History
Kyūragi Station opened on 13 June 1899 as the eastern terminus of the Karatsu Kogyo Railway's extension from Yamamoto, and became a through-station six months later when the track was extended east to Azamibaru (now Taku). The operator, renamed the Karatsu Railway, merged with the Kyushu Railway in 1902, and the station was renamed Iwaya on 1 November 1903. After the line's 1909 designation as the Karatsu Line, the station became a contracted operation in 1971 and fully unstaffed in 1983. Control passed to JR Kyushu on 1 April 1987. The current timber station building dates from 1930, and a gallery was added in 1995. The name is often cited as one of Japan's hard-to-read station names.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
An 1899 brick water tower, dating from the line's earliest steam-locomotive era, still stands almost intact beside the platform; the station also served as a location for Naoto Takenaka's 1997 film Tokyo Biyori.