History
Gosannen Station opened on 12 December 1921 as a Japanese Government Railways station in what was Iizume village. The station, now in Misato, Akita Prefecture, sits 234.7 rail kilometres from Fukushima on the Ōu Main Line. Freight and parcel handling ended on 1 April 1976 when the station became unstaffed. It passed to JR East at the JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987. A replacement station building, jointly developed with the town of Misato and styled after a samurai helmet to reference the Gosannen War battlefield nearby, entered service on 22 December 2012 ahead of the 2013 Akita Destination Campaign.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
The station is named after the 11th-century Later Three-Year War battlefield to its east; according to legend the warrior Minamoto no Yoshiie, fighting around 1 kilometre east of the present station site, detected an enemy ambush from the disordered flight of a flock of geese.