History
Minami-Ibaraki Station is an interchange between Hankyu's Kyoto Line and the Osaka Monorail. The Hankyu station opened on 8 March 1970 between Shōjaku and Ibaraki-shi, expressly to serve Expo '70 visitors via shuttle buses to the fairgrounds — and unlike the line's other Expo station, it was built as a permanent facility from the start. The Osaka Monorail station opened on 1 June 1990 as the original eastern terminus of the line's first phase, becoming a through stop on 22 August 1997 when the line was extended to Kadoma-shi. Hankyu station numbering HK-68 was introduced on 21 December 2013. The 2018 Osaka northern earthquake damaged the station building and forced a temporary closure; reconstruction completed in July 2022.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Until Minami-Ibaraki opened in 1970, the 5.4 km gap between Shōjaku and Ibaraki-shi was the longest distance between consecutive stations on the entire Hankyu network.