Overview

The Keisei Main Line (KS) runs 69.3 km from Keisei-Ueno to Narita Airport, 42 stations in Keisei blue, and it is the only line here that leaves Tokyo for good: it crosses the Edo River after twelve stops and spends the remaining thirty in Chiba. The company name says what it is for. 京成 takes the 京 of Tōkyō and the 成 of Narita, and the railway was chartered in 1909 to carry pilgrims to Naritasan Shinshoji, the temple that still draws close to three million visitors in the first days of the New Year. A century later the destination at the far end changed from a temple to an international airport, and the line's job did not change at all.

It arrived there slowly, and from the wrong end. The first section opened on 3 November 1912, not out of Ueno but out of Oshiage, and only as far as the Edo River; Narita was reached in 1926, and the Ueno head-house — a dead end under Ueno Park, connected to nothing — not until December 1933. Then in November 1931 Keisei renamed eleven stations at a stroke, putting 京成 in front of Takasago, Nakayama, Funabashi, Tsudanuma, Okubo, Owada, Usui, Sakura, Shisui and Narita to tell them apart from the government line's stations of the same name a few streets away. Fifteen of the 42 carry that prefix today.

The other thing that shaped the line was the gauge. Keisei was built to 1372 mm, Tokyo's old horsecar gauge, and in the autumn of 1959 it regauged the entire railway to 1435 mm standard gauge in six weeks, section by section, opening a transfer platform on the bank of the Kashima River for three days so passengers could step off a narrow-gauge train and straight onto a standard-gauge one. The point was to match Toei and Keikyu: on 4 December 1960 Keisei trains began running through the Asakusa Line, the first through service in Japan between a subway and a private railway, and the reason one train can now run from Narita to Haneda. Those services leave the Main Line at Aoto for the Oshiage Line, and so does the Skyliner, which has taken the separate Narita Sky Access route since 2010. Officially this line has no company name at all — the name filed with the ministry is simply "the Main Line".

Along the route

Keisei-Ueno is buried beside Shinobazu Pond, and the climb out of it is the hardest work on the railway: a 120 m curve and a 40‰ grade in the 2.1 km to Nippori. Halfway up, trains pass the dark platforms of Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen — "Museum-Zoo" — closed in 1997 and struck off the list in 2004, its little domed stone entrance still standing on the street outside the Tokyo National Museum. Nippori is where the line really joins Tokyo, rebuilt in 2009 with the up platform on the ground floor and the down platform two levels above it. Then Shim-Mikawashima and Machiya, over the Sumida to Senjuohashi, over the Arakawa floodway to Horikirishobuen — named for its iris garden — and Ohanajaya, whose name comes from a teahouse where a girl called Ohana is said to have nursed the eighth shogun. At Aoto the Oshiage Line comes in on a two-level junction, and the 1.2 km on to Keisei-Takasago is the only four-track stretch on the line, with the Kanamachi Line and the Hokuso trains for Sky Access peeling away at the far end.

Keisei-Koiwa, then Edogawa, the last station in Tokyo, and the line crosses the river and the prefectural boundary together into Konodai, on the bluff where the provincial capital of Shimosa once stood and where the Satomi and the Hojo fought twice in the 1500s. Ichikawamama is named for Tekona of Mama, the beauty of the Man'yoshu; Sugano is a quiet villa district of writers' houses; Keisei-Yawata stands alongside JR's Motoyawata and the far end of the Toei Shinjuku Line. Onigoe, then Keisei-Nakayama at the gate of Hokekyo-ji, then Higashi-Nakayama, which began in 1935 as a temporary halt for the Nakayama Racecourse and still takes limited-express stops on the big race days. Keisei-Nishifuna, Kaijin — one of only two platforms on the line still six cars long — and then Keisei-Funabashi and Daijingushita, both lifted onto viaduct in 2006 to be rid of the level crossings. Funabashikeibajo for the racecourse, then Yatsu, which was Yatsu-yuen until 1984: Keisei ran its own amusement park here until 1982, with a practice ground in one corner where the Yomiuri Giants began, and the rose garden it left behind is still open as a city park.

Keisei-Tsudanuma is the hinge of the network — the Chiba Line and the Shin-Keisei trains both start here — and past it the line turns inland and the stops spread out. Keisei-Okubo for the university district, Mimomi, then Yachiyodai, opened in March 1956 for the first large public housing estate built in Japan; a monument outside the west exit still calls it the birthplace of the danchi. Keisei-Owada, Katsutadai where riders change to the Toyo Rapid Line for the Tozai Line, Shizu, and Yukarigaoka, a privately built new town with its own little monorail, added to the line in 1982. Keisei-Usui, and then the longest gap on the line, 5.3 km to Keisei-Sakura below the castle town. Osakura is the quietest station Keisei has, 381 riders a day. Keisei-Shisui, Sogosando by the depot and the shrine to Sakura Sogoro, Kozunomori, the newest station on the line, opened in 1994. Keisei-Narita is the pilgrims' terminus the whole railway was drawn for, at the head of the Naritasan approach. Then 7.1 km around the airport perimeter to Narita Airport Terminal 2·3, and a last single-track kilometre — track Keisei does not own, laid by Narita Airport Rapid Railway through the tunnels dug for the abandoned Narita Shinkansen — into Terminal 1.

Why play it

This is one of the longest runs in the game: 42 stations and 457 keystrokes of romaji, neck and neck with the Oedo Line. It does not get there with long names. It gets there with けいせい. Fifteen stations begin with it, so ninety of those keystrokes are the same six letters, over and over, and what actually decides your time is whether the tail comes out clean while your hands are on autopilot — Keisei-Sekiya, Keisei-Takasago, Keisei-Nishifuna, Keisei-Tsudanuma, Keisei-Okubo, Keisei-Owada, Keisei-Usui, Keisei-Sakura, Keisei-Shisui. Two pairs make it worse: Keisei-Nakayama is followed immediately by Higashi-Nakayama, and Keisei-Sakura by Osakura.

Around that, one run hands you most of the awkward kana in the registry. お花茶屋 is おはなぢゃや with ぢゃ, not じゃ. 志津 is しづ and 公津の杜 is こうづのもり — づ twice, on a line that also gives you つだぬま. ユーカリが丘 is ゆーかりがおか, so in romaji you press the hyphen key in the middle of a station name. And the last two stops break the pattern entirely: 空港第2ビル reads くうこうだいにびる and carries a numeral, and both airport stations are signed in English rather than romanized, because by then you have arrived. The one place to breathe is 谷津 — やつ, two kana, the shortest stop on the line, and it sits almost exactly halfway.