Think of train stations in Japan and the mighty Shinjuku station is sure to come to mind for many people. That is the world’s busiest train station, and Japan monopolises the top 50 list with only five of them not in this country. However, at the other end of the scale are some tiny stations which are usually unstaffed and used by very few commuters.

Station: Yotsutsuji

Prefecture: Yamaguchi

Line(s): San’yo Line

Average No. of Daily Passengers: 273

My initial impressions of this station were favourable and I was enjoying the sleek, modern simplicity of the waiting room as well as the two big trees either side of it acting like guards akin to the stone foxes at a shrine. I left the station in a positive mood but many, many months later in my “research” (a quick look on Wikipedia!) I discovered the more visually pleasing station building of old.

The quaint old station building was replaced in Autumn 2020

In terms of station-related content, the platform zero stations of Yamaguchi prefecture may have been one of my main focuses of a day trip from Hiroshima last August but this tiny unstaffed station was a bigger bonus than expected with its basic gateless ticket gate and shining metalic silver construction.

Yotsutsuji originally opened in 1920 and is served by the JR West San’yō Main Line which continues on to Shin-Yamaguchi and Shimonoseki in one direction and Hōfu, Tokuyama and Iwakuni in the other.

For me, it was just something of a pit-stop en-route to Ube station (home to a platform zero) and not surprisingly there wasn’t anything to see and do in the surrounding area of this peaceful countryside part of Yamaguchi city. To be fair, there was a taxi stand, a supermarket and a Japanese confectionary shop on the street running parallel to the station so it wasn’t completely desolate although the station itself very much was!

The station consists of just one side platform and an island platform connected by a footbridge. There is a middle track too but that’s no longer in operation.

It took me about three hours to get to Yotsutsuji from our base in Hiroshima which is madness for the majority of people I guess but I enjoy the journey along the coast and the break from my family!! Of course, visiting this unstaffed station was just the warm-up for the aforementioned platform zeros as well as a football match and the fox-blessed hot spring town.

Click on the following links for previous ‘Unstaffed Stations of Japan’ posts…

1. Kamiyagi   #2. Funamachi   #3. Inazusa   #4. Yodo   #5. Nebukawa   #6. Miyamae   #7. Arao   #8. Higashi-Abiko   #9. Nukazawa   #10. Shin Shibaura   #11. Kubiki   #12. Kamakurakōkōmae   #13. Daishimae   #14. Minami-Takada   #15. Mochida   #16. Minami-Takasaki   #17. Screen   #18. Takio   #19. Igaya   #20. Sue