Abstract: The architectural heritage of railway stations is an important part of modern industrial heritage, and it is an important physical evidence to study the development history of modern architecture, industry and railway construction. There are some similarities in the history of modern industrial development between Japan and China, and the railway development of Japan has a certain influence on northeast China, which has important reference value for the study of the railway development history of China. This study took the architectural heritage of railway stations in Japan as the research object, sorted out the historical development context of the architectural heritage of railways and railway stations in Japan, collected and sorted out the basic information of all architectural heritage of railway stations in Japan, and investigated the style characteristics of each architectural heritage of railway stations. Based on the development of Japanese architectural thought and the cultural, technological, economic and other social factors when architectural heritage of railway stations were built, the paper analyzed and studied the design motivations of various types of architectural heritage of railway stations. The results are conducive to strengthening the research on the protection and regeneration of railway industrial heritage in China and Japan.