History
Tsukinokawa Station is on the Matsuura Railway Nishi-Kyūshū Line in Tsukinokawa-machi, Matsuura, Nagasaki Prefecture. The station opened on 25 June 1933 on the Ministry of Railways Imari Line (later the Matsuura Line); freight and parcel handling ended and the station was unstaffed on 1 October 1970, the station passed to JR Kyushu's Matsuura Line on 1 April 1987 with JNR privatisation, then to the third-sector Matsuura Railway Nishi-Kyūshū Line on 1 April 1988, and on 11 May 2015 was given the nickname "Japan's number-one horse-mackerel and chub-mackerel landing base." The nickname reflects the Matsuura Local Wholesale Market (Matsuura Fish Market) immediately north of the station. According to Matsuura's Wikipedia article, the city is on the northern Kita-Matsuura Peninsula facing the Genkai Sea and Imari Bay, is the birthplace of the mediaeval Matsuura Party of warriors, and has Japan's number-one ajiage (horse mackerel) catch — formally proclaiming itself the "Holy Land of Aji Fry" on 27 April 2019.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The station article records that in April 1943, a derailed freight train at this station was repaired under wartime blackout by station-master Maruyama Shichirō, who lit lamps despite air-raid blackout orders to complete the work; reproached by army observers, he subsequently threw himself in front of a locomotive he had himself signalled to depart, and a memorial stele was raised on the station grounds in May 1945 with about 17,280 yen raised by colleagues and the village.