History
Yokogawa Station (Hiroshima) opened on 25 September 1897 as a general station with the San'yō Railway's extension from Hiroshima to Tokuyama. After the 1 December 1906 nationalisation and the 12 October 1909 line-name change it became a San'yō Main Line station; the Dai-Nippon Kidō Hiroshima branch (forerunner of the Kabe Line) opened its own Yokogawa stop alongside on 19 December 1909. That stop passed through Kabe Light Railway (March 1919), Hiroshima Electric (May 1926) and Kōhin Railway (July 1931); on 20 April 1933 it was promoted to a full station as Yokogawamachi, and on 1 September 1936 Kōhin Railway was nationalised and Yokogawamachi was absorbed into the JNR Kabe Line's Yokogawa Station. The atomic bombing on 6 August 1945 destroyed the station building. The Kabe Line platform was relocated to its present site and elevated on 1 October 1962, the San'yō Main Line was raised onto a viaduct in June 1963 during the Ōta River diversion works, and the station was added to the JNR "Hiroshima City" tariff zone on 1 September 1972. Freight handling ended on 24 September 1980, parcel handling on 1 April 1986, and a Midori-no-Madoguchi window opened that same month. JR West took over on 1 April 1987; from the 16 March 1991 timetable revision all Kabe Line trains now run through to Hiroshima Station. A new station building opened on 23 August 2003, the south-side "NK Building" and the restored "first Japanese-built omnibus" exhibit opened on 28 March 2004, and ICOCA service began on 1 September 2007.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Yokogawa is recorded as the birthplace of Japan's first domestically built omnibus: a 12-seat vehicle ran between Yokogawamachi and Kabe-machi (about 15 km) in the early 20th century. A local merchants' "Retro Bus Restoration Association" later rebuilt the body, and the restored vehicle — nicknamed "Kayoko," a portmanteau of Kabe's "ka" and Yokogawa's "yoko" — was unveiled at the station forecourt on 28 March 2004 and has been displayed there ever since.