History
Kōnai Station opened on 16 September 1907 when Tosa Electric Railway extended the Ino Line west from Kagamigawabashi as far as here. The Kōnai-zaka pass beyond the stop was too steep for the new line, so the operator first opened the section past the pass (Edagawa–Ino) and then completed the Kōnai–Edagawa section through the pass on 20 February 1908 — only then was the line through to Ino. To avoid the steep gradient, the original track route ran under the JR Dosan Line bridge from the stop, then under the parallel highway through a narrow curved tunnel — the tunnel's tight curvature kept bogie cars off the line, making it the network bottleneck. The tunnel was demolished on 30 September 1960 and three kilometres of track on either side were realigned alongside the highway. The stop passed to Tosaden Kōtsū on 1 October 2014 with the operator merger. The 892 m gap between Kōnai and Ujidanchi-mae is the longest stop-to-stop distance on Tosaden Kōtsū.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
Kōnai sits at the foot of Kōnai-zaka, the pass that marks the boundary between Kōchi City and Ino. From 1907 until 1960 the Ino Line crossed the pass through a narrow curved single-track tunnel under the parallel highway — too tight for bogie cars, and the worst bottleneck on the line — until the tunnel was demolished in September 1960 and the track realigned alongside the road.