History
Shigaraki Station opened on 8 May 1933 as the terminus of the Japanese Government Railways Shigaraki Line. Operations were suspended on 1 October 1943 under wartime line-priority rules and resumed on 25 July 1947 under Japanese National Railways. Goods handling ceased on 10 October 1982. After JNR's privatisation on 1 April 1987 the line passed briefly to JR West before being transferred to the third-sector Shigaraki Kōgen Railway on 13 July 1987. The station was the main gateway to the 1991 World Ceramic Exhibition that opened on 20 April that year, but on 14 May 1991 a head-on collision involving a JR West charter train at the now-disused Onotani Signal Box south of Shigaraki — partly attributed to a signal failure at this station — caused the Shigaraki train disaster.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The station's normally unused second platform is lined with around 100 Shigaraki-ware tanuki figurines, and the station building hosts a permanent "Safety Shigaraki" memorial exhibit documenting the 1991 collision at the request of the victims' families.