History
Kotoni Station (number S03) is on the JR Hokkaido Hakodate Main Line in Nishi-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido. It opened on 28 November 1880 as a flag-stop of the government-owned Horonai Railway, on the line's inaugural Sapporo–Temiya section — the very first railway in Hokkaido and only the third in Japan — and the original station was a 6-tsubo wooden building erected at the petition of nearby tondenhei (military colonist) farmers. The station was transferred to the Hokkaidō Tankō Railway in 1889, returned to public ownership in 1906, became elevated for through-running on 3 November 1988 (resolving the long-troublesome Kotoni-Sakaemachi-dōri grade crossing), began hosting rapid services on 11 March 2000, and received station number S03 with the 2007 numbering scheme. Nishi-ku, Sapporo's second-largest ward by area after Minami-ku, traces its modern foundations to the first 198 tondenhei households settled at Kotoni in 1875 — per Nishi-ku's Wikipedia article the ward formed the Kotoni-mura municipality in 1906, gained town status in 1942, merged into Sapporo in 1955, and Teine-ku was split off from it in 1989.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
A unique chapter in the station's history is preserved in the Kotoni article: in October 1936 Emperor Shōwa toured Hokkaido and an Imperial Train ran a return service between Sapporo and Kotoni on 8 October, with a commemorative return ticket "Hokkaido Visit Commemorative Ticket (Kotoni-Sapporo round-trip)" issued for the occasion.