History
Kai-Tokiwa Station opened on 17 December 1927 as a station on the original Fuji-Minobu Line, handling both passengers and freight. The line was leased to the Ministry of Railways on 1 October 1938 and nationalised on 1 May 1941, becoming part of the JGR — later JNR — Minobu Line. Freight handling ended on 20 September 1972, and the station was destaffed on 1 April 1985. Around 1986 the seasonal Minobu express stopped serving here, ending an era when it had also been a Fujikawa express stop and a terminus for some Kōfu shuttles up to about 1970. The station passed to JR Central on 1 April 1987, and the current building was rebuilt in February 2000.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The former Shimobe schoolhouse — about a 10-minute walk away and closed before being adopted as the visual model for Hon-Su High School in the manga and anime Yuru Camp△ — has turned the surrounding lane into a pilgrimage route, with character-themed signs installed by a local revitalisation group.