History
Ōsawa Signal Station was set up on 15 May 1899 with the opening of the Ōu South Line between Fukushima and Yonezawa. It was upgraded to a passenger station on 25 December 1906 as Ōsawa Station. Operations were unstaffed from 1 December 1984, and the station passed to JR East on 1 April 1987 at the JNR privatisation. The famous switchback layout was abolished on 1 September 1990. From 10 January 2023 all trains began passing the station throughout the winter (in 2023 and 2024 the pass-throughs ran until 26 March). The Eki-net Q-Chiket service started on 1 October 2024. From 1 December 2024, citing very low usage, all trains pass year-round and the station is suspended from service; with no scheduled reopening date, some media outlets describe the station as "effectively abolished".
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Ōsawa lies on one section of the Itaya Pass and the line rises continuously from this station up to Tōge Station. Before the Yamagata Shinkansen, Ōsawa, Tōge, Itaya and Akaiwa were famous as a four-station continuous-switchback stretch; the platforms are entirely enclosed in a snow shelter built originally to protect the switchback points. When the line was regauged for through-running of standard-gauge Shinkansen, all four stations had their switchbacks abolished and the platforms were moved inside the snow shelters.