History
Niseko Station is a JR Hokkaido station on the Hakodate Main Line in the town of Niseko, identified by the line code S25 and located 179.6 km from the line's terminus at Hakodate. It opened on 15 October 1904 as Makkari Station on the privately operated Hokkaido Railway, when the line from Hakodate was extended northward to reach Otaru. The name was changed to Kaributo Station on 15 December 1906, and the station passed to the Japanese Government Railways with the line's nationalisation on 1 July 1907. It became part of the Hakodate Main Line on 12 October 1909. The current name, Niseko, was adopted on 1 April 1968, and JR Hokkaido inherited operations on 1 April 1987.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
Niseko was the first station in the Japanese National Railways/JR network whose name was written exclusively in katakana, a change adopted on 1 April 1968.