History
Doai Station opened on 19 December 1936 on the Jōetsu Line, originally a single-track route through the 9.7 km Shimizu Tunnel that linked Minakami in Gunma with Echigo-Yuzawa in Niigata. When the line was double-tracked in 1967 using the much longer Shin-Shimizu Tunnel, the new northbound platform was placed about 70 m underground inside the tunnel, leaving the southbound platform at ground level beside the original station building. An escalator shaft was reserved next to the underground staircase when the tunnel opened in 1967, but it has never been fitted. The station has been unstaffed since 1985, and in 2020 the glamping site "DOAI VILLAGE" and the in-station café "mogura" opened, drawing tourists.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Doai is the deepest railway station in Japan: its northbound platform sits about 70 m underground in the middle of the Shin-Shimizu Tunnel, reached only by a roughly ten-minute descent of 462 steps (486 in total counting the 24 steps in the connecting passageway), with no lift or escalator. The nickname "Japan's Number One Mole Station" comes from this descent.