History
Hataura Station opened on 25 December 1959 as a petitioned station built with 1.9 million yen of locally raised funds, serving the Misumi Line from the outset as an unstaffed stop handling only diesel-car passengers. With the 1 April 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways the station was transferred to JR Kyushu, which still operates it on the renamed Amakusa-Misumi Line. The layout — a single side platform serving one ground-level track, two simple platform waiting rooms and no station building — has not materially changed since opening, although a small ticket vending machine for short-distance tickets has been added.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Hataura is a designated "honorary stationmaster" station, and although unstaffed it is kept conspicuously well-maintained — the kind of detail unstaffed stops rarely show.