History
Nihon-heso-kōen Station opened on 15 July 1985 as an unstaffed seasonal stop on the Japanese National Railways' Kakogawa Line between Hie and Kuroda-shō, serving the adjoining Nihon-heso ('Japan's bellybutton') Park. It became part of JR West on 1 April 1987, was upgraded to a year-round station on 23 December 1987, and joined the Kakogawa Railway Division in 1990. In 2003 it was selected for the fourth Kinki Stations Top 100 list, and in 2009 it was placed under direct Kobe Branch control as a sub-station of Kakogawa. The single roof above the platform doubles as part of the adjacent Okanoyama Art Museum's design.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The platform roof was integrated into the architecture of the Okanoyama Art Museum next door, so the station building and museum effectively share a single structural canopy.