History
Ainoura Station opened on 27 March 1920 as a station on the private Sasebo Light Railway (later the Sasebo Railway), in Aiura-chō, Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. It was nationalised on 1 October 1936 as part of the Matsuura Line. In 1950 the city of Sasebo opened a 0.65 km port spur from Ainoura to a municipal coal-loading wharf; that spur was suspended in March 1971 and freight handling at the station itself ceased on 15 June 1978. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Kyushu, and on 1 April 1988 it was transferred again to the third-sector Matsuura Railway, becoming unstaffed at the same time.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Sasebo City operated a 0.65-km municipal harbour spur from Ainoura to a coal-loading wharf from 1950 until its suspension in March 1971 — a rare example of a city-run industrial branch line that has since been built over for housing.