History
Setose Station (station number A49) is on the JR Hokkaido Sekihoku Main Line in Engaru, Monbetsu District, Hokkaido. It opened on 10 October 1927 as a station of the government-built Sekihoku East Line, and since 2021 has been maintained by Engaru Town under a local-management arrangement after JR Hokkaido considered it for abolition; it survived because students in the Setose area still use it to commute to high school. According to Engaru's Wikipedia article, the present-day town was formed on 1 October 2005 by the equal merger of the former Engaru, Ikutahara, Maruseppu, and Shirataki municipalities (three towns and one village), and ranks as one of Japan's largest "towns or villages" by area — third nationwide after Rubetsu Village and Ashoro Town — while holding the largest population among non-city municipalities of the Okhotsk Subprefecture.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
Power for the Setose area is generated by the Setose Hydroelectric Station, a 25,000 kW Hokkaido Electric Power plant fed by the Muri Dam that has been in service since 1980, according to Engaru Town's Wikipedia article.