History
Beppu Station opened on 16 July 1911 as a Railway Board station in Eki-mae-machi, Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, on the Nippō Main Line. In June 1949 a postwar imperial tour saw Imperial trains running Kōzaki - Beppu (7 June) and Beppu - Nakatsu (9 June). Freight handling ended on 1 October 1961. A section of line around Beppu was elevated on 25 September 1965; the elevated works were completed on 9 August 1966 together with double-tracking from Kamegawa to Higashi-Beppu, and the present second-generation 'Beppu Minshū-eki' building opened on 15 September 1966 with Beppu Station Centre (now the BIS shopping area) following on 1 October. Parcel handling (excluding newspapers) ended on 1 November 1986, and JR Kyushu took over on 1 April 1987. The station was refurbished in spring 1995 and underwent a large-scale renovation completed on 25 February 2005. Three platform elevators were installed in March 2007, automatic ticket gates on 13 March 2010, and SUGOCA support from 1 December 2012. In April 2013 the platforms were fully renovated and raised, and on 12 March 2022 the Midori-no-Madoguchi hours were shortened to 07:30 - 19:00.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Beppu is the representative station of Beppu, internationally known for the Beppu Onsen. All limited expresses stop here, and the Yufu, Yufuin-no-mori, and Trans-Kyushu Limited Express originate or terminate here. From 1929 to October 1956 the Ōita Kōtsū Beidai tram ran from Kitahama to Beppu Eki-mae before its tracks were removed. A 1952 plan to relocate the station to Shinkō-chō was scrapped due to opposition from local residents, but the name 'Shin-Beppu' survives in the city road 'Shin-Beppu-eki Myōban-sen' (commonly called the 'Kankō-kō Ōdōri'). At the elevated station's opening in 1967 the shopping arcade beneath the viaduct was billed as 'the longest under-viaduct shopping arcade in Japan'.