April 1987 Japanese National Railways was split into regional passenger companies and one freight company. The Tokaido Line went to JR East, JR Central and JR West, and freight went to Japan Freight Railway Company (JR Freight). Each company then changed service for its own area. In 1997 Keihanshin local trains began running through to the JR Tozai Line and the Takarazuka Line. The Shonan-Shinjuku Line began on 1 December 2001. On 14 March 2015 the Ueno-Tokyo Line began, so trains ran through Tokyo Station to the Tohoku, Takasaki and Joban lines. In 2023 West Japan opened an underground platform at Osaka Station on 18 March. On 5 August 2023 an overhead wire caught on the front of a train between Ofuna and Fujisawa, and a pole pulled down by the wire damaged the front car. A power cut followed, and nine people from that train and the one behind were taken to hospital. Service resumed the next morning. By 2025 all sections of the line, including the Mino-Akasaka branch, used IC cards and had station numbering. Platform screen doors are being added at stations in big city areas. The last Blue Train from Tokyo ended in 2009. The Ogaki night train, which had become the reserved-seat Moonlight Nagara in 1996, ended in spring 2020. Only the Sunrise Seto and Izumo train remains as a regular JR night train. On 1 July 2026 JR East moved from a branch-office system to business headquarters, and its part of the line is now split between several of them.
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Written by an AI from the line's history on Japanese Wikipedia, nothing else, and checked by a program for dates and numbers that are not in those facts. It can still be wrong. Adapted from Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0; this text is shared under the same licence.