Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building

The Honjo Station Building

Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building (えちぜん鉄道本荘駅本屋, Echizen-tetsudō Honjō-eki Hon'ya) is a single-storey wooden station building at Nakaban in Awara City, Fukui Prefecture, built in 1928 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011. It went up in December of that year, when the Mikuni Awara Electric Railway opened its line between Fukui and Awara.

The building covers 61 square metres and measures 9.9 metres by 3.0 metres. It faces west under a hipped roof of pantiles, with a porch under a half-hipped roof set towards the north end of the front and the platform canopy projecting at the rear. The walls were later covered with sheet metal.

Paddy fields surround the station and the track runs straight from north to south. The Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building sits low on that flat ground, its roofline running parallel with the fields.

Why it is registered

The registration criterion is that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The case for the Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building rests less on the quality of the single structure than on its being a surviving example of the standard design used when the line opened.

Fukui Prefecture and Awara City both describe it as almost identical to the station building at Washizuka Harihara apart from the position of the porch, and suggest that buildings of this form once stood at stations all along the line in 1928. Many were built from the same drawings, and only a handful still look the part.

Original fabric survives as well. The decoration on the entrance gable and the metal brackets carrying the waiting room counter date from the building's construction and were left alone even when the walls were clad in sheet metal.

What to look for

Seen from the front, the porch projects from the northern part of the elevation rather than the centre, which is the quickest way to tell the Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building from its twin down the line. Its half-hipped roof has the top of the gable cut back, so the outline reads almost as a trapezium.

The decoration is on that gable face. This is where the 1928 design spent its effort, and it contrasts with the plain sheet metal of the walls behind.

Indoors, look under the counter, where metal brackets carry the board. The platform has no roof, so stepping out from the eaves puts you under open sky, with an unobstructed view of a train approaching across the fields.

Visiting

The Echizen Railway Honjo Station Building serves an unstaffed station and the waiting area is open to anyone at no charge. There is a toilet, cycle parking for 42, and a free park and ride car park with 15 spaces. Going out onto the platform needs a ticket.

Trains on the Mikuni Awara Line take about 37 minutes from Fukui Station, roughly every 30 minutes during the day. Since the station is unstaffed, fares are settled on the train.

For photographs, take the front from the road so that the off-centre porch is clear. With no canopy over the platform, the building throws long shadows early and late. Avoid flash towards moving trains, leave the tripod behind and keep back from the track.

These conditions were checked in September 2026. Services and facilities change, so confirm them on the Echizen Railway station page.