History
Aoyama Station is a single-platform halt on the JR East Echigo Line in Nishi-ku, Niigata City, and is 77.7 km from the line's terminus at Kashiwazaki. Construction began on 14 December 1987 and the station opened on 13 March 1988 as the very first petition-funded station the JR East Niigata Branch built after the JNR privatisation, prompted by rapid residential development in the former Sakaiwa village and by the 1978 opening of the Jusco Niigata store (now AEON Niigata Aoyama) immediately south of the line. Automatic ticket gates were introduced on 17 February 2005, Suica IC card service began on 21 January 2006, and the ticket window was closed on 28 February 2022, leaving the station with daytime-only staffing.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
The station was built for just 15 million yen, financed by local merchants in exchange for billboard space on the platform; the construction cost was kept low because JR East's in-house engineering department handled the build, and the project was profiled on Fuji TV's variety programme "Shichinin no HOT-medama" on the station's opening day.