Echizen Railway Washizuka Harihara Station Building

The Washizuka Harihara Station Building

Echizen Railway Washizuka Harihara Station Building (えちぜん鉄道鷲塚針原駅本屋) is a single-storey wooden station building at Kawai Washizuka in Fukui City, Fukui Prefecture, built in 1928 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011. It dates from the laying of the Mikuni Awara Electric Railway between Fukui and Awara.

The building covers 70 square metres and measures 9.9 metres by 3.6 metres. It faces west under a hipped roof of pantiles, with a porch under a half-hipped roof towards the south end of the front and the platform canopy projecting at the rear. The walls were later covered with sheet metal.

The station stands on the boundary between Fukui City and Sakai City, on the way from central Fukui to the port of Mikuni. Readings of the name differ: the Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives Washizuka Harihara, while Fukui Prefecture and Echizen Railway use Washizuka-Haribara, which is the form on the station signs.

Why it is registered

The registration criterion is that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The Echizen Railway Washizuka Harihara Station Building was listed as a surviving example of the standard specification the Mikuni Awara Electric Railway used when it opened.

Fukui Prefecture records that most station buildings on the Mikuni Awara Line are said to have collapsed in the Fukui earthquake of 1948, and that this one escaped. After the flat country near the epicentre lost its stations at a stroke, it remained as one of the few still in the form it was built in.

Ownership of the railway moved twice without the building moving at all. Operation passed from the Mikuni Awara Electric Railway to Keifuku Electric Railroad in 1942, and from Keifuku to Echizen Railway in 2003, while the station building stayed where it was and stayed in use.

What to look for

Look at the posts under the porch and the platform canopy. At the Echizen Railway Washizuka Harihara Station Building some of them were cut from rail, material that was lying about the railway's own yard, and the profile in section gives away what they used to be.

At the front, note that the porch sits towards the south. The station building at Honjo, built from the same design, has it towards the north. Set the two side by side and you can see which part of a standard drawing was adjusted on site.

From the platform side the yard is wider than it once was. Through services from the Fukui Railway Fukubu Line run as far as this station, so modern low-floor cars pass in front of a building from 1928.

Visiting

The Echizen Railway Washizuka Harihara Station Building serves an unstaffed station and the waiting area is open to anyone at no charge. There is a toilet, cycle parking for 60 and a park and ride car park with 23 spaces. A ticket is needed to go out onto the platform.

Trains on the Mikuni Awara Line take about 23 minutes from Fukui Station, and through services from Tawaramachi on the Fukui Railway take about 13 minutes. Daytime trains run roughly every 30 minutes, and fares are settled on board.

For photographs, work from the road so that the porch reads against the main roof; for the rail posts, go close and shoot the section. On the platform stay behind the tactile paving, avoid flash towards moving trains and leave tripods behind.

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