History
Bairin Station opened on 25 December 1910 as Bairin tram stop when the Dai-Nippon Kidō Hiroshima branch extended its line from Furuichibashi to Ōtagawa-bashi (now Kami-Yagi). Operations passed to Kabe Light Railway on 11 March 1919, to Hiroshima Electric on 1 May 1926, and to Kōhin Railway on 1 July 1931 before the stop was promoted to a full station on 1 December 1935. Kōhin Railway was nationalised on 1 September 1936, making this a Japanese National Railways Kabe Line station. It was added to the JNR/JR "Hiroshima City" tariff zone on 1 May 1973, lost parcel handling on 1 February 1984, and passed to JR West at privatisation on 1 April 1987. The station's administration moved from the Hiroshima Branch direct (via the Kabe management station) to the Kabe Railway District on 1 April 1991, and on 1 November of that year it became a commission-operated station. Turn-back services starting here began on 2 September 1996. Window hours were cut back to weekdays in October 2004, four-car door-cutting began on 1 October 2005 and ended on 15 March 2008. The Kabe Railway District itself was abolished on 1 July 2006 and the station went back under Hiroshima Branch direct control. ICOCA simple gates were installed on 25 July 2007 and ICOCA service began on 1 September 2007. Heavy rain in August 2014 closed the Midorii - Kabe section between 20 and 31 August, and the station was made unstaffed on 1 October 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The station name comes from the former village of Yagi-Bairin. The August 2014 mudslide disaster was at its worst around Bairin: torrents from the alluvial fan west of the station crossed the tracks and reached the prefectural road, and the revised Hiroshima hazard map now classifies almost everything west of the Kabe Line here as a "sediment-disaster warning zone", with the most exposed strips at the mountain edge upgraded to special-warning zones.