History
Honjō Station opened on 1883-10-21 as a station of the Nippon Railway, then building its line northward from Ueno towards Maebashi. The Nippon Railway was nationalised in 1906, and the route-name decree of October 1909 placed the station on the Takasaki Line. From 1915 to 1933, the Honjō Electric Tramway terminated in front of the station. Freight handling ended in 1980 and parcel handling in 1985, and the station passed to JR East at the April 1987 privatisation. Automatic ticket gates were installed in 1995, and Suica IC service became available in 2001. From 2016-03-10 the station has been left unstaffed in the very early morning, and on 2025-11-28 a staffed reserved-seat ticket machine was introduced.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
To allow turnbacks during service disruptions, since fiscal 2018 platform 2 has been able to accept 15-car trains — no regular service uses the full length, but Honjō is the only station north of Kagohara capable of doing so.