History
Nichinan Station opened on 28 October 1941 as Agata Station (吾田駅) when the Railway Ministry's Shibushi Line (now the Nichinan Line) was extended between Aburatsu and Kitagō. It was renamed Nichinan Station on 1 January 1952. On 8 May 1963 the Shibushi-Kitagō section of the Shibushi Line was absorbed into the Nichinan Line. Freight handling was discontinued on 25 November 1982, parcel handling on 14 March 1985, and the station was destaffed on 1 November 1986. With the JNR breakup on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Kyushu. On 1 April 2015 it became a simply-contracted station, with the ticket window taken over by Nichinan City. On 1 April 2022 it was transferred from the Kagoshima Branch to the new Miyazaki Branch. On 2 November 2023 JR Kyushu and Taiwan Railway concluded a sister-station agreement between this station and Rinan Station in Taichung, Taiwan.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
The forecourt of Nichinan Station displays a statue of Mancio Itō, the head of the Tenshō embassy of Japanese Christian envoys sent to Europe in 1582; Itō was born in this region. In November 2023 Nichinan also entered a sister-station relationship with Taiwan's identically-named Rinan Station (日南駅) on Taiwan Railway's Coast Line in Taichung.