I was just in Japan a few months ago. It was my fourth visit, but the first for my partner, who found the different departure melodies notable and a really nice, cute, joyful thing. We made a point to listen to them whenever we were taking a train somewhere (which was of course very often, multiple times per day). In a way it feels like a funny thing to have near top-of-mind when it comes to memories of a trip that was packed with so many fun activities.
Noticed the Okachimachi and Uguisudani (and several other) melodies are the same... is that correct, or is that a mistake on the site? I imagine it's hard to have a unique melody for every single station, so I expect there are some repeats throughout the transit system, but those two stations are so close together, it's a surprise that they'd be the same.
Going off [0] where Okachimachi, Uguisudani, Nippori, Nishi-Nippori, Tabata, Sugamo, Otsuka, Mejiro, and Yoyogi are covered by the same lesson, I guess they must be?
There are multiple independent wiki sites on Japanese WWW documenting these things including historical changes and standard protocols as observed, for obvious reasons, in case anyone needs some data...
A couple of months ago, riding the subway through Ginza Station for the first time in a while, I noticed that the door-closing melody was from the 1949 song Ginza Kankan Musume [1, 2]. I’m normally not very familiar with Japanese pop music, but I happen to have the song on a playlist I listen to together with my five-year-old grandson. It brought a smile to my face, as it’s a cheerful, very slightly risqué song from the early postwar period, when Japanese popular culture was enjoying renewed freedom. It was fun to hear it in a subway station in 2025.
This probably has a philosophical underpinning in Animism, almost everything is anthropomorphized and given a "soul", personality. This has the affect of humanizing the most utilitarian parts of day-to-day life, commuting, a tax office, etc.
All across the western world in the post war period it was common to put faces and personalities to inanimate objects in order to sell things in advertisements.
The reduction of similar behavior in Japan to things like animism fails to capture the texture of why these things happen, and how they are reproduced in other places, and how ultimately societies across the world act similarly, but for timing issues.
People don’t talk about the Dutch being obsessed with serious work ethic and cleanliness due to protestantism and thus generating De Stijl.
I do legit wonder what the history of anthropomorphism on inanimate objects looks like though. Who was the first person to draw a toothpaste tube that smiled and talked?
I think it's more to do with the fact that the official ethos is all about staunch sacrifice in the face of continuous suffering and inflexible rules. People end up trying to get some relief any way they can, looking for a bit of joy in every corner of society where they won't feel judged harshly.
As the rare Japanese on here who speaks English, the amount of theory-crafting from English-speakers about how and why Japanese do this or that is borderline hilarious. Just shows how different our cultures are. Most people don't realize that the way they view the world is through their own ethnocentric lens.
This is prevalent even among foreigners in Japan, who think they understand the Japanese better than the Japanese do, despite living here for 20 years and barely being able to hold a conversation in Japanese for 2 minutes.
And your first comment is shitting on those trying to understand instead of applying your own analysis? Sorry for showing an interest I guess. Hopefully the irony of you own analysis of "English-speakers" isn't lost on you.
I made field recordings during my last stay in Tokyo. From those, I made a song for each station of the Yamanote line, using the Jingle in the prompt. The visuals were made similarly.
Thia give me PTSD flashback. My first job out of high school was bic camera. Those melodies are fun at station because they only play it when train is coming, but full blasting it 24/7 (including rest room) makes your brain go numb.
I go in to a trance state of corporate drone mode with a 営業スマイル(sales smile) and bendy-hip when I hear that tune
In my mind, Yamada Denki is the absolute worst. I bought a washing machine there in 2004 and, almost entirely due to the song, have been back maybe once since then. I remember at the time telling my wife I couldn't imagine what working there would do to a person.
Seibu had nothing to do with it. BicCamera started in Ikebukuro and was influential in building up the area. The jingle change is a campaign as BicCamera is doing a cooperation with the ward to build it out more. See [1]
Ah, my mistake — Bic Camera didn’t acquire Seibu’s site.
Seibu Ikebukuro was actually sold to Fortress, and then the property was transferred to Yodobashi Holdings, which is now planning the redevelopment. Bic Camera started in Ikebukuro, so it’s influential locally, but it wasn’t part of the acquisition.
Why can't train operators in other countries take inspiration from things like this?
It takes very little effort to implement. You could hold melody competitions for local communities. It is a nice thing which sparks joy and it's also something that people would want to travel and experience. You could hold a competition with local schools every year to develop a little 5 second melody.
