History
Utsubo Station opened on 12 November 1933 as a general-purpose Ministry of Railways station on the Hietsu Line (now the Takayama Main Line) between Sakaue and Sugihara in present-day Hida, Gifu Prefecture. Freight handling ended in 1973, parcel handling in 1984, and the station was destaffed in 1985. With the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Central. A simplified station building replaced the original structure in March 2003. In October 2004 flooding from Typhoon Tokage damaged the line and stranded two KiHa 48 cars at Utsubo until September 2007, when full-line service resumed after a roughly three-year suspension.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
A snow-shelter shed covering the turnout at Utsubo — the only such installation on the entire Takayama Main Line — was repurposed in 2004 to protect the two KiHa 48 cars stranded at the station by Typhoon Tokage flooding.