History
Chūgoku-Katsuyama Station, in the city of Maniwa in Okayama Prefecture, opened on 15 March 1925 as the terminus of the Sakubi Line extension from Kuse. The name takes a Chinese-region prefix to distinguish it from Katsuyama Station in Fukui; local councillors reportedly insisted the prefix should be "Chūgoku" rather than the old province name "Mimasaka," predicting it would become the more important Katsuyama. The line was incorporated into the Kishin Line in October 1936. Freight ended in 1980 and parcel service in 1985. JR West inherited the station at JNR's privatisation in 1987. The station became unattended on 2 October 1999 and was rebuilt with a tile-roofed building in April 2000.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
When the station was named in 1925, a town councillor argued that "the future Katsuyama of importance will be in the Chūgoku region, not Mimasaka," winning the regional prefix used to this day.