History
Shirataki Station opened on 12 August 1929 as part of the Ministry of Railways' Sekihoku East Line, then being extended west from Marusebpu toward what is now Kamikawa. Successive reorganisations folded the route into the Sekihoku Line in 1932 and the Sekihoku Main Line in 1961. Freight handling ended in 1982 and the stop became unstaffed by 1992. At the 1987 JNR breakup it passed to JR Hokkaido. From 1981 it served as a limited-express stop on the "Okhotsk" service, a role that was widened at the March 2025 timetable revision when all scheduled passenger trains on the line began to call here. The wooden station building was rebuilt in 1989 and sits at the head of a wide former-yard layout.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The 37.3 km gap between Shirataki and Kamikawa, on either side of the Sekihoku tunnel through the Hokkaido watershed, is the longest distance between adjacent stations on any JR conventional line carrying scheduled passenger service.