History
Katata Station is a JR West stop on the Kosei Line in the city of Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture, located 17.7 kilometres from the line's starting point at Yamashina and 23.2 kilometres from Kyoto. It opened on 20 July 1974 with the Kosei Line itself, originally as a Japanese National Railways station. It passed to JR West on 1 April 1987 with privatisation, gained automatic ticket gates on 1 October 1998, accepted ICOCA from 1 November 2003, and was given the station number JR-B25 in March 2018. The station has two elevated island platforms with the station building underneath and a Midori no Madoguchi staffed ticket office.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The station's name is celebrated in the 1900 Railway Song (Tetsudō Shōka), where the Kosei area's wild-goose-descending Katata sunset is mentioned — even though the station itself would not open for another 74 years.