History
Rikuchū-Kanzaki Station opened on 1925-07-26 as a general station on the Ōfunato Line in Ichinoseki, Iwate Prefecture. The Ōfunato Line was built eastward from Ichinoseki to this point before swinging north, the political compromise that produced the line's famed "saucepan-handle" detour. Freight handling ended on 1982-11-15, parcel handling on 1984-02-01, and the station was made unattended on 1986-11-01. It transferred to JR East at the 1987-04-01 privatisation and a new station building was completed in March 2010. From late 2025 the passing loop was taken out of service, reducing the layout to a single side platform on one track.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.