Sumiyoshi (Kumamoto)

Weekday departures: 32/day · Sat & holiday departures: 32/day

First / last train (weekday): 6:17 / 23:22

Busiest hour: 7:00–8:00 (3)

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0:00 ─ 23:00

Counts are departures in the timetable data shown on our live map.

• JR Amakusa Misumi Line: Midorikawa ⇄ Higo-Nagahama

Sumiyoshi Station opened on 25 December 1899 (Meiji 32) under the original Kyūshū Railway and has been on what is today JR Kyūshū's Misumi Line (the Amakusa-Misumi Line) ever since. The line was nationalised on 1 July 1907 (Meiji 40), bringing Sumiyoshi under the Imperial Railway Agency. Freight operations ceased on 1 October 1961 (Shōwa 36), the station became outsourced-staffed on 16 October 1973 (Shōwa 48), baggage handling ended on 1 February 1984 (Shōwa 59), and the station was unstaffed on 1 November 1986 (Shōwa 61). With the JNR breakup on 1 April 1987 (Shōwa 62) the station passed to JR Kyūshū. The crossing alarm at the platform-connecting level crossing was updated in February 2007 (Heisei 19), and on 14 March 2015 (Heisei 27) platform numbers were added at the timetable revision.

There is another Sumiyoshi Station on JR West's Tōkaidō Main Line (JR Kobe Line) in Kobe, Hyōgo, so JR has two stations with the identical name. On certain ticket-stock printouts this Kumamoto Sumiyoshi is distinguished by the parenthetical "(三)住吉" (Misumi-Sumiyoshi). Once a wooden station building stood here but it was destroyed during a Heisei-era typhoon and removed; today only roofed waiting areas remain, with a ticket vending machine on the Kumamoto-bound platform. Across the road on the embankment is the Sumiyoshi Coastal Park, where a bronze statue of "Jinbe" from One Piece was installed as part of the ONE PIECE Kumamoto Reconstruction Project.