The Takasaki Line (Japanese: 高崎線, romanized: Takasaki-sen) is a Japanese railway line which connects Ōmiya Station in Saitama, Saitama Prefecture and Takasaki Station in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture. It is owned and operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East).
All services on the line (excluding through Shonan-Shinjuku Line trains) run to/from Ueno Station in Tokyo via the Tōhoku Main Line. The line was extended to Tokyo Station via the Ueno-Tokyo Line that opened in March 2015.
The Hokuriku Shinkansen (Japanese: 北陸新幹線) is a high-speed Shinkansen railway line connecting Tokyo with Tsuruga in the Hokuriku region of Japan. It is jointly operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East) and West Japan Railway Company (JR West).
The first section, between Takasaki and Nagano in Nagano Prefecture, opened on 1 October 1997 in time for the 1998 Winter Olympics, and was originally called the Nagano Shinkansen (長野新幹線). The extension to Toyama in Toyama Prefecture and Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture opened on 14 March 2015. Construction of a further section onward to Fukui and Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture, covering 125 kilometers and six stations, commenced in 2012 and opened on 16 March 2024. The route of the final section to Shin-Osaka was decided on 20 December 2016 as the Osaka–Kyoto route, with construction expected to begin in the late 2020s and take about 25 years, after impact assessment procedures for areas along the line are completed.
The Shinetsu Main Line (Japanese: 信越本線, Hepburn: Shin'etsu-honsen) is a railway line, consisting of three geographically separated sections, operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in Japan. It was originally one continuous line connecting Takasaki and Niigata via Nagano. Since the opening and later extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen, sections running in parallel have either been discontinued or transferred to third-sector railway companies.
The name of the line refers to the old names for Nagano and Niigata prefectures, Shinano (Japanese: 信濃), and Echigo (Japanese: 越後).