History
Ryūgamizu opened on 7 August 1915 by the Railway Bureau between Shigetomi and Kagoshima on what is now the JR Kyushu Nippō Main Line. A reinforced-concrete station building replaced the original on 25 March 1952. Freight handling ended on 20 September 1962, the station was destaffed on 1 October 1979 along with the introduction of CTC between Minami-Miyazaki and Kagoshima, and parcel handling ended the same day. It passed to JR Kyushu at the 1 April 1987 privatisation. On 6 August 1993 the heavy rain of the August 1993 disaster caused mudslides that struck the station and a train standing in it — the famous incident in which the driver positioned the empty cars to shield evacuating passengers from the flow. Service resumed on 15 September 1993.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Citizen-of-the-Year award for 1993 went to the train's driver and crew, who held the train deliberately at the most precarious spot so its body could act as a wall protecting evacuating passengers from the mudslide — a decision later credited with saving all but three lives.