History
Umekōji-Kyōtonishi Station opened on 16 March 2019 on the Sagano Line (San'in Main Line) of JR West, in Shimogyō Ward, Kyoto, primarily to serve the Umekōji-Park complex (Kyoto Railway Museum and Kyoto Aquarium). The station was the first new station on the San'in Main Line in eleven years (since Kajikuri-Gōdaichi in 2008). After the Kyoto Railway Museum expansion of April 2016 boosted visitor numbers, the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce proposed in May 2014 a new station between Kyoto and Tanbaguchi; the city government took up the idea in August 2014. A 2 February 2015 mutual-consensus agreement set total cost at ¥4.9 billion with JR West paying ¥1.9 billion, the city ¥1.5 billion, and the remainder coming from national subsidy. Ground-breaking was on 19 September 2016 and the station name (selected over the working name 'JR Shichijō') was finalised on 20 July 2018 after a public-name solicitation gathered 1,257 suggestions. The station is also the first on the Sagano Line equipped with platform-screen doors. Station code is JR-E02.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The station name fuses 'Umekōji', the park name that drew 836 of 1,257 name-suggestions, with 'Kyōtonishi' meaning 'Kyoto West', acknowledging the location 1.7 km west of Kyoto Station. Per the Japanese Wikipedia article, fiscal 2023 averaged 7,570 daily station users.