History
Kesennuma Station opened on 31 July 1929 as a station of the Ministry of Railways' Ōfunato Line, in what is now Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture. It is the city's only rail station and is the northernmost and easternmost rail station in Miyagi Prefecture; today it is also the terminus of the Ōfunato Line, with the Kesennuma Line and Ōfunato Line BRT bus services sharing the premises. Kesennuma sits at the northeastern tip of Miyagi on the Sanriku Coast and was formed in March 2006 by the merger of the former Kesennuma City with Karakuwa Town, taking its present shape after also absorbing Motoyoshi Town in September 2009. It is a fishing town whose ria coastline and proximity to the Kinkazan offshore grounds — one of the world's three great fisheries — make it a base for coastal, offshore and deep-sea fishing.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
Both the station and the city's articles record the 11 March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake as a defining event: the station suspended service that day and the city as a whole suffered heavy damage from the quake, the resulting tsunami, tsunami-related fires and ground subsidence. Rail service was restored to the station on 1 April 2011 from Ichinoseki, with BRT replacing the Kesennuma Line in August 2012 and the Ōfunato Line BRT-side in March 2013.