History
The station opened as Numakunai Station on September 1, 1891 on the Nippon Railway in what is now the town of Iwate, Iwate Prefecture. The 1906 nationalisation made it part of the Tōhoku Main Line, and while the Tōhoku Main Line was non-electrified the station served as a junction for coupling and uncoupling auxiliary locomotives needed to assist trains over Jūsanbongi Pass; this role ended when the Morioka–Aomori section was double-tracked and electrified on 1 October 1968. With the April 1, 1987 JNR privatisation it passed to JR East. On December 1, 2002, when the Tōhoku Shinkansen was extended to Hachinohe, the station was renamed Iwate-Numakunai and became a Shinkansen stop; the parallel Tōhoku Main Line section here was concurrently transferred to the third-sector Iwate Ginga Railway Company.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
In fiscal 2024, an average of 75 passengers boarded Shinkansen trains here each day, the lowest figure on any JR East shinkansen and only behind Oku-Tsugaru-Imabetsu and Kikonai across the entire shinkansen network.