History
Moriyama Station opened on 16 April 1912 on the Japanese Government Railway's Tōkaidō Main Line between Yasu and Kusatsu, serving both passenger and freight traffic. On 30 July 1945, US Navy carrier aircraft strafed a train departing the station in what is known locally as the Moriyama Air Raid, killing eleven people. The current second-generation overhead-style station building was completed in April 1973. Moriyama was added as a stop for new rapid services from the 1986 timetable revision, and with the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR West. Automatic ticket gates were installed in 1998 and ICOCA support followed in November 2003. Station numbering JR-A22 was introduced in March 2018, and the Midori-no-Madoguchi staffed window closed in November 2021 in favour of an upgraded ticket machine.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
A small stone Jizō statue near the station, scarred by aircraft fire, is one of the few surviving physical relics of the 1945 strafing attack on Moriyama.