JR East Headquarters Building

Completed in September 1997 with 28 stories and a height of approximately 150 m, the JR East Headquarters Building stands adjacent to Shinjuku Station's south exit in Yoyogi, Shibuya — a deliberate choice by the privatized railway to anchor its new identity to its busiest hub.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shibuya City

Completed

1997

Floors

28 above ground, 4 below

Height

150 m

Developer

East Japan Railway Company

Architect

Nikken Sekkei / JR East Architectural Design Office

A Railway Company at the Door of Its Busiest Station

Exit Shinjuku Station from the south side and cross Koshu Kaido: the Southern Terrace pedestrian deck stretches before you, and at its far end stands a 28-story office tower whose address is Yoyogi 2-chome, Shibuya City. This is the JR East Headquarters Building, completed in September 1997. Tall at 150 meters but relatively understated in form, it was designed by a joint venture between Nikken Sekkei and the JR East Architectural Design Office.

The building was constructed about ten years after the dissolution of Japanese National Railways (JNR) and the privatization of the rail network in 1987. For East Japan Railway Company — the largest of the six regional JR companies by revenue — the new headquarters represented both a practical consolidation and a symbolic statement: a privately managed corporation, no longer subordinate to the state, establishing its own address.

The Logic of a Location

The old JNR headquarters had been located in Marunouchi, close to the government district in central Tokyo. When JR East chose to place its new headquarters next to Shinjuku Station, the reasoning was operational as much as symbolic. Shinjuku is where the Yamanote Line, the Chuo Line, the Shonan-Shinjuku Line, and several private railways converge — a hub that carries more daily passengers than any other station in the world. A railway company headquartered beside its most important node reflects the way a post-privatization JR thought about itself: not as a government agency in a ministry district, but as a transport enterprise measured by its busiest interchange.

The Southern Terrace, which connects the headquarters building to the station, opened at roughly the same time and became a well-used pedestrian space linking the station concourse to the commercial buildings on the south side.

Summary

The JR East Headquarters Building was completed in 1997 with 28 above-ground floors and a height of approximately 150 meters. It stands as the operational and symbolic centre of East Japan Railway Company — a company born from the privatization of JNR a decade earlier — positioned deliberately at the southern edge of its busiest station.

Walk the Southern Terrace from the south exit of Shinjuku Station and look up: the understated tower beside you has housed the decisions that shape train travel across the Kanto region for almost thirty years.

Related: JR Shinjuku Miraina Tower / Shibuya Scramble Square / Shibuya Hikarie

Exploring around Shibuya and Shinjuku? Rakuten Travel has a wide range of nearby hotels.