History
Sasebo Station opened on 20 January 1898 as the western terminus of the Kyushu Railway. The line was nationalised on 1 July 1907, making Sasebo the westernmost stop on the national rail network, and the line numbering reforms of 12 October 1909 placed it at the end of the Sasebo Line. A two-storey reinforced-concrete station building opened on 25 August 1937, surviving the war and remaining in use until elevation. Freight handling ended in 1985, and JR Kyushu inherited the station at privatisation on 1 April 1987. When the JR Matsuura Line was transferred to the third-sector Matsuura Railway as the Nishi-Kyushu Line on 1 April 1988, Sasebo became the westernmost station in the entire JR Group, and an elevated joint station building opened on 26 December 2001.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Because both JR Kyushu and Matsuura Railway treat it as a terminus, Sasebo Station is both the westernmost JR Group station in Japan and the westernmost terminal station in the country.