History
Hibayama Station opened on 20 December 1935 as Bingo-Kumano Station, named for Kumano Shrine roughly eight kilometres to the northwest, and the original station building was designed to resemble a Shinto shrine to reflect that role. The station joined the Geibi Line in July 1937 when the formerly private Geibi Railway was nationalised. Freight and parcel handling ended on 1 September 1972, when the station was also unstaffed. It became part of JR West on 1 April 1987 at JNR privatisation, and the local commission-based ticket sales ended on 31 March 2008. The station was renamed Hibayama on 20 December 1956 to reflect its new role as the gateway to Mount Hiba, designated a prefectural park in 1952. It lies 50.2 km from Bitchū-Kōjiro on the Geibi Line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Today's Hibayama serves an average of about two passengers a day and is connected to its neighbour Bingo-Ochiai by a 5.6-km section so heavily slow-ordered that trains take 16 minutes, twice the eight minutes scheduled in the autumn 2001 timetable.