History
Nagasaka Station opened on 11 December 1918 as a Railway Bureau station on the Chūō Main Line, 166.3 km from Tokyo, in what is now Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, sitting at an elevation of 740 m. From the start it was a switchback, and after the line was doubled on 25 March 1966 the layout became a turnback wedged between the up and down main tracks — a configuration unique in Japan in which crossing trains do not block one another. Passenger switchback operations ended on 28 September 1971, freight ended on 1 February 1972, parcel handling ended in 1984, and the present station building opened on 15 March 1986. Control passed to JR East with privatisation on 1 April 1987, Suica use began on 1 April 2014, the Midori-no-Madoguchi closed on 3 March 2017, all limited expresses stopped calling the next day with the timetable change, and the station became fully unstaffed on 1 April 2017.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
About three-tenths of the funds raised to build the station came from silk filature operators in Suwa, Nagano: the Chūō Line was their lifeline for moving cocoons, raw silk to Yokohama, and seasonal women workers, and the platform area soon hosted a Marunaka and a Marukyō silk-cocoon market.