History
Tabira-Hiradoguchi Station opened on 6 August 1935 as Hiradoguchi Station on the Ministry of Railways' Imari Line in present-day Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture. The line was renamed the Matsuura Line on 1 March 1945, and the station passed briefly to JR Kyushu at the 1 April 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways. On 1 April 1988 the third-sector Matsuura Railway took over the route, and the station was renamed Tabira-Hiradoguchi on 11 March 1989 to acknowledge its actual location in the former town of Tabira. It is the westernmost station in Japan on a railway operated under the Railway Business Act (i.e. the westernmost non-monorail station), and on the four main islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu) it is the westernmost station of all. A "Westernmost Station" monument has stood on the forecourt since 1962, and Matsuura Railway adopted "Japan's Westernmost Station" as the station's official nickname in 2015. A portion of the station building houses a small railway museum, opened in April 1989 and renovated in October 2025, displaying signage and rolling-stock artefacts from the former Japanese National Railways Matsuura Line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Tabira-Hiradoguchi, on the Matsuura Railway Nishi-Kyūshū Line, is the westernmost non-monorail (ordinary-railway) station in Japan and the westernmost station on the four main islands. It held the title of Japan's westernmost station outright until Yui Rail's Naha Airport opened in 2003; it was a JR Kyushu station until the line was transferred to Matsuura Railway in 1988.