History
Motozenkōji Station opened on 18 March 1923 as the terminus of the Ina Electric Railway extension from Ichida, becoming a through stop later that August when rails reached Iida. The Ina Electric Railway was nationalised on 1 August 1943 as part of the Iida Line, and the station was simultaneously renamed Zakōji; it reverted to Motozenkōji on 20 May 1950. Car-load freight (except for industrial spurs) ended in December 1971, the last scheduled freight train ran on 30 September 1996, and operations were contracted out from March 1998. The station has been unstaffed since 1 April 2013; freight rights are retained by JR Freight on an occasional-traffic basis.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The neighbouring village gives its name to the original Zenkōji Temple, said to predate the much larger Zenkōji in Nagano; the planned Linear Chūō Shinkansen "Nagano Prefecture Station" is slated to sit about one kilometre southwest of Motozenkōji.