History
Sakuramachi opened on 25 December 1919 (Taishō 8) as Bungo-machi, was renamed Ogawamachi (read "Ogawamachi" though the actual neighbourhood name was "Kogawamachi" — a misreading that stuck) in 1921 (Taishō 10), and traffic was halted on 9 August 1945 by the atomic bombing. The Nagasaki-eki-mae–Ogawamachi–Furumachi section was restored on 11 January 1946 (Shōwa 21). In March 1954 (Shōwa 29) the steep mountain-pass section (with 40-permil grades up to the now-defunct old Sakuramachi stop and onward to Furumachi) was abolished after National Route 34 was grade-separated; the Sakuramachi Branch was rerouted in cutting through the highway, the old Sakuramachi stop was abolished, and Ogawamachi was relocated. The stop took the name Sakuramachi on 20 September 1966 (Shōwa 41) and was rebuilt on 26 March 2003 (Heisei 15). It carries stop number 44 on the Sakuramachi Branch and is served only by route 3.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Sakuramachi is the nearest stop to Nagasaki City Hall and the headquarters of Nagasaki Broadcasting (NBC), so it sees civic-business and event traffic. Because only route 3 stops here, every time route 3 has been suspended — for example after each of the four derailment incidents at Kōkaidō-mae (now Shiyakusho-mae) between 2007 and 2016 — the stop has been temporarily cut off. Tram transfers were historically limited to Shinchi-Chūkagai for routes 1 and 5; from 1 July 2020 (Reiwa 2) a transfer was added between routes 3, 4 and 5 at Shimin-Kaikan (now Shiyakusho), and from 1 September 2022 (Reiwa 4) another between routes 1 and 3 at Nagasaki-eki-mae, finally giving Sakuramachi single-fare access to the whole system. Parts of the abolished 1954 mountain-pass route survive — a stretch of the 40-permil descent toward Furumachi is now the pedestrian walkway of the Katsuyama Market.