History
Hōkaiin Station opened on 20 June 1908 as a simple stop on the Chūgoku Railway's main line near Okayama; an earlier provisional stop with the same name had operated nearby from 1903 to 1908. It was upgraded to a full station on 2 September 1908 and renamed Hōkaiin Station for the nearby Shingon-school temple. With the nationalisation of the Chūgoku Railway on 1 June 1944, the station joined the Japanese National Railways' Tsuyama Line, 2.3 kilometres from Okayama. Freight handling ceased on 1 March 1962, parcel handling on 15 November 1971, and JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987 transferred operations to JR West. ICOCA-compatible automated gates were installed in July 2007; the manned ticket window closed on 31 May 2021 and the station has been unstaffed since the following day.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
The unusually wide and tree-lined platform is a leftover from a now-removed siding that once moved soldiers and supplies for an Imperial Japanese Army infantry regiment based on what is today Okayama University's Tsushima campus.