History
The site of Shin-Minamata Station was first established on 19 September 1968 as Hatsuno Signal Stop by Japanese National Railways. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 the signal stop passed to JR Kyushu. When the first segment of the Kyushu Shinkansen opened on 13 March 2004 between Shin-Yatsushiro and Kagoshima-Chūō, a new Shinkansen station named Shin-Minamata was inaugurated at this location and the signal stop was promoted to a full station under the Hisatsu Orange Railway, which took over the Yatsushiro-Sendai segment of the former Kagoshima Main Line on the same day. The JR station building, designed by Makoto Sei Watanabe and opened with the line, received a Kumamoto ArtPolis promotion award.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The JR Shinkansen station building was designed by Makoto Sei Watanabe; the plaza monument "Shin-Minamata Gate", whose branching form was generated by computer algorithm, is by the same architect.