History
Shin-Otanoshike Station (station number K51) is on the JR Hokkaido Nemuro Main Line in Kushiro, Hokkaido. It opened on 3 November 1988 as a passenger-only stop, built to serve the Fuji Paper / Ōji Paper company housing, a new residential subdivision, and the former Hokkaido Kushiro-Nishi High School (closed 2009; the site has hosted Hokkaido Kushiro-Tsuruno School for Special Needs since 2014). Its name simply marks it as the newer station relative to neighbouring Otanoshike. Kushiro is on the Pacific coast of eastern Hokkaido and serves as the seat of the Kushiro Subprefecture; it is the 7th-largest city in Japan by area, and the present Kushiro City was constituted on 11 October 2005 by the merger of the previous Kushiro City (1922–2005) with Akan Town and Onbetsu Town.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
The Kushiro article notes that the present Kushiro City — created in 2005 — incorporates a major exclave around the old Onbetsu Town that is physically separated from the central city by Shiranuka Town, the result of Shiranuka withdrawing from the original merger talks.