History
Sannomiya Station opened on 18 June 1985 on the Kobe Municipal Subway Seishin-Yamate Line, between Ōkurayama Station and Shin-Kōbe Station as part of that extension. The station was suspended on 17 January 1995 by the Great Hanshin Earthquake; subway service on the Seishin-Yamate Line was restored across its full length on 16 February 1995, but Sannomiya was treated as a non-stop pass-through until full reopening on 16 March 1995. Platform screen doors entered service on 3 March 2018 — the first such installation on the Kobe Municipal Subway.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The station is the busiest on the Kobe Municipal Subway and is built on a two-level single-platform-per-track structure: the concourse is on the first basement, the Shin-Kōbe / Tanigami-bound Platform 1 is on the second basement, and the Seishin-Chūō-bound Platform 2 is on the third basement. This unusual stacked layout reflects the narrow width of the Ikuta Shinmichi road under which the section between Sannomiya and Ōkurayama runs. JR West's station here is named Sannomiya (三ノ宮); neighbouring private operators Hankyū and Hanshin call their stations Kōbe-Sannomiya (神戸三宮); Kobe New Transit and the city subway both use Sannomiya (三宮); and the city's Kaigan Line subway station is Sannomiya-Hanadokeimae — six stations of five different operators using four different names, which the city's redevelopment plan proposes to unify as Kōbe-Sannomiya.