The rumble of the approaching Keisei Skyliner bound for Narita Airport swells into a thunderous roar. The train’s passengers — many of them tourists returning home at the end of their vacations — remain oblivious to us watching them glide by from the dark, soot-stained platform of an abandoned station tucked beneath a corner of Tokyo’s Ueno Park.

A faded poster for Keisei’s high-speed rail hangs on a concrete wall, and an old wooden booth where a clerk once punched paper tickets still stands, its window shuttered and layered with dust. From the station’s opening in 1933 to its suspension in the late 1990s, day-trippers poured through its gates to visit the park’s zoo and museums. Now, these musty traces of railway history and walls scrawled with white chalk graffiti are all that remain.

“Be careful, there’s iron dust, mud and oil everywhere,” says Mamoru Iwai, Keisei Ueno Station’s stationmaster and my guide inside Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station, a former stop on the Keisei Main Line located halfway between Ueno and Nippori stations.

“If it gets on your clothes, it won’t come off, so try not to brush up against anything,” he says as we explore the underground facility. “They told us to leave everything exactly as it was back then, so yes, it’s still this dirty. But I guess that’s part of the charm, isn’t it?”

It surely is. From the neoclassical station entrance — with its massive emerald-green sliding steel doors, pyramid-like roof and domed ceiling — to the wide concrete staircases leading down to the cool, musty underground platform and tracks, the station exudes a peculiar mix of mystery and urban decay.

Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen Station, a former stop on the Keisei Main Line, opened in 1933 and operated until service was suspended in 1997. Its ornate entrance features emerald-green sliding steel doors, a pyramid-shaped roof and a domed ceiling. | JOHAN BROOKS

“I’ve heard that during the war, the site was taken over by the military and used as a factory, or that Japan Railways once kept the emperor’s carriage here,” says Iwai, a veteran of Keise