History
Igashima Station opened on 1 June 1913 with the Railway Agency Shin'etsu Line branch extension from Maoroshi to Tsugawa. No station had been planned at this location, but the village raised the funds for land purchase and house relocation in order to obtain a stop serving the nearby Mochikura copper mine, which generated heavy freight in the Taishō years. The line was renamed Iwakoshi on 1 November 1914 and the Ban'etsu West Line on 10 October 1917. Goods handling was withdrawn on 1 December 1978, parcels and full staffing on 28 February 1983, and the station passed to JR East on 1 April 1987. The current site has no station building; access is via a sheltered footbridge stairway on the west side of the line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Igashima was built only because villagers covered the cost of land purchase and house relocations themselves so that the line would stop at the local Mochikura copper mine — a mine which had largely closed by the late Shōwa period.