History
The station opened on 20 September 1897 as Kanazu Station when the government railway was extended from Fukui to Komatsu, and was renamed Awaraonsen on 15 March 1972 to mark the closure of the parallel Mikuni Line. Freight handling ended in 1986 and the station passed to JR West and JR Freight at the 1987 privatisation. ICOCA reached the station in September 2018 and Hokuriku Shinkansen construction began in November 2020. With the Kanazawa-Tsuruga extension on 16 March 2024, a new elevated Shinkansen station opened and the original conventional-line facilities were transferred to Hapi-Line Fukui, leaving JR West to operate only the Shinkansen platforms.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The station has Sakai-cho's first elevators only because the inn-keepers of Awara Onsen, organised as the Wakakusakai, petitioned the mayor in 2009 — the request prompted JR West to add two lifts in 2015.