History
Otome Station opened on 8 August 1915 as a passenger halt on Saku Railway's new Komoro - Koumi route, in what is now Komoro, Nagano Prefecture. The Saku Railway was nationalised on 1 September 1934 and absorbed into the Railway Ministry's Koumi North Line (later the Koumi Line), and the stop was upgraded from a flag-stop to a full station. Operations were suspended on 11 November 1944 and the station closed; service resumed on 1 March 1952 with the halt re-opened between Mitsuoka and Komoro. Otome passed to JR East on 1 April 1987 at the JNR privatisation, and remains an unstaffed single-platform stop with only a shelter on the platform.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
Local lore offers several explanations for the name: the primary account derives it from 'Ōtōmi' (大遠見, a far-viewing lookout), with two further theories citing a maiden (otome) who found a spring, and the site's former use as the Komoro Domain's restricted off-limits ground (otome-ba).