is a railway station of

Chūō Main Line The , commonly called the Chūō Line, is one of the major trunk railway lines in Japan. It connects Tokyo and Nagoya, although it is the slowest direct railway connection between the two cities; the coastal Tōkaidō Main Line is slightly faste ...

East Japan Railway Company The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are ...

(JR East) in Nagasaka, in the city of Hokuto,

Yamanashi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Yamanashi Prefecture has a population of 817,192 (1 January 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,465 km2 (1,724 sq mi). Yamanashi Prefecture borders Saitama Prefecture to the no ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Lines

Hinoharu Station is served by the

, and is 160.1 kilometers from the terminus of the line at

Tokyo Station Tokyo Station ( ja, 東京駅, ) is a railway station in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The original station is located in Chiyoda's Marunouchi business district near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Imperial Palace grounds. The newer Eastern extension is ...

Station layout

The station consists of one ground level

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platforms ...

and one ground level

island platform An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...

, connected to the wooden station building by a footbridge. The station is staffed.

Platforms

History

Hinoharu Station opened on December 21, 1904 a station on the

Japanese Government Railways The Japanese Government Railways (JGR) was the national railway system directly operated by the Japanese Ministry of Railways ( ja, 鉄道省, Tetsudō-shō, ) until 1949. It was a predecessor of Japanese National Railways and the later Japan Rai ...

(JGR) Chūō Main Line. The station was built as a watering point for

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s, which were still used on the line until August 1964. A freshwater spring, called the Hino spring, occupied this location, and was a noted local landmark due to an ancient pine tree from which local legend stated that

Takeda Shingen , of Kai Province, was a pre-eminent ''daimyō'' in feudal Japan. Known as the "Tiger of Kai", he was one of the most powerful daimyō with exceptional military prestige in the late stage of the Sengoku period. Shingen was a warlord of great ...

once hung his battle standard. When the government appropriated the land for the station, the local landowner insisted that the tree be spared. However, through neglect and due to smoke from the locomotives, the pine tree died in 1914. Descendants of the owner sued the Railroad Ministry in 1917, and won the case in 1919. A monument was erected in front of the station on the location of the pine tree in 1933 to commemorate the incident. The JGR became the JNR (

Japanese National Railways The abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pref ...

) after the end of World War II. Scheduled freight services were discontinued from February 1972. With the dissolution and

privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

of the JNR on April 1, 1987, the station came under the control of the East Japan Railway Company.

Passenger statistics

In fiscal 2017, the station was used by an average of 590 passengers daily (boarding passengers only).

Surrounding area

*Hinoharu post office

References

* Miyoshi Kozo. ''Chuo-sen Machi to eki Hyaku-niju nen''. JT Publishing (2009) *

External links

JR East Hinoharu Station
{{Chūō East Line Railway stations in Yamanashi Prefecture Railway stations in Japan opened in 1904 Stations of East Japan Railway Company Chūō Main Line Hokuto, Yamanashi