History
Zeze Station opened on 15 July 1880 as Baba (馬場), the 19th station in Japan, when the government railway reached Ōtsu and trains switched back here for the lakeside terminus — the earliest dated switchback station in Japan. After the Kōtō Line completed in 1889 the branch lost passenger trains, and over the next decades the station was renamed Ōtsu (1913) and back to Baba (1921) when the new Tokaido alignment opened. Passenger service resumed under the present name Zeze on 15 September 1934. Four-track widening in 1970 gave the station today's two-island layout, and the elevated station building with a north-south concourse opened on 24 June 2017.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Zeze's new station building, completed in 2017, was styled after the multi-storey turret of Zeze Castle, with monotone facades meant to evoke the silhouette of a water castle mirrored on Lake Biwa.