Former Meitetsu Minomachi Line Mino Station Platform and

What Exactly Is Preserved Here?

The cultural property registration covers the platform structure and the railway tracks themselves — a combined 405 square meters of railway ground that has remained essentially untouched for over a century. Two narrow platforms, each 70 centimeters high and 3.8 meters wide, extend from the south face of the station building in the distinctive comb-shaped (kushigata) layout typical of small terminal stations of the era.

What makes the site so unusual is the level of original fabric still in place. The platform side walls are faced with rounded river cobblestones, a hand-laid finish that speaks to the patient craftsmanship of provincial Taisho-era engineers. Slender L-shaped steel beams support the platform canopy overhead — an austere but elegant solution that lets light filter down onto the boarding area. Between the two platforms run two parallel tracks, the rails themselves stamped as products of the Carnegie Steel Company in 1919, imported from Pennsylvania in the United States and still bearing their original markings.

The Story of the Mino-machi Line

The line that once terminated here was born of local ambition. In 1909 (Meiji 42), the Mino Electric Tramway Company was founded by a group of Osaka and Mino-area investors with capital of 500,000 yen — a substantial sum for a regional venture at the time. By February 1911, the company had completed a 24.9-kilometer electric tramway connecting Kandamachi in the heart of Gifu City with the prosperous papermaking town then known as Kozuchi.

The original Mino terminus was a temporary stop located about 300 meters north of the present site. As the town's name was officially changed from Kozuchi to Mino-machi, the station was renamed accordingly. Then in October 1923, to coincide with the opening of the national railway's Etsumi-Nan Line and the laying out of the new Hirookacho thoroughfare, the entire station was relocated to its current position and rebuilt on the comb-shaped terminal plan you see today.

For nearly nine decades the Mino-machi Line carried students, shopkeepers, paper merchants, and day-trippers between Mino and Gifu, eventually merging into the Meitetsu (Nagoya Railroad) network. After ridership declined in the late twentieth century, the section between Shin-Seki and Mino was discontinued on April 1, 1999. Rather than demolish the terminus, Mino City elected to preserve it as a monument to the railway's role in the community's modernization.

Why It Was Designated a Cultural Property

When the platform and tracks were entered onto the National Register of Tangible Cultural Properties on February 9, 2005, the citation emphasized that the site "preserves remarkably well the appearance of a modern light-rail terminal station." That phrase carries real weight in Japanese architectural history: very few original early twentieth-century interurban terminals survive anywhere in the country, and almost none retain their platforms, canopies, and rails together as a coherent ensemble.

The combination of cobblestone facing, L-section steel canopy, U-shaped track arrangement, and the genuine 1919 Carnegie rails offers researchers and visitors a near-complete snapshot of provincial Japanese railway construction in the Taisho period. The wooden station building (also registered, separately) completes the ensemble, and together they constitute a rare reference for understanding how light-rail technology was adapted to small-town Japan.

Highlights for Visitors

Visiting Information

Admission is free, and the site is open during daylight hours throughout the year. From April through September, visiting hours are from 9:00 to 17:00; from October through March, from 9:00 to 16:30. The site is closed on Tuesdays and during the New Year holidays. Even when the gate is locked, the platforms and streetcars remain visible from the perimeter fence, so the journey is rarely wasted.

The station is conveniently located just three minutes on foot from Mino-shi Station on the Nagaragawa Railway — itself a Registered Tangible Cultural Property and well worth a look. Travelers arriving by car can reach the site in about seven minutes from the Mino interchange of the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway via National Route 156. A small parking area is available nearby.

Things to Do in the Surrounding Area

The Former Mino Station sits at the northern edge of one of central Japan's most enchanting historic districts, the Udatsu no Agaru Machinami — the Townscape of the Raised Fire Walls. Selected as a National Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1999, this neighborhood preserves more than a hundred Edo- and Meiji-era merchant houses, each topped with the distinctive raised parapet walls (udatsu) that wealthy washi-paper merchants once installed as both fire protection and a public display of prosperity.

Within easy walking distance you will find the Former Imai Family Residence, an exceptionally large Edo-period merchant house with a celebrated suikinkutsu water-music garden; the Mino Washi Akari Art Museum, dedicated to handmade Mino paper and its luminous sculptural possibilities; and dozens of small workshops, cafes, and paper boutiques where visitors can purchase or even make their own washi.

A short drive further out brings you to the Mino Bridge — Japan's oldest surviving modern suspension bridge for general traffic and a designated Important Cultural Property — and to the Mino Washi no Sato Kaikan, where hands-on papermaking experiences are available year-round. Mino's traditional Honminoshi handmade paper technique is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, making the entire town a living cultural landscape worth exploring at a leisurely pace.