品川駅はなぜ港区にあるのか？ Why Is Shinagawa Station in Minato-ku?
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%93%81%E5%B7%9D%E9%A7%85
Last week I promised to find the answer to this, but Mamoru Akagi posted the answer in the comments in Japanese on the Meguro Station posting. The English translation is contained below.
先週、この謎の答えを調べることを約束しましたが、目黒駅の記事のFBコメント欄でMamoru Akagiさんが、答えが出ている場所を教えてくれました。英訳をこの下に載せます。
日本語の答え：http://news.mynavi.jp/series/trivia/058/
English Answer: Because this area used to be called Shinagawa.
First, some background. Shinagawa-juku was one of the 53 stations of the Tokaido (actually, the first one). It was located in what is now Kita Shinagawa (north side of Meguro River) and Minami Shinagawa (south side of Meguro River), Shinagawa-ku. It stretched from the present Kita Shinagawa Station to the present Aomono Yokocho Station on the Keihin Kyuko Line.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%93%81%E5%B7%9D%E5%AE%BF
It has long been thought that Shinagawa Station is located in Minato-ku because Shinagawa-juku opposed the establishment of the station. But the current thinking is that the Meiji government was in a hurry to build the station and so avoided Shinagawa-juku to make it easier to acquire the land, not because of opposition to the project. When this station (on the first railroad in Japan) was built, it was called Shinagawa Station, but it was a distance from Shinagawa-juku. This is thought to be the basis for the argument that the station was built in its current location to avoid Shinagawa-juku.
However, when we take a good look at the historical documents, we find that Shinagawa station was opened in Meiji 5 (1872). Until Meiji 4 (1871), the current location was a part of Shinagawa-ken. According to the official website of Shinagawa-ku, Shinagawa-ken was established in Meiji 2 (1869) and covered a huge area including the southeast part of Tokyo, Musashino and Yokohama. However, when the abolition of clans and establishment of prefectures was reorganized two years later, Shinagawa-ken was disbanded after only being in existence for two years. Therefore, by the time the station was completed, Shinagawa-ken had ceased to exist. However, when the railroad was being planned, it was in Shinagawa-ken. Therefore, it is thought that Shinagawa Station was not named after Shinagawa-juku, but took that name because the location had been in Shinagawa-ken.
And that also explains why Kita Shinagawa station is south of Shinagawa Station.
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