History
Higo Tanoura Station opened on 4 April 1925 as a stop on the Japanese Government Railways Kagoshima Main Line, in what is now the town of Ashikita, Kumamoto Prefecture. The station passed to JR Kyushu at the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987. On 13 March 2004, the partial opening of the Kyushu Shinkansen prompted JR Kyushu to transfer the parallel coastal stretch of the Kagoshima Main Line between Yatsushiro and Sendai to the third-sector Hisatsu Orange Railway, and the station was reassigned along with it. The reinforced-concrete station building remains in place but is unstaffed, and an old freight platform survives in use as a siding for track-maintenance vehicles.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
A disused freight platform still stands at the station, now serving as a holding track for the operator's track-maintenance vehicles.