History
Ōya Station opened on 20 January 1896 as a government-railway stop on the Shin'etsu Line, established to shorten the silk-export route from the Suwa region toward the port of Yokohama. It is recognised as Japan's first petitioned station, with a stone monument commemorating that origin. The Ueda–Maruko Electric Railway also called here from 1918 until the line's 1969 closure. The station passed to JR East at the 1987 JNR breakup, and to the third-sector Shinano Railway when the Hokuriku Shinkansen opened in 1997. In 2007 the building was designated a Modernization Industrial Heritage site, and in February 2024 the local post office moved into the station building.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
In February 2024 the local post office moved into the station building, the first instance in Japan of a regional-railway station and post office being operated jointly under one roof.