History
Kusatsu Station is a junction station in Kusatsu, Shiga Prefecture, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) and serving both the Tōkaidō Main Line (Biwako Line) and the Kusatsu Line. It opened on 1 July 1889 as a government-railway station and within months connected to the privately built Kansai Railway, which was nationalised in 1907. The line through Kusatsu was electrified on 19 November 1956 and the present elevated station concourse opened on 12 April 1967, the first overhead-concourse rail station in Shiga. Quadruple-tracking between Kusatsu and Kyoto was completed on 9 March 1970, JR West took over at privatisation in 1987, ICOCA support began in 2003, and station number JR-A24 was assigned in March 2018.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Kusatsu Station is the eastern start of Japan's longest stretch of quadruple track: roughly 120 kilometres of paired pairs continue uninterrupted from here through Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe to Nishi-Akashi.