History
Gembudō Station opened on 2 March 1912 as a provisional seasonal stop on the Imperial Railway Agency's San'in Main Line, between Toyooka and what is now Kinosakionsen Station. It was upgraded to a year-round passenger station on 21 April 1918. Parcel handling ended in December 1970 and the station was left unstaffed. With the 1 April 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways it passed to JR West. A March 2012 timetable revision saw some local trains begin skipping the station; those services were redesignated Rapid in March 2013, but the Rapid category was abolished from 13 March 2021. The station sits at the gateway to the basalt-column Gembudō Caves, reached by ferry across the Maruyama River.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
From the station forecourt, the easiest route to the Gembudō Caves is not by road but by a roughly seven-minute reservation-only ferry crossing of the Maruyama River.