History
Bakkai Station opened on 25 June 1924 with the Teshio Kita Line between Wakkanai (today's Minami-Wakkanai) and Kabutonuma. It became part of the merged Teshio Line in 1926 and was absorbed into the Soya Main Line on 1 April 1930. Freight handling ended in 1977 and the station was unstaffed from 10 November 1984; complete unstaffing followed electronic blocking in November 1986. JR Hokkaido inherited the station at privatisation on 1 April 1987. In June 2023 Bakkai was named in a JR Hokkaido shortlist of 42 stops being studied for closure; after Wakkanai City declined to continue funding maintenance, the station was closed in the timetable revision of 15 March 2025, and the wooden station building was demolished that summer.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
Bakkai's wooden station building, completed in 1924, was the northernmost wooden depot in Japan until its 2025 demolition; the station also served as a stand-in for the Sekihoku Line's Shirataki Station in the 2018 film Kita no Sakuramori.