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Hokushin Line

railway line in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ5358551 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Hokushin Line (北神線, Hokushin-sen) is a line of Kobe Municipal Subway connecting Tanigami in Kita-ku, Kobe and Shin-Kobe in Chūō-ku, Kobe. The 7.5-kilometer (4.7 mi) line has only these two stations.

Formerly operated by the third-sector Hokushin Kyuko Electric Railway (ja:北神急行電鉄; a subsidiary of Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group), in 2020 the company was absorbed into the Kobe Municipal Transportation Bureau, and the Hokushin Line became part of the subway network.

Operations

All trains on the line operate a through service to/from Seishin-Chuo on the Seishin-Yamate Line.

Stations

History

The Hokushin Line opened on 2 April 1988, including the 7,179 m (23,553 ft) Hokushin Tunnel.

The line was built by Hokushin Kyuko Railway Co., Ltd. (北神急行電鉄株式会社, Hokushin Kyūkō Dentetsu Kabushiki-gaisha), a private railway company in Kobe, Japan. It was headquartered in Kita-ku, Kobe. Investors in the company included Hankyu Railway and Kobe Electric Railway, and it was a subsidiary of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings. On 4 March 2020, the Kobe Municipal Transportation Bureau announced that it would acquire Hokushin Kyuko Railway Co., Ltd.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hokushin Line” as railway line in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020, 1988—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Hokushin, Line and railway can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as railway line in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5358551. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 1988.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hokushin Line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.