Ginza Line — Tokyo subway
Asia’s first subway, opened in 1927: nineteen shallow stations and orange trains between Shibuya and Asakusa.
The Ginza Line at a glance
The Ginza Line runs 14.3 km across the wards of Shibuya, Minato, Chuo, Chiyoda and Taito, and it is the oldest subway line in Asia. It is named after the Ginza district it passes under, coded orange, and numbered with the letter G.
It is also one of only two self-contained lines on the Tokyo subway: no Ginza Line train leaves the subway for another company’s tracks, and nothing from another company comes in. That independence shows in the engineering. Along with the Marunouchi Line it uses 1,435 mm standard gauge and a third rail, where every line built afterwards chose narrow gauge and overhead wire so that through services would be possible. Being the oldest, it is also the shallowest: most of its platforms are barely a storey and a half below the street.
Every station on the Ginza Line
19 stations in order with their station numbers. A ringed dot marks a station where you can transfer; the small coloured dots are the other lines there.
Service hours on the Ginza Line
| Timetable | First – last departure on the line |
|---|---|
| Weekdays | 05:01 – 00:28 |
| Saturdays, Sundays & holidays | 05:01 – 00:28 |
Departure times come from the operators’ own GTFS timetables (ODPT GTFS Toei-Train-GTFS (version 20261009, valid 2026-03-14..2027-03-12) + TokyoMetro-Train-GTFS (version 20261008, valid 2026-09-19..2027-03-12)). Japan publishes two subway timetables: 平日 weekdays and 土休日 Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays. There is no separate Sunday timetable, and the December 30 – January 3 period runs the holiday timetable. Each station page gives its own first and last train by direction.
How often trains run
| Timetable | Morning peak (08:00) | Midday (12:00) | Evening (21:00) | Measured at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekdays | 2.2 min | 3 min | 4.2 min | Kyobashi |
| Saturdays, Sundays & holidays | 4.1 min | 3 min | 4.3 min | Kyobashi |
Average gap between trains in one direction at the busiest station of the line.
Where you can transfer
| Station | Other lines | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| G01 Shibuya | ZHanzomon FFukutoshin | Tokyo Metro |
| G02 Omote-sando | CChiyoda ZHanzomon | Tokyo Metro |
| G04 Aoyama-itchome | ZHanzomon EOedo | Toei Subway Tokyo Metro |
| G05 Akasaka-mitsuke | MMarunouchi | Tokyo Metro |
| G06 Tameike-sanno | NNamboku | Tokyo Metro |
| G08 Shimbashi | AAsakusa | Toei Subway |
| G09 Ginza | MMarunouchi HHibiya | Tokyo Metro |
| G11 Nihombashi | TTozai AAsakusa | Toei Subway Tokyo Metro |
| G12 Mitsukoshimae | ZHanzomon | Tokyo Metro |
| G16 Ueno | HHibiya | Tokyo Metro |
| G19 Asakusa | AAsakusa | Toei Subway |
A transfer to a line of the other company is a change of railway as well as of platform: your fare is the sum of the two, less the connecting discount. See fares.
Transfers on foot to a differently named station
| From | To | Lines there | On foot (estimated) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Akasaka-mitsuke | Nagatacho | Yurakucho Line, Hanzomon Line, and Namboku Line | about 4 min |
| Tameike-sanno | Kokkai-gijidomae | Marunouchi Line and Chiyoda Line | about 3 min |
| Toranomon | Toranomon-hills | Hibiya Line | about 6 min |
| Ginza | Ginza-itchome | Yurakucho Line | about 5 min |
| Ueno-hirokoji | Naka-okachimachi | Hibiya Line | about 5 min |
| Ueno-hirokoji | Ueno-okachimachi | Oedo Line | about 2 min |
These are official transfers recorded by the operators between stations with different names. The walking time is our estimate from the distance between the platforms — no operator publishes transfer walking times.
History
The line was the idea of Noritsugu Hayakawa, who saw the London Underground on a visit in 1914 and decided Tokyo needed one of its own. In 1920 he founded the Tokyo Underground Railway with Baron Furuichi Koi, and construction began on 27 September 1925. The plan had been to open from Shimbashi to Asakusa in one go, but the recession that followed the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake made the money impossible to raise, and only the stretch from Ueno to Asakusa was finished, on 30 December 1927. It was so popular that passengers queued more than two hours for a five-minute ride.
On 1 January 1930 the tunnel was pushed 1.7 km to a temporary station at Manseibashi, abandoned on 21 November 1931 when the line reached Kanda. The Great Depression slowed everything down, and Shimbashi, the original goal, was not reached until 21 June 1934. From the other end the Tokyo Rapid Railway opened between Shibuya and Toranomon in 1938 and reached Shimbashi in 1939; the two companies began running through that year and were merged into the Teito Rapid Transit Authority in July 1941. The name Ginza Line dates from 1953, when it had to be told apart from the new Marunouchi Line, and the newest station, Tameike-sanno, was inserted in 1997.
Trains and service
Japan publishes two subway timetables and the Ginza Line follows both: 平日 weekdays, and 土休日 for Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays. On either, the first trains leave at about 05:01 and the last at about 00:28; there is no night service. Measured at Kyobashi, weekday trains come roughly every two to three minutes in the morning peak, every three minutes at midday and every four in the evening; on the Saturday and holiday timetable the morning gap stretches to about four minutes while the midday service stays much the same. Nearly every train runs the whole length of the line, although two early-morning services start at Toranomon and several late-night trains from Shibuya finish at Ueno.
Rolling stock
Since April 2012 the line has been worked by a fleet of forty six-car Tokyo Metro 1000 series trains with a maximum speed of 80 km/h. The cars are small by Tokyo standards, 16 m long and 2.55 m wide with three doors a side, because the tunnels are narrow and old, and they draw 600 V DC from a third rail. Trains are stabled at Shibuya depot and at the Ueno inspection division, which holds up to twenty sets; heavy overhauls go to Nakano on the Marunouchi Line over a connecting track at Akasaka-mitsuke. The 01 series that preceded them left service on 10 March 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Because it was dug first, in the 1920s, when tunnelling deep was expensive and nothing else was in the way. Most of its stations sit no more than a storey and a half below the surface. The western end is the exception in the other direction: the line enters Shibuya on the third floor of a building, because the ground there falls away into a hollow.
No. Along with the Marunouchi Line it is self-enclosed. Its standard-gauge track and third-rail power supply are incompatible with the narrow-gauge, overhead-wire lines built later, so every train you see on the platform has come from somewhere else on the Ginza Line and is going somewhere else on the Ginza Line.
Tameike-sanno, which opened on 30 September 1997, seventy years after the first section. It was inserted into an existing stretch of tunnel purely so that passengers could change to the newly built Namboku Line.