History
Rakurakuen Station traces back to the temporary 'Shiohama Beach Front' stop opened in August 1935 between Suminohama (an existing intermediate stop) and the rest of the 1924 Miyajima Line; on 1 December 1935 the temporary stop was replaced by a permanent Shiohama Station, and on the same day Suminohama was abolished. The station was renamed Rakurakuen on 8 September 1936, the day Hiroden's predecessor Hiroshima Gas Electric Tramway opened the Rakurakuen amusement park as a traffic-generator for the line — one of the era's many private-rail-park combinations. The park ran as one of Hiroshima's premier amusement parks until shifting tastes and competing facilities closed it on 31 August 1971. The station had been renamed Rakurakuen-yuenchi ('Rakurakuen Amusement Park') on 20 July 1965 to emphasise the connection, but was restored to Rakurakuen on 1 September 1971 the day after closure. Subsequent dates: platform improvements on 31 January 1981; station building completed on 31 March 1986 after the original station building burned down in February 1980; over-the-counter ticket-sales ended in April 2004. Today the station is a 2-platform/2-track ground-level stop, staggered platforms across the former Shiohama site, with the down-side platform housing the station building and a commuter-pass window operated by Hiroden Miyajima Garden. Station number M29.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
Rakurakuen began life as Shiohama in 1935, but Hiroden's predecessor built an amusement park called Rakurakuen (literally 'easy-easy garden, easily reachable by tram') next to the station the following year and changed the station's name to match — Hiroshima's own version of the railway-and-amusement-park pairing that was a hallmark of pre-war private-rail marketing in Japan. The park outlasted the war but closed in 1971; the station took the park's name back the day after closure, and 'Rakurakuen' lives on today as the surrounding place-name as well.