History
Today's Shikabe Station opened on 1945-06-01 as a general station on the new Sunahara branch of the Hakodate Main Line. The same day, the original 'Shikabe Station' on the private Ōnuma Electric Railway, opened on 1929-01-31, was closed under the wartime 'non-essential lines' order. On 1949-02-20 the reborn postwar Ōnuma Electric Railway renamed its Shikabe-Onsen Station as 'Shikabe', so the JNR station was renamed Takamachi after old falconry posts in the area. After the second Ōnuma Electric Railway was withdrawn entirely in December 1952, the JNR station regained the Shikabe name on 1956-12-20. Freight ended on 1980-05-01, parcels on 1984-02-01, and the station was unstaffed and simply commissioned from 1984-11-01. JR Hokkaido inherited the station in 1987, and the simple commission lapsed on 2005-04-01, leaving the station fully unstaffed.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The place-name Shikabe is said to come from the Ainu word sikape meaning 'short-tailed albatross', once abundant in the area.