Ikebukuro Station (池袋駅) is run by East Japan Railway Company (JR East) and other companies, including Tokyo Metro, Seibu Railway and Tobu Railway. It serves the Fukutoshin Line, Marunouchi Line, Saikyō Line, Yamanote Line, Yūrakuchō Line, Shōnan–Shinjuku Line and TJ Tobu Tojo Line. It opened on 1 April 1903.
History
A signal station was set up on the Yamanote Line on 10 May 1902. On 1 April 1903 the Ikebukuro signal box opened as Ikebukuro Station, for passenger services only. The Yamanote Line branch between Ikebukuro and Tabata opened at the same time. Freight handling began on 23 October 1906. The station was nationalized under the Railway Nationalization Act on 1 November 1906. On 12 October 1909 it came under the Yamanote Line, when the line names were set.
On 1 May 1914 a station on the Tōjō Railway Line, now the Tōbu Tōjō Main Line, opened. On 15 April 1915 the station opened as a station on the Musashino Railway Line. In 1935 the Keihin Department Store Ikebukuro branch and the Kikuya Department Store opened. The Kikuya store became the Musashino Department Store in 1940. On 13 April 1945 an air raid burned down the station building. The fire also destroyed 151 electric trains, 13 passenger cars, 123 freight cars and 2 locomotives, which were stored at the nearby Ministry of Transport and Communications Ikebukuro railway district.
On 20 January 1954 a station on the Teito Rapid Transit Authority Marunouchi Line opened. It first used a temporary platform where the crossover tracks are now. On 6 November 1960 the current Marunouchi Line platform opened, which extended the operating distance by 0.2 km. On 29 May 1962 Tobu Department Store opened above the station. On 1 November 1963 platform 7 was extended 34 m to the north, when the first 10-car train on a private railway began running. In 1969 limited express services began, and freight exchange with Japanese National Railways started. On 30 October 1974 a station on the Teito Rapid Transit Authority Yūrakuchō Line opened. Some station facilities were not finished, so at first the station operated on a temporary platform half the length of the full platform. In 1976 freight exchange with Japanese National Railways ended, because the connecting line between Nii-Akitsu and Tokorozawa on the Japanese National Railways Musashino Line opened.
On 30 September 1985 the Saikyō Line began operating. On 1 April 1987 Japanese National Railways was split up, and the station became a JR East station on the Yamanote Line. On 13 March 1988 a platform was added, when some Tōhoku Line and Takasaki Line trains began stopping here. On 19 March 1991 the Narita Express began running. On 7 December 1994 a station on the Teito Rapid Transit Authority Yūrakuchō Line new line opened, at first called Shin-sen Ikebukuro. On 18 November 2001 Suica became usable here. On 1 December 2001 the Shōnan–Shinjuku Line began running. On 6 June 2004 the platforms for the Saikyō Line and Shōnan–Shinjuku Line were rearranged so that trains were separated by direction. On 14 June 2008 the Fukutoshin Line opened, and Shin-sen Ikebukuro was renamed Ikebukuro. On the same day the reserved-seat TJ Liner began running, and platform 5 started being used for it.
On 26 March 2009 Echika Ikebukuro opened, and on 27 November 2009 Esola Ikebukuro opened. On 25 March 2019 the Seibu Holdings headquarters building and Dia Gate Ikebukuro were completed on the railway tracks on the south side of the station. On 11 September 2019 the booth-type STATION BOOTH office, part of the STATION WORK shared-office service, opened inside the Metropolitan ticket gates. On 12 March 2021 the Narita Express stopped running into the station, and the Odoriko service ran here only on weekends and holidays. On 25 April 2023 the platforms for tracks 1 and 2 were redesigned in a British style, referring to King's Cross Station, to match the planned opening of Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo on the former Toshimaen site. On 1 March 2024 the departure melody for the Yamanote Line platform was changed to the theme song of Bic Camera, whose main store is at the east exit. On 14 November 2025 the sub-name In front of Bic Camera was added to the Yamanote Line platform signs. On 18 March 2026 smart home doors began to be used on tracks 5 and 8. On 15 July 2026 the north ticket gate introduced a face-recognition walk-through gate, the first in Tokyo.
See all 91 dated events in the Data view →
Written by an AI from this station's own sourced facts (the dated events in the Data view), nothing else, and checked by a program for dates and numbers that are not in those facts. It can still be wrong. Found a mistake? . Adapted from Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0; this text is shared under the same licence.