Shimbashi-Kasumori Station

(Above:) The Shinbashi Station Tokyo. The second Shimbashi Station, ca. 1920, located just west of the old Shiodome terminal. Visitors alighting here were at the literal gateway to Ginza from across Shimbashi Bridge. Until its destruction in 1923, Tokaido express service to Tokyo, and local stops, terminated here.

By 1910, the Japanese national government had assumed control of many private railways throughout the country, and most lines serving the capital city. (A few years before, the Tokyo city government bought controlling rights over the city's three privately-owned streetcar lines.)

Plans to complete the Akabane/Yamanote loop began after the mergers; design work was also begun on a new central rail terminal to be located in the Marunouchi district. Track near Shimbashi/Shiodome was rerouted north through Yurakucho, and the original station at Shiodome, completed in 1872, was turned into a freight office.

A new, more grand-looking station, Shimbashi Karasumori [Crow forest], constructed in a post-Victorian style of quarried stone and red brick, was completed in 1914 to the west of the old Shiodome terminal. It was at this terminal that the Tokaido [] express train from Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto terminated.

As solid and as sturdy as it looked, this new Shimbashi station was completely destroyed in the 1923 Kanto earthquake. By that time, its importance as a terminal had diminished following the opening of Tokyo Central Station in 1914. When a new Shimbashi station was built after the earthquake, it looked much as it does today -- just another commuter stop on the Yamamote-sen.