History
Kiwa Station opened on 17 August 1924 when the privately operated Ube Railway extended its line from Hon-Ajisu (today's Ajisu) to Tokonami in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The Ube Railway was nationalised in 1943, with the line absorbed into JNR as the Ube Higashi Line; it took its current Ube Line name on 1 February 1948. The station became unstaffed at that 1948 reorganisation. JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987 transferred the station to JR West, and the station building was rebuilt in 2020, leaving the passenger area as an open-sided roofed frame. The station sits at the 12.7 km point of the Ube Line from Shin-Yamaguchi.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Kiwa holds the last surviving on-platform level crossing on the Ube Line, used to connect the station building to the opposite track.