History
Koboro Station (station number H45) is on the JR Hokkaido Muroran Main Line in Refunge, Toyoura Town, Abuta District, Hokkaido. It opened on 25 September 1943 as Koboro Signal Box on the state-run Muroran Main Line — sited in an 80-metre gap between two long tunnels along the cliffs of Uchiura Bay to add wartime passing capacity for coal and military freight — and although classed as a signal box, it carried passengers from the start. The line was double-tracked through the area between 1964 and 1967, and on 1 October 1967 the signal box was reclassified as Koboro Provisional Stop; it was promoted to a full passenger station with the JNR breakup on 1 April 1987, and its fare-calculation distance was finally set on 10 March 1990. With no road access and approachable only by rail or boat, it is the best known of Japan's "hikyō-eki" (secluded stations). After JR Hokkaido floated closing Koboro in July 2015 on cost grounds, Toyoura Town stepped in, subsidising the station's annual maintenance and treating it as a tourism asset; its tourist facilities — the Michi-no-Eki Toyoura, the Toyoura Onsen Shiosai and the Suisha — issue a "hikyō tōtatsu shōmeisho" (secluded-station arrival certificate) on production of a photo of the visitor with the Koboro station nameboard. Toyoura Town is in the westernmost part of the Iburi Subprefecture; it was renamed from Benbe Village to Toyoura Village in 1932 and was promoted to town status on 1 July 1947.
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
Koboro is the most secluded railway station in Japan: it sits in an 80-metre gap between two cliff tunnels along Uchiura Bay with no road access, reachable only by rail or boat, and it ranks first in the secluded-station (hikyō-eki) ranking compiled by Takanobu Ushiyama. There is no station building — only a small maintenance shed and a bio-toilet outhouse.