History
Saijō Station (Hiroshima) opened on 10 June 1894 with the San'yō Railway's extension from Mihara to Hiroshima, handling both passengers and freight. It was relocated about 300 m towards Okayama on 5 February 1897, passed to the state railway when the San'yō Railway was nationalised on 1 December 1906, and was designated part of the San'yō Main Line on 12 October 1909. A second-generation station building opened on 15 October 1959; freight handling ended on 1 January 1984 and parcel handling on 1 April 1986. At privatisation on 1 April 1987 it passed to JR West. Saijō became the first conventional-line station in Higashihiroshima to install automatic ticket gates on 15 April 2007 and ICOCA service began on 1 September 2007. From 20 October 2011 work on a new overhead station and free passageway began; a temporary station was used from 1 June 2012, the third-generation overhead building opened on 13 January 2014, and the south–north passageway and the full station complex entered service at 10:00 on 25 January 2015. The station was closed by the July 2018 heavy-rain disaster, ran a partial Shiraichi–Hachihonmatsu shuttle from 21 August, and resumed full operation between Shiraichi and Seno on 9 September. Station numbering (JR-G10) was introduced in September 2020, administration moved from Saijō to Kaitaichi on 1 November 2020, and the staffed Midori-no-Madoguchi window closed on 8 May 2022.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Saijō is the gateway to Higashihiroshima, a city of about 190,000, and is the closest station to Hiroshima University. The town is famous for its sake breweries, and every second weekend of October the nearby Saijō Central Park hosts the "Sake Festival". To distinguish tickets from the Nishijō Station on JR East's Shinonoi Line, tickets issued here are printed with the (陽) San'yō prefix.