【Kuwana Station / Night Walk】(Kuwana, Mie) A Station Plaza with a Famous Abandoned Building

April 21st, 2026

MieKuwanaKuwana StationAround the Station

The street in front of Kuwana Station at night. A quiet station plaza lit by street lamps

Visited: Sunday, December 7, 2025

In the Edo period, Kuwana was one of the fifty-three post towns on the Tokaido highway and was immortalised in Utagawa Hiroshige's celebrated woodblock print series. A long-standing hub of trade and transport — yet today, the area around the station feels somewhat subdued, with an abandoned building standing as a quiet reminder of changing times.

Around the Station

Exterior of Kuwana Station. A simple, modern station building

Kuwana Station opened in 1894. The current building has been in use since 2020, though the atmosphere of the surrounding area makes it feel older than it is.

Kuwana Station plaza at night. Few restaurants, quiet and largely empty

The station serves JR Kansai Line, Kintetsu Nagoya Line, and Sangi Railway Hokusei Line — a genuine interchange point — but there are few restaurants nearby and the plaza is quiet after dark.

A retro covered shopping arcade near the station. Many shutters are down on a Sunday night

A covered shopping arcade close to the station. The retro architecture has real charm, but on a Sunday evening most of the shutters were down.

A building housing a cluster of small restaurants, with a narrow alleyway feel

A building packed with small restaurants, laid out like a narrow back alley. It has the feel of a place that hasn't changed much since the Showa era.

A "watch out for children" road sign featuring a girl, standing by the roadside

One of those ubiquitous jumping-child road signs, this time featuring a girl. You see them all over Japan, and Kuwana is no exception.

A covered arcade with a sign reading "Ginza Shopping Street"

In post-war Japan, seemingly every town had a shopping street called Ginza. Tokyo's Ginza has no arcades or traditional shotengai to speak of, which makes the name's nationwide spread all the more curious.

An old cabaret sign, its neon still intact

An old cabaret sign, still hanging in place. Whether it is still operating is hard to say, but it is a striking remnant of the area's more lively past.

A dimly lit back alley with izakayas and snack bars, their signs glowing softly

A lane of small bars and snack bars. Nothing flashy — the kind of places that run on regulars rather than foot traffic.

An elaborate covered arcade stretching into the distance along Teramachi-dori

A short walk from the station is the Teramachi-dori arcade, which has a more intricate, carefully designed structure than the one near the station. It developed just outside the moat of Kuwana Castle — Teramachi-bori — and has apparently been a commercial street since long before the modern era. The old Tokaido road runs even closer to the sea.

A dark street at night, branching toward the old Tokaido road

The old Tokaido continues beyond this point, but with little lighting and uneven ground, I turned back here and headed toward the station.

A street lined with lamp posts on the way back to the station, echoing the area's former shopping street

The street back to the station is lined with lamp posts — a faint echo of the shopping street that once lined this route.

Kuwana Station plaza. An unlit abandoned building is visible on the left

Back at the station plaza, the darkened building on the left is the abandoned structure — reportedly slated for demolition. As with so many Japanese station districts, the activity has shifted to large retail complexes on the outskirts, leaving the area around the station quiet.