History
Hakusan Station first opened on 25 August 1912 with the Echigo Railway's Yoshida–Hakusan section; the original site was near the present Niigata City Kagamibuchi Elementary School. On 1 October 1927 the Echigo Railway was nationalised and the Kashiwazaki–Hakusan section became part of the national railway's Echigo Line. A Shin'etsu Main Line freight branch from Niigata to Sekiya opened on 1 November 1943, when small-lot freight handling at Hakusan ended. Passenger service began over the Niigata–Sekiya section on 25 June 1951, and on 15 December 1951 the freight branch was merged into the Echigo Line: Hakusan was relocated onto the new alignment, the old line between Sekiya and Hakusan was abolished, and freight handling at the station was discontinued; because the formal change took the shape of abolishing the old line and newly establishing Hakusan on the branch, JR East counts this date as the station's opening day. The Niigata earthquake of 16 June 1964 caused major damage including roadbed collapse between Sekiya and Hakusan; double-track operation resumed on 1 November 1964 following repairs. A JR-affiliated eatery, "Wide Porch Hakusan", opened on 9 December 1978. Parcel handling ended on 1 February 1984, and the station passed to JR East on 1 April 1987 at the JNR privatisation. A departure-bell system entered service in autumn 2004 (one-man trains excepted), automatic ticket gates began on 9 December 2004, and Suica became usable on 21 January 2006. As part of the Niigata Station continuous-elevation project and the surrounding Hakusan Station development project, station-building reconstruction began in 2010; a reserved-seat ticket machine entered service on 18 December 2010; the present station building and platform 3/4 (the up-direction platform) entered service on 1 September 2013, with provisional north-south concourse use beginning the same day. The north-south free passage was fully completed in March 2014, when the north exit and elevator entered service.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Hakusan Station sits on a strongly curved embankment and is unusual in having two island platforms with three tracks where the centre track is shared between both platforms, used in either direction. The station building is half-buried below the platforms, and a free passage runs north-south at street level past the ticket gates. The 2013 rebuild was triggered by the Niigata Station continuous-elevation project: because the new Niigata Station was to drop from 4 platforms / 7 tracks to 3 platforms / 5 tracks, Hakusan was expanded to maintain network capacity.