History
Funato Station opened on 1 January 1899 on the Kiwa Railway, in the city of Iwade, Wakayama Prefecture. A predecessor provisional stop on the same site had operated for several months in 1898 as the temporary terminus. The Kiwa Railway was bought by the Kansai Railway in 1904 and nationalised in 1907, placing the station on what became the Wakayama Line in 1909. JR West has operated Funato since the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987. The unattended station consists of two opposed side platforms connected by an open footbridge and sits 75.3 kilometres from the line's terminus at Ōji.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Funato appears by name in verse 49 of the fifth volume of Ōwada Takeki's 1900 Tetsudō Shōka ("Railway Song"), although the "Wakayama" station mentioned alongside it in the same verse refers to what is now Kiwa Station, not present-day Wakayama Station.