Kibukawa

Weekday departures: 64/day in the available timetable data · Sat & holiday departures: 64/day in the available timetable data

Earliest / latest departure in the available data (weekday): 5:26 / 23:32

Busiest hour in the available data: 19:00–20:00 (6)

0:00 ─ 23:00

Figures are typical departures in the timetable data, not a live service count.

Timetable data as of 2 May 2026.

The timetable data is incomplete for some or all lines at this station, so the weekday and Sat & holiday figures are departures in the available timetable data, not totals.

Lines where the timetable data is complete: Kusatsu Line

Lines where the timetable data is incomplete:

• Ohmi Railway Main Line: no timetable data
• Shigaraki Line: no timetable data

• Kusatsu Line: Mikumo ⇄ Konan (Shiga)

Kibukawa Station opened on 29 December 1900 as a Kansai Railway station between Mikumo and Fukawa (now Kōnan); the Ōmi Railway had opened its Hino – Kibukawa section and the connecting Ōmi Railway station the previous day, 28 December 1900, making the location an interchange. The Kansai Railway was nationalised on 1 October 1907 and the 1909 line nomenclature placed the State Railway portion on the Kusatsu Line. The Shigaraki Line opened from Kibukawa to Shigaraki on 8 May 1933 and was suspended as a wartime non-urgent line on 1 October 1943, resuming on 25 July 1947. At the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR West, and on 13 July 1987 the Shigaraki Line was transferred to the third-sector Shigaraki Highland Railway. On 14 May 1991 a train-on-train collision occurred between the station and Shigarakigūshi (Shigaraki Kōgen Railway disaster); service resumed on 8 December 1991. Freight services on the JR side were discontinued in 1971; an attempt to restore freight handling between 1987 and 1999 ended without any actual service. The station was rebuilt with an overhead, bridge-style station building in November 1986. Automatic ticket-gates began operating on 21 January 1999, ICOCA service on 1 November 2003, and the Kusatsu Line's Tsuge – Kibukawa section gained ICOCA on 17 March 2018. The station is currently a JR West Transportation Service contract-operated station (since 1 April 2021), managed under Kusatsu Station. Three operators share the station: JR West (Kusatsu Line), Shigaraki Highland Railway (Shigaraki Line, starting here) and Ōmi Railway (Main Line / Minakuchi–Gamōno Line, ending here, station code OR37).

The name 'Kibukawa' is an 1889 administrative-merger compound name, formed by taking one character from each of the four villages merged that year — Naiki (内貴), Kita-Naiki (北内貴), Mushōno (虫生野) and Ukawa (宇川) — which combined into Kibukawa Village. There is no actual river called 'Kibukawa' near the station, but the name survives in a police box, an aza (字) subdistrict name, a road intersection and a city-road name.