History
Annaka Station opened on 15 October 1885 on the line that became the Shin'etsu Main Line, situated 10.6 km from the line's starting point at Takasaki. It is operated by JR East after the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987, and JR Freight also serves the site for car-load traffic. A private siding once handled zinc concentrate and roasted ore for the adjacent Toho Zinc refinery; that traffic ended in March 2025 when the refinery's zinc operations closed, eliminating the line's last regular freight workings west of Takasaki. The station was added to the Greater Tokyo Suica fare area on 14 March 2009.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The station building sits in a flood-prone low-lying area between the Usui River and its tributaries; a 1935 typhoon washed out roughly 120 m of track east of the station, and the city's modern hazard maps still anticipate inundation of the building during major floods.