History
Sakari Station opened on 29 September 1935 as a station on the Ōfunato Line of the Ministry of Railways, in what is now Ōfunato, Iwate. The Iwate Development Railway connected its Hikoroichi Line on 21 October 1950 and its Akasaki Line on 21 June 1957 for freight. The JNR Minami-Rias Line opened on 1 March 1970, and on 1 April 1984 it was transferred to the third-sector Sanriku Railway. The Ōfunato Line itself joined JR East at the 1987 privatisation. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami flooded the station and severed track on both lines; bus rapid-transit service replaced the Ōfunato Line in 2013, and the JR rail segment to Kesennuma was formally retired on 1 April 2020.
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
On JNR-era and JR East destination boards Sakari is rendered in hiragana as "さかり" to avoid confusion with Morioka (盛岡); buses on the Ōfunato Line BRT now display it as "盛（さかり）".