The Unique History of Shin-Fuji Station.

Shin-Fuji Station（新富士駅), which is located in Fuji City, as the closest area of Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture, has very unique history of foundation with some convoluted reasons and was established as the civic-requested stations after the grand opening of Tokaido Shinkansen in 1964. 

Shin-Fuji sta. is not connected or coterminous with city's primary and central terminal Fuji station in Tokaido Line as main railway but only for passengers of Shinkansen. Semi-rapid expresses such as Hikari & Nozomi the fastest type wholly passed the station. Kodama as non-passed express only has to stop there and get the passengers by per about 30 minutes. Currently, the numbers of visitors are not high. Possibly, most of them would be business persons or people whose relatives or families live there.   

However, in the moment of opening, the whole usage percentages in several years  were very high because of some particular purposes and certain religious demands. 

Shin-Fuji sta. was strongly requested by municipals, private cooperation and one of Japanese huge religious foundation "Soka Gakkai" which is based on Buddhism and formerly related to Nichiren Shu as one of the major sections of Buddha. The headquarter of Nichiren is in Fujinomiya City which is next there. In the past, the followers of Soka Gakkai often visited the headquarter of Nichiren as one of most sacred place for them. 

Before the birth of Shin-Fuji Sta, limited expresses bound to the nearest station in Minobu line as local railway were operated to transfer many religious passengers in the past. That's so helpful for visitors and lucrative for Japan National Railway, which was currently transformed to privatized cooperation "Japan Railway Tokai" who owns and administers Minobu line. However, due to the increment of visitors rapidly, they should need another one which is "faster" and "more efficient" way. 

The foundation of Shin-Fuji sta. firstly supported the people who wanna travel to headquarter by public transportation rapidly. However, the situation was suddenly changed because the headquarter of Nichiren unpredictably anathematized Soka Gakkai and brought about controversial feud each other. Therefore, the supporters of Soka halted to go there. 

Afterwards, the demands and usages of Shin-Fuji were completely tapered off. That was awkward tragedy for JR and region because the economical impacts of them were so strong. 

In spite of those unfortunate downturns, the travelers of business trips are still using the station because there are lots of factories of paper-manufacturing and some electronic ones. Besides, it is genuine that Shin-Fuji Sta. is one of nearest and fastest thresholds for Mt.Fuji and Fuji City where has lots of tourism attractions. I wanna visit the area, too.