What was the Hokuriku Shinkansen commonly called before its 2015 extension to Kanazawa?

Before its 2015 extension to Kanazawa, the Hokuriku Shinkansen was commonly called the Nagano Shinkansen.

The line’s legal name has always been Hokuriku Shinkansen, reflecting its planned route toward Japan’s Hokuriku region. However, when the first section opened from Takasaki to Nagano in 1997, railway authorities wanted a name that described the service’s actual destination. “Nagano Shinkansen” quickly became the standard public and timetable name.

The trains on that first section were branded Asama, after the nearby Mount Asama. That is why Asama Shinkansen can sound like a plausible answer, but Asama was the service name, not the usual name of the line itself. Joetsu Shinkansen was a separate route used by travelers transferring toward Hokuriku before the extension.

The Nagano–Kanazawa extension opened in March 2015. After that, the broader Hokuriku Shinkansen name became the normal designation, although Asama remains a train service name on the Tokyo–Nagano portion.