I just think of this from a UK point-of-view. It's like we completely forget what makes life interesting and everything has to be boring and mundane.
Nit: if you scroll down a lot, the stations at the top disappear (and get appended at the bottom, which makes sense – it’s a circular line after all!), but the space remains, so when you scroll back there’s a ton of empty space. Maybe remove that empty space after the scrolling has stopped? (Would be nice if you could scroll backwards, too!)
Naturally, it’s not as clean and sleek, but incorporating some elements of it might make this site look more authentic. Maybe something like this? https://files.catbox.moe/8cpp76.png
Not to create a boring back-and-forth but the page loads perfectly fine for me on safari (both mobile and macOS) and looks exactly the same as it does in Chrome.
Unfortunately JR East has phasing out the custom melodies and have been standardizing the Yamanote line to always play the same tune. They are saying labor shortages are the reason since they need to press a physical button in the station in order to play the melody.
My impression is that all of the Yamanote line stations are above ground -- I'd have expected it to be possible to have "one button plays the right sound at each station" if you used a standard phone's GPS to figure out which station you were at.
Commuter trains always knows where they are by various means. Braking distances for trains is airplane scaled, and so knowing where they are programmatically with accuracy on both trains and at central control stations is important for safety.
That's not actually true. True, with computerised technology it might be more convenient to implement it that way and it also allows some additional optimisations and bonus features, but it's not an absolute requirement.
At a minimum that's acceptable enough even by modern-ish safety standards, the signalling system only needs to know which sections of track are occupied and which are free, and it only needs to know that at the granularity of individual block sections between subsequent signals. It also doesn't necessarily need to know about the identity of the train, even though in practice you'll want to track that, too, for the convenience of the signallers.
The train in turn doesn't need to know where exactly it is – in terms of safety, it's enough knowing the local speed limit and the state of any upcoming signals, but for that, it doesn't need to know where it is in relation to the outside world. The classic implementation is simply fixed trackside infrastructure telling the onboard safety systems all they need to know.
Historically, any demands for knowing where the train is exactly in relation to the outside world were rather driven by automated passenger information systems and the like rather than the safety-critical parts of the signalling system.
Not only you don't need a GNSS to determine a fixed in place railroad station but actually you don't want to use a GNSS to do that.
A simple radio beacon working on ~400MHz is more than enough to solve this difficult technical obstacle.
Of course, this is totally ignoring what the trains do already know where they are because they need to display the current/next stations on the passenger information displays.
These songs were composed by whoever available at equipment manufacturers, and copyright statuses were a bit of a mess. Now that the songs had become no small part of their branding and JRE would want to use them as they please, they're vertically integrating the process.
I think it's pretty obvious that the goal is to get rid of the conductor position entirely. 50% less employees per train. Someone who sits at a desk all day definitely gets promoted for that one.
Huh? What does that even mean? The train already announces the train station name, so why does it need a specific button for the specific jingle? Does not sound right.
Its not an automated operation, the train jingles play a few seconds before the conductor closes the door. Its played at different times depending on congestion on the train platform.
Right, but the train knows where it is. The screen shows it. Why is the jingle not connected to the same system as the train's screens? Everything is on the screen, even the doors closing animation. No excuse, really.
Lived in Asagaya for a year .. this sure brought back memories. I'd often walk to Koenji for the nightlife .. what a wonderful neighborhood. I remember the beautiful moments in summer when the school jingle played out over the region - that was another example of Japanese appreciation for aesthetics that I've carried with me all my life.
Sad to see the recent development of Asagaya, though. Some classic old Japanese dwellings, now gone ..
To be fair, most homes are replaced everywhere in Japan, since houses themselves are depreciating assets with all the earthquakes and everything. It is how things go here.
The first time I got off at and heard Komagome's tune I mistakenly thought it was some halloween special because it was late October at the time, and the song felt so distinct and unique.
Yes I was living in Tokyo in 2003 at the day when, according to the original comic, Atom was created. That's when they started to use this melody at Takadanobaba.
Interestingly this one seems it is from before 高輪ゲートウェイ (Takanawa Gateway) station which opened in 2020, but the numbering shows the gap (JY 25 -> JY 27). That led me to looking it up, and turns out that they introduced the numbering in 2016, and that already came pre-planned with the gap ready [1].
