History
Hanakuma Station opened on 7 April 1968 as part of the Kobe Rapid Transit Railway's east-west line, where Hankyu services take over from the Hanshin alignment. It is the westernmost and southernmost station Hankyu operates and is treated as the railway's de facto Motomachi stop, since Hankyu — unlike JR and Hanshin — has no station bearing that name. Trains were suspended on 17 January 1995 by the Great Hanshin earthquake; the seven months required to restore the Kobe Line saw Hanakuma host turnback service to Shinkaichi from 6 February and through service from Hankyu Sannomiya from 1 June 1995. Station numbering as HK-17 was introduced on 21 December 2013, and an elevator entered service on 14 March 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Trains from Sanyō Electric Railway's limited expresses stopped at Hanakuma until April 1991, then resumed from February 1998, before all through service from Sanyō was withdrawn from Hanshin in March 2001.