History
Kuwanagawa Station opened on 6 July 1923 as a station on the Iiyama Railway in what is now Iiyama, Nagano, and was nationalised on 1 June 1944. Freight handling ended on 1 October 1970, the station became a contracted operation in June 1981 and a directly-managed but station-master-less station in July 1983, and baggage was dropped in February 1984. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 it passed to JR East. The station was destaffed on 15 March 1995 and the present building was rebuilt in November 2009. The slightly oversized building doubles as a rest area for track-maintenance crews.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Because Kuwanagawa serves as a maintenance base, staff are still posted at the station during the winter months to handle snow-clearing and emergency response, though they do not sell tickets.