History
Kikyō Station opened on 10 December 1902 as part of the Hokkaido Railway's first-generation Hakodate–Hongō line, and is today JR Hokkaido station H73 on the Hakodate Main Line, located in Kikyō 3-chōme, Hakodate. The station name comes from the local place-name: the area, where bellflowers (kikyō) once grew in abundance, had long been called "Kikyō-no" by nearby villagers, and in 1872 (Meiji 4) "Kikyō" was adopted as the official village name and later as the station name. Hakodate, in the southern tip of Hokkaidō within the Oshima Subprefecture, is the third-largest city in the prefecture by population (about 240,000) after Sapporo and Asahikawa, and is the seat of the subprefectural offices. Hakodate Port was one of the first treaty ports opened to foreign trade in the Bakumatsu era under the Ansei Five-Power Treaties, alongside Yokohama and Nagasaki, and the city remains a major destination for its night view of Mt. Hakodate and the star-shaped Goryōkaku fortress.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-10.
Notes
The Hakodate-city article notes that Kikyō was one of five villages — Kameda, Kamiyama, Kajiya, Kikyō and Ishikawa — combined in 1902 into Kameda Village, which itself grew into Kameda City and was absorbed into Hakodate City in 1973.