東急多摩川線

Overview

The Tokyu Tamagawa Line (TM) runs 5.6 km from Tamagawa to Kamata in seven stations, all of them in Ota ward. Its three-car trains stop at every station, have run without conductors since the line was created in 2000, and come from the Ikegami Line's depot, so a few of them run on from Kamata onto that line.

The track is much older than the name. It is the southern end of the Mekama Line, the first railway of the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway, which was set up to develop the garden suburb of Den-en-chofu and grew into Tokyu. It opened from Meguro to Maruko, today's Numabe, on 11 March 1923 and reached Kamata on 1 November. On 6 August 2000, to make way for through-running into the subway, the Mekama Line was cut in two at Tamagawa: the northern half became the Meguro Line, and this stub the Tokyu Tamagawa Line. The 東急 is part of the official name, to tell it apart from Seibu's Tamagawa Line (多摩川線) and from Tokyu's own former 玉川線 and 新玉川線, all read the same way.

Along the route

Tamagawa is the line's only underground station, its island platform tucked beneath the elevated Toyoko and Meguro lines. It opened as 多摩川 in 1923 and was renamed three times — Maruko-tamagawa, then Tamagawaen-mae and Tamagawaen, after the amusement park beside it that closed in 1979 — before getting its first name back in 2000.

From there the line runs on the surface, south-east along the Tokyo bank of the Tama River. Numabe was the terminus in 1923, when it was called Maruko; nearby is Sakurazaka, the cherry-lined slope that Masaharu Fukuyama's song made famous. Unoki opened in 1924 as 鵜ノ木 and took its present spelling in 1966. Its platforms are squeezed between level crossings and are only three cars long, so the four-car trains of the Mekama days kept one car's doors shut there. Shimomaruko is the station for Canon's head office.

Musashi-nitta is named after the Nitta shrine nearby. It opened in 1923 as plain 新田 and added the old province name 武蔵 in 1924, because stations elsewhere also wrote 新田, reading it either にった or しんでん. The shrine honours Nitta Yoshioki, a son of the general Nitta Yoshisada, and the next station tells how he died. In 1358 he was ambushed and killed at the Yaguchi ferry on the Tama River, and the local people built the shrine for him. Hiraga Gennai turned the story into a puppet play, 神霊矢口渡, in 1770, and the ferry kept running until the Tamagawa Ohashi bridge replaced it in 1949. Yaguchi-no-watashi station is named after that ferry, and the game maker Namco once had its head office near it. The line then curves east beside the Ikegami Line and ends with it at Kamata, next to JR's Keihin-Tohoku Line; Keikyu Kamata is a separate station about 800 m further east.

Why play it

Seven stations and 64 keystrokes make a short run, and the readings do most of the damage. 武蔵新田 is むさしにった, the Nitta family's name, not the しんでん of a "new rice field". The game does have a 新田 read しんでん, on the Tobu Skytree Line, so the confusion the 1924 rename tried to prevent is waiting for you. The っ doubles the t: musashinitta.

矢口渡 is やぐちのわたし: the の is read but not written, and 渡 alone stands for わたし. At 16 keystrokes it is the line's longest name, and since it sits next to Kamata it comes either second or second-to-last. In Kanji mode the missing の matters: commit 矢口の渡し and the board keeps 矢口, counts a miss for the rest and waits for 渡.

鵜の木, うのき, is the line's shortest name at five keys, but in Kanji mode it needs the hiragana の. If your IME offers the pre-1966 鵜ノ木, matching stops after 鵜, because a katakana ノ is not treated as の. Even the first station can catch you out: たまがわ may convert to 玉川, as in 二子玉川 upstream, and 玉川 is refused.