History
Kitauchi Station opened on 1896-10-25 on the Nanwa Railway between Kuzu (now Yoshinoguchi) and Gojō, in what is now Gojō, Nara Prefecture. The Kansai Railway absorbed the Nanwa Railway in 1904, and the line was nationalised in 1907 and renamed the Wakayama Line in 1909. Freight handling ended in 1963 and the station was unstaffed from 1984-10-20. With the 1987 privatisation of the Japanese National Railways, the station passed to JR West. Kitauchi was famous as the last switchback station in the Kansai region until the manoeuvre was abolished on 2007-03-18, when a temporary single-track platform replaced the relative pair of switchback platforms. The station has been recognised in the second "Kinki Top 100 Stations" selection.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Until March 2007, Kitauchi was the only switchback station remaining in Japan's Kansai region; the manoeuvre was abolished after two ATS-related incidents in 2006 raised safety concerns.