History
Minami-Otari Station is on the Ōito Line in the village of Otari, Kitaazumi District, Nagano Prefecture, 70.1 km from the line's start at Matsumoto. It opened on 29 November 1935 with the extension of the JNR Ōito Southern Line from Shinano-Morigami to Nakatsuchi, and the entire line was completed and renamed the Ōito Line on 15 August 1957. With the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987, Minami-Otari became the boundary station between JR East and JR West — the only such in-line crossover on the conventional network. JR East operates the southern, electrified half; JR West runs the unelectrified section north to Itoigawa. The Azusa limited express stopped here from 1982 until the 15 March 2025 timetable revision, when service was cut back to Hakuba.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Minami-Otari is the only point on Japan's conventional rail network where JR East and JR West share a boundary station; the actual rail dividing line sits about 600 metres north of the platforms.