History
Araki Station opened on 1 April 1958 as a Japanese National Railways stop on the Abiko Branch of the Narita Line in Abiko, Chiba. It began as an unstaffed halt handling only diesel-railcar passengers. The north footbridge entrance opened on 1 April 1979 and the south footbridge replaced the closed west entrance on 16 December 2001. The station was absorbed into JR East at the JNR's 1 April 1987 privatisation, and conversion from unstaffed to contracted-operations status followed on 1 December 1998. Suica IC card service began on 18 November 2001. A new bridged station building was fully commissioned on 24 January 2017.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Before the present bridged station building, staff worked from a small office on the platform — boarding passengers walked through the open gate and bought tickets at the office rather than at an exit barrier.