History
Shin-Rifu Station opened on 1 April 1982 as a station of Japanese National Railways on the Rifu Branch of the Tōhoku Main Line, in what is now Rifu, Miyagi District, Miyagi Prefecture. It was established together with the opening of the Tōhoku Shinkansen and was sited to serve workers commuting to the adjacent Shinkansen General Rolling Stock Centre (新幹線総合車両センター). It is operated today by JR East. Rifu, immediately northeast of Sendai, is part of the Sendai metropolitan area and the Sentō wider planning region; the town houses the Miyagi Prefectural Sports Park including Miyagi Stadium (Q&A Stadium Miyagi), which hosted matches at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the football competition of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Aoyama district of Rifu is also the prefecture's centre of population (38°20'50"N 140°58'45"E).
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Rifu article records that during the Nara period the Mutsu Provincial Office and Chinjufu were established at Taga Castle on the Matsushima Hill ridge, and that the Nakoso Barrier — said by some to be one of the "three barriers of Ōshū" alongside Shirakawa and Nezugaseki — was sited in the Morigō district of the modern town as the southern gateway to the road over those hills.