In the street where I grew up they had to renumber most of the houses one year because a row of new buildings were built, so everyone that was further down the street than the new houses had to have their numbers increased so that the new houses could be given numbers that were in order with where along the street they were built.
I wonder if that sort of renumbering is common or not, and if Japan is better at planning that sort of thing also.
I was too young at the time to know if this lead to any mail delivery issues, and I imagine the postal delivery service was made aware of the change. But I would think that even if they were notified it would sometimes be the case that if your house used to be say number 53 and now it’s 73 that mail that was intended for you ends up in the mail box of the house that used to be 33 and is now 53.
Even if not at first then at least like 3 years later when some random company still has your old address on file and most other mail for everyone in the street is usually addressed to updated numbers.
Good question. The composer and artist of most of them in Japan is Minoru Mukaiya.[1] He's also the CEO of Ongakukan, which builds train simulators for both games and training.
He's done over a hundred original station jingles.[2] Many of the Yamanote Line jingles are classics, though.
I know "fair use" gets bandied about quite frequently on youtube uploads, but offering full verbatim downloads of any work is highly unlikely to be considered fair use if a court were to rule on it. The only reason such sites are still up is that the rights holders don't care enough to sue.
We need adverse possession ("squatter's rights") for intellectual property.
I'm surprised copyright trolls are not buying IP from defunct game/film/music companies and suing youtubers left and right for uploading video game music and anime OSTs.
If I were a sociopath and didn't care how I make my money, I draft some legit-looking legal threat letter template demanding $10,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit worth millions, fill in the blanks with a name, IP address, and title of pirated content, then mail out the letters by the tens of thousands using USPS-subsidized cheap mail.
If you mail out about 20k of these threats, you only need 3 of them to pay up to come out on top.
Noticed the Okachimachi and Uguisudani (and several other) melodies are the same... is that correct, or is that a mistake on the site? I imagine it's hard to have a unique melody for every single station, so I expect there are some repeats throughout the transit system, but those two stations are so close together, it's a surprise that they'd be the same.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNs2Ka0C_w4
https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html
https://wikiwiki.jp/sta_melodys/%E5%B1%B1%E6%89%8B%E7%B7%9A
https://atosmatome.wiki.fc2.com/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%A...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYpdBcso3A
[2] https://g.co/gemini/share/d584c36b99ab
The reduction of similar behavior in Japan to things like animism fails to capture the texture of why these things happen, and how they are reproduced in other places, and how ultimately societies across the world act similarly, but for timing issues.
People don’t talk about the Dutch being obsessed with serious work ethic and cleanliness due to protestantism and thus generating De Stijl.
I do legit wonder what the history of anthropomorphism on inanimate objects looks like though. Who was the first person to draw a toothpaste tube that smiled and talked?
Japan just gets a lot of attention as 1. The earliest Asian developed economy and 2. The earlier bubble-era panic over Japanese economic dominance
I made a psychedelic AI audio-visual collage inspired by it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwUSzUvShqcaa
I made field recordings during my last stay in Tokyo. From those, I made a song for each station of the Yamanote line, using the Jingle in the prompt. The visuals were made similarly.
Used mainly Suno, Udio, Runway and Ableton Live.
By the way, Ikebukuro’s melody isn’t this one anymore. Bic Camera, an electronics retailer, acquired Seibu, and now their song is played instead. https://youtu.be/9Emi-ZAnnlc?si=G8iazo945capvT5T&t=221
It’s fun, isn’t it?
I go in to a trance state of corporate drone mode with a 営業スマイル(sales smile) and bendy-hip when I hear that tune
When I worked at a gym, they played the same 10 or so songs all day every day. My heartrate rises when I hear them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3aR-DnEcM8
[1] https://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1573062.html
Sources:
Wikipedia – Sogo & Seibu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogo_%26_Seibu SBbit – Seibu Ikebukuro redevelopment: https://www.sbbit.jp/article/cont1/144891
It takes very little effort to implement. You could hold melody competitions for local communities. It is a nice thing which sparks joy and it's also something that people would want to travel and experience. You could hold a competition with local schools every year to develop a little 5 second melody.
I just think of this from a UK point-of-view. It's like we completely forget what makes life interesting and everything has to be boring and mundane.
And just to throw in a wild idea, it might be nice if the UI was a variation of the in-train display interface: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Series-E131-500_Insi...
