History
The site began as Iwaki-Nishigō Signal Stop on 11 October 1944, with a freight siding opening in November the same year. It was upgraded to a station on 7 April 1959 as Iwaki-Nishigō Station (磐城西郷駅). When the Tōhoku Shinkansen opened on 23 June 1982 the station was renamed Shin-Shirakawa. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987, it came under JR East and JR Freight. From 14 October 2017, when the Kuroiso–Kōriyama power-supply upgrade made the AC/DC dead-section move south of Kuroiso, the station became the operational boundary between AC electric stock and DC electric stock, with passengers transferring between trains on platforms 6 and 7.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Shin-Shirakawa is the only shinkansen-stop station in Japan located in a village (Nishigō), although the platforms straddle the boundary between Nishigō and Shirakawa City to the north. The Nasu, Yamabiko (Sendai-bound stopping types), and a few morning Hayabusa trains from Morioka call here; Hayabusa, Tsubasa and Komachi services pass through without stopping.