History
Nakanojō Station was opened on 2 January 1945 as a signal stop and was upgraded to a full station on 5 August 1945. Situated at the centre of Nakanojō town, it serves as the gateway to the Shima and Sawatari hot-spring areas and is a stop for every Kusatsu-Shima limited express on the Agatsuma Line. The current reinforced-concrete station building dates from November 1963 and was funded by local-government utility bonds. The Midori no Madoguchi ticket window was closed in 2006 and replaced by a remote-staffed Kaeru-kun machine, which itself was withdrawn in 2012. The station became part of JR East at the 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways and joined the Tokyo metropolitan suburban zone in 2014.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Each autumn since 2001, station staff and residents hang strings of peeled persimmons from the rafters of platform 1 to dry, then offer the sweetened fruit free to Kusatsu-Shima passengers when the astringency has gone; in summer the same hooks carry wind chimes.