History
Arao Station opened on 1 November 1912 as the Railway Board's Manda Station (万田駅), an additional stop on the Kagoshima Main Line in what is today Manda, Arao, Kumamoto Prefecture. The station was renamed Arao on 15 June 1943, after Arao-machi merged with neighbouring villages to form Arao City in 1942. The second-generation station building was completed in March 1945. From 21 December 1949 the Arao Municipal Electric Tramway opened, with its own Shiden Arao Station behind the JNR station; a freight connector to the Miike Railway Honsen opened in October 1961 and was suspended in October 1978. The tramway closed on 1 October 1964. Parcel handling at the JNR station ended on 1 February 1984, and with the JNR breakup on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Kyushu and JR Freight; JR Freight operations ceased on 1 April 2006. Automatic ticket gates were installed on 20 February 2009, SUGOCA service began on 1 March 2009, and on 8 April 2012 the station forecourt was redeveloped with the Manda Pit second shaft-frame monument designed by mechanical-engineering students of Ariake National College of Technology. From the 17 March 2018 timetable revision the curtailed Limited Express 'Ariake' no longer stopped here, ending scheduled limited-express service. On 23 November 2024 the former staff office was converted into the 'Arao Living' community space.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Arao is the northernmost station in Kumamoto Prefecture and the official 'World Cultural Heritage Manda Pit Station' (世界文化遺産万田坑駅), since it is the nearest station to the World Heritage Manda Pit. Tickets issued at this station are printed with '(鹿) 荒尾' to distinguish it from JR Central's Arao Station on the Tōkaidō (Mino-Akasaka) line. The station is the latest in Kumamoto to receive the final train of the day, and east-west crossing of the station was so awkward (about 500 metres to the nearest crossing) that an east-side entrance was planned but frozen for budget reasons. The former Municipal Tramway Arao station was a small wood-built island platform behind the JNR station with no connecting access.