History
Moheji Station opened on 25 October 1930 as a Japanese Government Railways station on the Kamiiso Line (renamed the Esashi Line in 1936) when the line was extended from Kamiiso to Kikonai. After passing to JR Hokkaido at the 1987 privatisation, it became sh06 on the Dōnan Isaribi Railway Line when JR Hokkaido divested the Goryōkaku–Kikonai segment on 26 March 2016, the day the Hokkaido Shinkansen opened. The station name derives from the Ainu name of the present-day Mobetsu River — most commonly read as mo-pet ("quiet river"), though an alternative mu-pet ("blocked river") has also been proposed. Moheji sits in the southern Hokuto City, in the Oshima Subprefecture; Hokuto itself was formed by the 1 February 2006 merger of Kamiiso Town and Ōno Town, becoming the first non-Hakodate city in the Oshima Subprefecture in 33 years.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Mobetsu name itself is older than the Hokuto merger: in the eastern bank of the Mobetsu River near the station stands the Mobetsu-yakata site, one of the medieval Dōnan Twelve Tate (designated a National Historic Site) — and the article notes the site's creation is dated to around 1443 when the Andō clan crossed to Hokkaidō after losing to the Nambu clan.