History
The Osaka Metro Tanimachi Line's Abeno Station opened on 27 November 1980 as a replacement for the original Nankai Hirano Line Abeno Station, which closed the same day. Earlier station history at the same vicinity: the Nankai Railway (now Nankai Electric Railway) Uemachi Line began service on 1 October 1910; the (original) Hankai Tramway Hirano Line opened on 26 April 1914 and merged into Nankai Railway on 21 June 1915. Through wartime corporate consolidation the station became part of Kintetsu on 1 June 1944, then passed to the newly-formed Nankai Electric Railway on 1 June 1947. On 27 November 1980 the Nankai Hirano Line was abolished, the Uemachi Line was transferred to Hankai Tramway on 1 December 1980, and the Osaka Municipal Subway Tanimachi Line opened simultaneously on the same day between Tennōji and Yaominami. On 12 September 1987, with the opening of the Abeno Belta complex, the Tennōji-Ekimae-bound tram stop was moved to its present location. With the privatisation of the Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau on 1 April 2018, the Tanimachi Line section passed to Osaka Metro. Platform screen doors went into service on the Tanimachi Line on 27 November 2025.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
From 1 September 1929 until 27 November 1980 a connecting track joined the Uemachi Line and the Hirano Line at the Abeno intersection, and from 8 December 1929 until the Hirano Line's final day of service through trains ran between Tennōji-Ekimae and Hirano via this connection (with a hiatus during the war and immediate postwar years). A truss-structure utility pole at the northeast corner of the Abeno intersection — once a contact-wire support for that connecting track — is still in use today as a catenary support for the Uemachi Line, and is identified as "上 キ" (Uemachi-line feeder).