Japan’s train travel soundscape faces sad change as JR East axes special station departure melodies

Operational shift means no more unique station melodies on one Tokyo line, and more could follow.

There are a lot of little things that make Japan’s rail network so pleasant to use, and one of them is the departure melodies that play before trains depart. Instead of a harsh buzzer or clanging bell, there’s usually a gently energizing piece of music that serves as an audio signal that the train is about to leave, so if you’re hopping on, now’s the time.

Making the whole thing especially cool is that instead of every stop having the same chimes, it’s not uncommon for stations to have their own unique melody. Sometimes these are chosen to reflect an aspect of the local culture or to salute a famous figure who grew up in the neighborhood, and other times the melody is crafted or selected to help give the station its own identity and vibe. For example, on the Nambu Line which connects Tachikawa Station in Tokyo and Kawasaki Station in Kanagawa Prefecture, Noborito Station has departure chimes that are instrumental versions of Doraemon anime theme songs, since the Fujiko F. Fujio/Doraemon museum is located nearby.

▼ The departure chimes of the Nambu Line, with a chart showing which stations use which melodies

Unfortunately, this unique part of Japan’s soundscape looks to be facing an impending crisis. East Japan Railway Company/JR East, which operates the Nambu Line, says that the line’s individual departure melodies will be going away very soon.

Up until now, trains on the Nambu Line have been operated by a team of two staff members, a driver up front and a conductor in the back. As of this month, though, the Nambu Line is switching to “one-man” operation, meaning a single driver with no conductor, in response to staff shortages. How does this relate to departure melodies? It turns out that in order to play the station-specific departure melodies, someone has to press an actual button located on the platform, and this has been part of the conductor’s responsibilities.

This means that the buttons are located at the back of the platforms (relative to the direction the train is headed), and since commuter trains spend less than a minute stopped at each station, there’s not enough time for the driver to hop out, walk all the way to the opposite end of the platform, hit the button, and then walk all the way back to the front of the train. So instead, once the Nambu Line makes the change to one-man operation, it’ll also be switching to a system where the driver, from the front of the train, initiates an identical piece of music to play for every station.

JR discontinuing the Nambu Line’s special station melodies doesn’t bode well for other lines either, The Yokohama Line (connecting Tokyo’s Hachioji with Yokohama’s Higashi Kanagawa) is slated to transition to one-man operation in the spring of 2026, and even Tokyo’s famous Yamanote Line, which circles the capital’s city center, is planned to go one-man by 2030.

▼ The Yamanote Line’s departure melodies include the theme of Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy at Takadanobaba Station, as a tip of the that to the nearby studio of creator/“god of manga” Osamu Tezuka

There is a ray of hope, though. While the exact dates for each station aren’t readily available, JR East first introduced specific station departure melodies in 1989. Japan often has an “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” attitude when it comes to technology, which would explain why even in 2025 the user interface requires someone to get out of the train and press a physical button at each stop. With modern technology, though, it doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult to upgrade to a system that allows the driver to play different departure melodies by wirelessly linking the train’s control panel to the station’s speaker system. If the issue is that JR East doesn’t want the driver to be distracted by having to think about which melody to play at which station, that too seems like something that could be automated pretty easily.

JR East doesn’t appear to currently have any plans to make such upgrades, though, and so the last day for the Nambu Line station’s special departure melodies, at least for the foreseeable future, will be March 14.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun via Livedoor News via Golden Times, FNN Prime Online
Top image: Wikipedia/Toshinori baba
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