Shirakawa

History

Shirakawa Station opened on July 16, 1887 as a Nippon Railway facility, rushed into service so it could carry observers to the total solar eclipse of August 19 that year. After the 1906 nationalization and the 1909 line-name reform it became a Tōhoku Main Line station, and from 1916 it also anchored the Hakuhō Line to Iwaki-Tanakura until that line was suspended as a non-essential wartime route in December 1944. The Kuroiso-Shirakawa section was AC-electrified in July 1959. The station passed to JR East at the 1987 JNR privatization, and in 2002 was selected as one of the Hyakusen of Tōhoku stations for its distinctive Taishō-era brick and stained-glass building.

History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.

Notes

The station's red-tiled, stained-glass Taishō-era building, opened in 1921, was selected as one of the Hyakusen "100 best stations" of Tōhoku and later served as the location for a 2020 Daihatsu Move Canbus television commercial.