Naturally, it’s not as clean and sleek, but incorporating some elements of it might make this site look more authentic. Maybe something like this? https://files.catbox.moe/8cpp76.png
It stood very much in contrast with all the other jingles, and I simply loved it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0
There are possibly-recognizable tunes throughout the system. Vivaldi's Spring comes to mind. I think at Ooimachi.
I haven't done any website design since the early 2010s, what would a webdev even pull from the modern frameworks to achieve what this site is doing?
https://kaisercougarconnection.com/2784/news/musical-trains-...
My impression is that all of the Yamanote line stations are above ground -- I'd have expected it to be possible to have "one button plays the right sound at each station" if you used a standard phone's GPS to figure out which station you were at.
At a minimum that's acceptable enough even by modern-ish safety standards, the signalling system only needs to know which sections of track are occupied and which are free, and it only needs to know that at the granularity of individual block sections between subsequent signals. It also doesn't necessarily need to know about the identity of the train, even though in practice you'll want to track that, too, for the convenience of the signallers.
The train in turn doesn't need to know where exactly it is – in terms of safety, it's enough knowing the local speed limit and the state of any upcoming signals, but for that, it doesn't need to know where it is in relation to the outside world. The classic implementation is simply fixed trackside infrastructure telling the onboard safety systems all they need to know.
Historically, any demands for knowing where the train is exactly in relation to the outside world were rather driven by automated passenger information systems and the like rather than the safety-critical parts of the signalling system.
Kids these days...
Not only you don't need a GNSS to determine a fixed in place railroad station but actually you don't want to use a GNSS to do that.
A simple radio beacon working on ~400MHz is more than enough to solve this difficult technical obstacle.
Of course, this is totally ignoring what the trains do already know where they are because they need to display the current/next stations on the passenger information displays.
https://github.com/tramlinehq/ueno – it's downloadable from both app stores.
https://youtu.be/wpw1MWH0AZI?si=ELfOL6QdgYCxHRyU
https://youtu.be/4qFHVCMUrto?si=daYuWZWK_aQizbha
Sad to see the recent development of Asagaya, though. Some classic old Japanese dwellings, now gone ..
ドアに注意下さい
Then you move somewhere else in the world and one day you hear the same tune you used to hear twice a day.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0
https://youtu.be/yFLYuKUKXoY
The station is named after a beer company that operates there, and they used their beer CM song for the station chime as well.
https://youtu.be/4V6Q5l2S7Co?si=k1M5F6WD3y05wIN2
He also has done live reproductions of SNES music which are well worth a view
https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/blob/main/lines/k...
and here:
https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/tree/main/audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nkEfZKMEnw
- https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html
- https://www.te2do.jp/contents/category-n3/?attr=1&cid1=1&cid...
I honestly need to pop up there to some Rust meetups. I always wind up discounting Tokyo, but I've met some smart people at the wrong times.
[1] https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2016/20160402.pdf
I wonder if that sort of renumbering is common or not, and if Japan is better at planning that sort of thing also.
I was too young at the time to know if this lead to any mail delivery issues, and I imagine the postal delivery service was made aware of the change. But I would think that even if they were notified it would sometimes be the case that if your house used to be say number 53 and now it’s 73 that mail that was intended for you ends up in the mail box of the house that used to be 33 and is now 53.
Even if not at first then at least like 3 years later when some random company still has your old address on file and most other mail for everyone in the street is usually addressed to updated numbers.
France has a suffix system, so you if a buildings are added between 24 and 25 you'll get 24 bis, 24 ter etc.
Japan doesn't care about the ordering in the first place, so a block added between 24 and 25 and 26 will be 32 without any issue.
He's done over a hundred original station jingles.[2] Many of the Yamanote Line jingles are classics, though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya
[2] https://www.ongakukan.co.jp/en/business/music/#melody
I'm surprised copyright trolls are not buying IP from defunct game/film/music companies and suing youtubers left and right for uploading video game music and anime OSTs.
If I were a sociopath and didn't care how I make my money, I draft some legit-looking legal threat letter template demanding $10,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit worth millions, fill in the blanks with a name, IP address, and title of pirated content, then mail out the letters by the tens of thousands using USPS-subsidized cheap mail.
If you mail out about 20k of these threats, you only need 3 of them to pay up to come out on top.
Someone in Japan will surely be indignant about the all the lost revenue from people who are not buying a CD full of train station jingles.