history forest

Today is the 90th anniversary of the opening of the Giza Line on the Tokyo Metro. Noritsugu Hayakawa, a Japanese businessman, saw the London Underground in the early 1900s and decided that such an underground railroad was needed in Tokyo. Construction was begun in 1925 and completed in 1927. It became the first fully operating underground railway in the Orient.

Supposedly the demand to ride the subway was so great that the line for the 5-minute train trip sometimes exceed 2 hours!

The stations are not very deep compared to today’s more modern underground trains, they are about 1 story deep underground. The line is still in use today as part of the Tokyo Metro.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 9:36 pm and is filed under history of the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.