History
Ashiya Station opened on 1 August 1913 on the JNR Tōkaidō Main Line between West-Nishinomiya (today Nishinomiya) and Sumiyoshi, in present-day Ashiya City, Hyōgo Prefecture, after a petition and a 10,000-yen donation from the surrounding Seidō Village. Originally there were only about 80 passengers a day; the station was severely flooded by the Hanshin Great Flood of 1938, the platforms were elevated in 1969, and a station building rose alongside the Monte-Mare retail complex from October 1980. Following the JNR breakup it passed to JR West on 1 April 1987 and adopted the JR Kobe Line nickname in March 1988. The 1995 Hanshin Awaji earthquake destroyed the station, which was restored within about three weeks. Special Rapid services began stopping all day from 1 December 2003, and a multi-year renovation programme concluded in July 2023.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
The station's name was deliberately drawn from a long-defunct village called Ashiya rather than the contemporary Seidō, on the grounds that the older name had more brand recognition; the city itself adopted Ashiya in 1940.