History
Sakanoue Station opened on 1 October 1966 as an unstaffed addition to the Ibusuki-Makurazaki Line between Taniyama and Goino, then operated by Japanese National Railways. Staff were assigned from 8 March 1983, and the station passed to JR Kyushu at the 1 April 1987 privatisation. The line itself had been built southward from Nishi-Kagoshima (now Kagoshima-Chūō) in stages from 1930, reaching Ibusuki by December 1934, and was renamed the Ibusuki-Makurazaki Line on 31 October 1963. SUGOCA IC card support was introduced on 1 December 2012, and the station became largely unstaffed under the ANSWER remote-assistance system from 30 May 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.