History
Oku Station opened on 20 June 1929 in what is now Shōwachō, Kita, Tokyo. By line classification it sits on the Tōhoku Main Line's Nippori–Oku–Akabane branch, the so-called Oku Spur; operationally it is served by Utsunomiya and Takasaki line trains. Parcel handling ended on 1 October 1964 and the station passed to JR East at the JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987. Suica IC cards were accepted from 18 November 2001, the staffed reserved-seat office (Midori-no-Madoguchi) closed on 21 August 2007, and the remote-operation "Customer Support Call System" was introduced on 8 March 2015. The 13 March 2021 timetable revision merged the former commuter-rapid services on the two lines into the daytime Rapid Rabbit and Rapid Urban categories, leaving Oku with no rapid stops at all.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The station's name is pronounced "Oku", but the same characters in the neighbouring Arakawa Ward place names Higashi-Ogu and Nishi-Ogu are read with a voiced second syllable, leaving the station and the district it stands beside spelt the same but pronounced differently.