History
Cable Sakamoto Station opened on 15 March 1927 as Sakamoto Station, the lower terminus of what is now the 2,025-metre Sakamoto Cable funicular, the longest cable-car route in Japan, operated by Hieizan Railway. Operations were suspended on 19 March 1945 due to wartime conditions and resumed on 7 August 1946. The station was renamed Cable Sakamoto on 15 January 1974 to distinguish it from JR West’s nearby Hieizan Sakamoto Station. The two-storey Western-style station building, completed in 1925 with a ticket office and waiting room on the ground floor and offices above, was designated a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 15 July 1997.
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
The 1925 station building is one of the oldest cable-car terminals still in everyday use in Japan; a retired catenary pole stands beside the entrance as a monument, and the original lettering reading "Sakamoto-eki" in pre-war characters is preserved above the door.