Japan Railway Station API — Stations, Lines & Interchanges

Every railway station in Japan: where it is, which lines serve it, who runs them, and what you can change to there.

{
    "stationName": "新宿",
    "lineName": "山手線",
    "operator": "東日本旅客鉄道",
    "operatorType": "JR（在来線）",
    "railwayClass": "普通鉄道（JR）",
    "prefecture": "東京都",
    "municipality": "新宿区",
    "municipalityCode": "13104",
    "latitude": 35.68843,
    "longitude": 139.698615,
    "interchangeCount": 6,
    "connectingLines": [
        "東京都 10号線新宿線",
        "東京都 12号線大江戸線",
        "東京地下鉄 4号線丸ノ内線",
        "京王電鉄 京王線",
        "小田急電鉄 小田原線",
        "東日本旅客鉄道 中央線"
    ]
}

No scraping. No API keys. No rate limits. Compiled from Japanese government open data and shipped inside the Actor.

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What is in it

9,059 stations	every station in Japan, from Shinkansen termini to single-platform tram stops
10,160 station-line rows	one per station and line, because a station served by seven lines is seven facts
597 lines · 178 operators	JR, private railways, subways, third-sector, municipal
104 Shinkansen stations	flagged, not guessed from the name
Interchanges	which other lines serve the same physical station

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What it adds to the raw data

The source (国土数値情報 鉄道) ships one line-segment per station per line, with no station identity, no area and two numeric code columns whose meanings are easy to swap. This Actor:

• Places the station. Each feature is a stretch of track; the coordinate here is its centroid. Tokyo Station lands within 300 m of its real position — that is a regression test, not a claim.
• Reconstructs interchanges by grouping features that share 駅グループコード. That is what turns seven unrelated rows into "Shinjuku, served by these seven lines".
• Adds prefecture, municipality and the 5-digit municipality code, which the source does not contain at all, by matching each station to the nearest 位置参照情報 town centroid.
• Decodes the classification columns correctly. N02_001 is 鉄道区分 and N02_002 is 事業者種別 — the opposite of what the column order suggests. Both were pinned against the real data: code 1 of 事業者種別 selects exactly the 104 Shinkansen rows, and 鉄道区分 25 selects exactly the Linimo maglev.

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Use cases

• Rank property by transport access. Combine near with a station's interchangeCount to score any address in Japan for connectivity.
• Build a station picker or autocomplete. 9,059 names with coordinates, prefecture and municipality, in one download.
• Join transit to any other dataset. municipalityCode is the key used by every Japanese government statistic.
• Answer "what is the nearest station". A radius search returns stations sorted by distance.
• Give an AI agent a Japan transit tool. It runs as an MCP tool: an agent can ask "which lines serve this station and what is nearby" and get typed rows back.

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Input

{
    "stationNames": ["新宿", "渋谷"],
    "lineNames": ["山手"],
    "operators": ["東日本旅客鉄道"],
    "prefectures": ["東京都"],
    "near": { "latitude": 35.6812, "longitude": 139.7671, "radiusMeters": 800 },
    "shinkansenOnly": false,
    "minInterchangeCount": 3,
    "groupByStation": true,
    "maxResults": 100
}

Every field is optional; an empty input returns the stations named 東京.

Field	Meaning
stationNames	Japanese station names, matched as substrings — 新宿 also finds 西新宿
lineNames	Line names as substrings — 山手 finds 山手線, 新幹線 finds every Shinkansen
operators	Operator names as substrings — 東京地下鉄 for Tokyo Metro
prefectures	With or without the suffix (東京 = 東京都)
municipalityCodes	5-digit 全国地方公共団体コード
keyword	Substring across station, line, operator, prefecture and municipality
near	{latitude, longitude, radiusMeters} — sorted by distance
shinkansenOnly	Shinkansen stations only
minInterchangeCount	Set to 3 or more to find the major hubs
groupByStation	One row per physical station, with all its lines in a lines array
maxResults	Hard cap on rows — this is what determines the cost of the run

Output

One row per station and line by default, or one per station with groupByStation.

Field	Description
stationName, lineName, operator	As published, in Japanese
operatorType	JR（新幹線）/ JR（在来線）/ 公営鉄道 / 民営鉄道 / 第三セクター
railwayClass	普通鉄道, 軌道, 鋼索鉄道, 懸垂式鉄道, 跨座式鉄道, 案内軌条式鉄道, 無軌条鉄道, 浮上式鉄道
isShinkansen, isTram, isMonorailOrAgt	Ready-made booleans for the common filters
stationGroupCode	Shared by every line serving the same physical station
prefecture, municipality, municipalityCode	Derived; the source has no area field
latitude, longitude	Centroid of the station's track geometry, WGS84
interchangeCount, connectingLines	The other lines at the same station
distanceMeters	Radius searches only

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Pricing

Pay per event: a small charge to start the run, plus a charge per row returned. No proxy costs, because there is nothing to proxy.

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Data sources

Source	Publisher	Licence
国土数値情報 鉄道 (N02-23)	国土交通省	公共データ利用規約 第1.0版 (PDL1.0)
位置参照情報 大字・町丁目レベル	国土交通省	公共データ利用規約 第1.0版 (PDL1.0)

PDL1.0 permits commercial use and redistribution and requires the source credit plus a statement that the data was edited. Reproduced here and in every run's RUN_SUMMARY:

「国土数値情報（鉄道）」（国土交通省）（https://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/）をもとに jp-data-engine が加工して作成

「位置参照情報ダウンロードサービス」（国土交通省）（https://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/isj/）をもとに jp-data-engine が加工して作成

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Known limits

• Coordinates are the centroid of the track geometry, not the station building or a specific entrance. For a large station like Shinjuku that is a few hundred metres from some exits.
• No timetables, fares or platform data. This is the network, not the schedule.
• The municipality is inferred from the nearest town centroid rather than a boundary polygon. It is right for stations inside a built-up area; a station on a municipal border can fall on the wrong side.
• Names are Japanese only. The source publishes no romanisation. Feed them through Japan Address Normalizer, Geocoder & Romanizer if you need the coordinates turned into a romanised address.
• Freight-only lines and closed stations are not included; this is the passenger network as of the 2023 edition.

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Local development

npm install
npm run build:data   # downloads the government data and compiles the registry into data/
npm test             # 12 tests, including the code-mapping regressions
npx apify run

Part of the jp-data-engine Japan data suite. See also Japan Land Price API — every survey site records its nearest station, so the two join directly.