History
Katamachi Station opened on 13 May 1897 as a station of the privately owned Hokuetsu Railway, which was nationalized on 1 August 1907. Freight handling ended in 1971 and parcel handling in March 1985; the station was reduced to a single track later that year and became unstaffed in March 1986. With the privatization of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987 it passed to JR East. The ticket window closed in November 2017 and the station has been fully unstaffed since December 2018. In 2015 the station building was rebuilt around the theme of the local "Mermaid House" legend ahead of a JR Niigata spring tourism campaign.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The renovated station building draws on the local "mermaid legend" of the nearby Karikohama coast in its interior and exterior design.