History
Taura Station (JO 04) is on the JR East Yokosuka Line in Taura-chō 1-chōme, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 13.8 km from Ōfuna and 63.2 km from Tokyo. It opened on 1 May 1904 under Japanese Government Railways on the Zushi–Yokosuka section, became part of the Yokosuka Line in October 1909 and acquired a footbridge-type station building in May 1959. Freight handling on the JNR portion ended in February 1984; the station passed to JR East on 1 April 1987 under privatisation, and Suica was introduced on 18 November 2001. The dedicated siding to the Sōmō Warehouse complex (used to feed jet fuel from the US Navy's Taura POL site) saw its last use in 1998, and JR Freight withdrew on 1 May 2006; on 11 December 2025 the automated faregates were swapped for simple Suica readers.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
Taura sits in a narrow valley wedged between two tunnels, so the platform is too short for 11-car trains; the first car's doors and the foremost door of the second car stay shut — the so-called "Taura switch" handled manually on E217 series cars is automated on E235-1000 series by the INTEROS train-information system.