History
Towada-Minami Station opened on 4 July 1920 as Kemanai Station (毛馬内駅) on the privately built Akita Railway, serving Nishikigi village in Akita Prefecture. The line was nationalised on 1 June 1934, becoming part of the JGR and later the JNR. The station took its present name on 1 June 1957. It passed to JR East at the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987. Ticketing functions ended on 31 March 2024 with the closure of the Midori no Madoguchi, and the station became fully unattended the following day. The station has a single island platform serving two tracks and is laid out as a switchback — every train must reverse direction here, a vestige of an abandoned plan to extend the line to Kosaka.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Until 2003 the station was a major gateway to Lake Towada, and a local bento-maker sold "Nishikigi okowa" lunch boxes here; both the lake-bound bus services and the bento sales ended that year, leaving the switchback platforms much quieter than they had been.