History
Iwamizawa Station began on 1884-08-15 as a flag stop on Japan's first Hokkaido railway, the government-run Horonai Railway opened in 1882, and was upgraded to a regular stopping-place in November 1885. After transfer to the private Hokkaido Colliery Railway in 1889, branches to Sunagawa (1891) and Muroran (1892) made it a major coal junction; the road's head office moved here in 1904 and the network was nationalised in 1906. From 1926 it possessed Iwamizawa Yard, then the largest marshalling yard north of Tokyo. The Manji Line closed in March 1985 and the Horonai Line in July 1987, the year JR Hokkaido inherited the station. The third-generation building, dating from 1933, was destroyed by an electrical fire on 2000-12-10; a temporary structure served for over six years while a new design was selected through a public competition. The current fourth-generation complex opened in stages from 2007-06-23 to 2009-03-30 and won the 2009 Good Design Grand Award.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The current 4th-generation station building was chosen through Japan's first public design competition for a railway station and won the 2009 Good Design Grand Award, the 2010 Architectural Institute of Japan Award, and the 2011 Brunel Award. Its glass curtain wall uses 232 lengths of recycled Hokkaido rail as mullions, and 4,777 of its bricks bear personalised inscriptions paid for by local donors.