History
Yobuno Station opened on 1 April 1915 as a stop on the privately run Kokura Railway. The railway was nationalised on 1 May 1943 as a wartime acquisition, and the station became part of what is today the Hitahikosan Line. Located in Kita-ku, Kitakyūshū, Fukuoka Prefecture, it sits 12.3 km from the line's starting point at Jōno and carries the station number JI09. Freight handling ended in October 1969, and the station became unstaffed in October 1971. A switchback that had once helped trains climb the 17-permille gradient toward Kanabe Pass was decommissioned in 1983 after the line fully converted to diesel traction. JR Kyushu inherited the station at the 1987 JNR privatisation.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
Yobuno was the only switchback station in Fukuoka Prefecture: steam-hauled trains had to reverse roughly 400 metres to gather speed for the 17-permille climb toward Kanabe Pass, a practice abandoned in 1983 once the line was fully dieselised.