History
Kayanuma Station opened on 15 September 1927 with the Railway Ministry's extension of the Senmō Main Line between Kushiro and Shibecha. Freight and luggage handling ended on 5 February 1973, after which the station was downgraded to a passenger-only stop, and signalling rationalisation in November 1986 left the post entirely unstaffed. With the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Hokkaido, and the present log-cabin station building dates from a 1989 reconstruction. In June 2023 Hokkaido Shimbun named Kayanuma in a list of 42 JR Hokkaido stops being weighed for closure, though the company subsequently told Shibecha it had no immediate plans to shut the station.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Since a 1964 flood destroyed nearby roosting habitat, station staff have hand-fed the red-crowned cranes that visit the platform — the practice is recorded as a duty in the station handover notes, and locals have continued it since the post became unstaffed.