History
Kizukuri Station opened on October 21, 1924 as a station on the privately operated Mutsu Railway, in the former town of Kizukuri. The line was nationalised on June 1, 1927, bringing the station into the Japanese Government Railways. Freight handling ended on September 20, 1980, and the staff was withdrawn on April 1, 1983 in favour of simplified consignment. Operational control passed to JR East on April 1, 1987. The current concrete station building, completed on August 3, 1992, is fronted by a giant statue modelled on the shakōkidogū (goggle-eyed clay figure) excavated from the nearby Kamegaoka site; the building was selected for the Top 100 Stations of Tōhoku in 2002.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The shakōkidogū statue on the façade originally blinked red in time with arriving trains — the "Welcome Beam" — but local complaints that it frightened children led the railway to switch it off; a 2020 refit replaced the bulbs with seven-colour LEDs that the operator now runs only on request.