History
Minami-Kusatsu Station is a JR West Tōkaidō Main Line (Biwako Line) station in Kusatsu, Shiga Prefecture, 48.0 kilometres from Maibara and 493.9 kilometres from Tokyo. It opened on 4 September 1994 as a petition station, with Kusatsu City contributing about 2.5 billion yen of the roughly 3 billion yen total cost and citizens raising about 360 million yen in addition. The opening was timed to support the brand-new Ritsumeikan University Biwako-Kusatsu Campus, which began operations earlier the same year. Special-rapid (Shin-Kaisoku) services began stopping at all hours from 12 March 2011 after a petition gathered over 61,000 signatures, and from 13 March 2021 the Haruka and Biwako Express limited expresses were added. Station number JR-A25 was assigned in March 2018.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The push for special-rapid service to stop here was so well organised that a Kusatsu mayoral candidate ran in 2008 on a promise to deliver it, won office, and the city's 2009 petition committee gathered 61,162 signatures — far above its target — before JR West agreed to make every Shin-Kaisoku stop here in 2011.