History
Kōnan Station opened on 19 February 1890 as Fukawa Station (深川駅) on the Kansai Railway when the Tsuge–Mikumo segment of the present Kusatsu Line was extended. It was nationalised on 1 October 1907 as part of the Imperial Railway Agency network, and the line-naming reform of 12 October 1909 assigned it to the Kusatsu Line. In May 1955 the then-Kōnan town petitioned Japanese National Railways to rename the station, and the change to Kōnan Station took effect on 10 April 1956. Freight operations ended on 1 October 1962 and baggage handling on 1 February 1984. The station passed to JR West with the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987, ICOCA reader-only IC support began on 17 March 2018, and the wood-fronted ground-level station was replaced by a steel two-storey overhead structure on 11 May 2019 that added a barrier-free north entrance.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Before the opening of Kibukawa Station, Kōnan was the main terminal for the Kōnan and Minakuchi districts. From 1928 a 17-km Shigaraki aerial ropeway ran from Nagano-Kitade to the former Fukawa Station to transport Shigaraki ware, but falling-load accidents forced it to close about two years later.