上野停車場

About this photo

This photograph shows Ueno Station in Taito Ward, Tokyo. It appears in Nihon Shashincho (Photo Album of Japan), published in 1912 (Meiji 45). Judging from the book's date, it is thought to be the brick station building built in 1885.

The building had a one-story central section holding the ticket office and a hall, with waiting rooms on either side, so from above it was shaped like the letter H. At the end of the Meiji era, Ueno Station bustled with people arriving by train from the Tohoku region. Ueno is also said to be the station in a tanka by Ishikawa Takuboku, who came to Tokyo from Iwate. It appears in his 1910 collection Ichiaku no Suna (A Handful of Sand): "Furusato no / namari natsukashi / teishaba no / hitogomi no naka ni / so o kiki ni yuku" (Missing the accent of my home, I go to hear it in the crowds at the station).

The brick station burned in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the present station building was completed in 1932. In 1985, to mark the arrival of the Tohoku Shinkansen at Ueno, a monument carved with this poem by Takuboku was placed inside the station.

Glossary