History
Koi-Yamagata Station opened on 1994-12-03 with the inauguration of the Chizu Express Chizu Line, a 56.1 km third-sector route from Kamigōri to Chizu. The unstaffed two-platform station, 50.0 km from Kamigōri, was given an unusual second life on 2013-06-09: the operator played on koi, the Japanese word for love, by repainting the shelters and fencing in vivid pink and replacing the platform signage with heart-shaped equivalents. Despite the rebranding, ridership remained minimal — fiscal-2018 figures averaged five passengers per day.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The platform shelters and station signs were repainted vivid pink and reshaped as hearts in 2013 to play on the word koi ("love") in the station name.