History
Okayama Station opened on 18 March 1891 when the privately held Sanyō Railway extended its line west from Mitsuishi. The Sanyō Railway was nationalised in 1906 and the station became part of the Sanyō Main Line under the 1909 line-naming reform. The Uno Line opened from here in 1910, and a reinforced-concrete second-generation building was completed in 1926. The station served as the western terminus of the Sanyō Shinkansen from its arrival from Shin-Ōsaka on 15 March 1972 until the line was extended to Hakata in 1975. After the 1987 privatisation it passed to JR West, and a bridge-style station building opened in October 2006.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The Marunouchi-style front of the station faces the Shinkansen side rather than the conventional in-town side — one of only a handful of major Japanese stations laid out this way. The Shinkansen platforms use Godiego's "Ginga Tetsudō 999" as a departure melody, introduced in March 2016.