History
Kobunato Station opened on 11 March 1914 with the inauguration of the Kyoto Dento Echizen Electric Railway between Ichiarakawa (today Echizen-Takehara) and Katsuyama, and passed to Keifuku Electric Railway in March 1942. It was destaffed and its passing loop removed on 1 April 1978, and the station's namesake "small-boat crossing" of the Kuzuryū River was bridged in 1923 after high water repeatedly stranded would-be passengers. After the June 2001 Echizen Main Line head-on collision shut the line, the station reopened under Echizen Railway on 19 October 2003. Daily boardings averaged just 8 passengers in fiscal 2016. The single side-platform sits between hills and the river, with little development nearby.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
Kobunato's name comes literally from a "small-boat crossing": before the Kobunato Bridge was built over the Kuzuryū River in 1923, residents on the far bank were routinely cut off from the station whenever the river ran high.