JR Omiya Station in Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo, becomes crowded after a Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train made an emergency stop on Aug. 24, 2025. (Kyodo)
TOKYO (Kyodo) — A Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train made an emergency stop near Tokyo on Sunday after its safety brakes were automatically activated, halting services for nearly three hours, JR East said.
A bullet train traveling between Omiya and Oyama stations with 560 passengers on board stopped at around 2:10 p.m. in Kuki, Saitama Prefecture. There were no reports of injuries.
Services in both directions between Tokyo and Morioka in Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, fully resumed around 5 p.m.
JR East is investigating the cause of the incident, suspecting the emergency brakes were triggered by a malfunction onboard.
The Tohoku Shinkansen Line has been plagued by issues recently, including the decoupling of two carriages last September on a train traveling between Furukawa and Sendai stations.
In March, there was another decoupling between Ueno and Omiya stations.
In June, a series of failures occurred with power supply devices in the latest series of the Tohoku and Yamagata Shinkansen lines, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of trains on the Yamagata Shinkansen for around a month and a half.
On Friday, an oil leak was discovered on a bullet train used for construction, disrupting services on part of the Tohoku line for around an hour.
AloJapan.com