History
Utazu Station opened on 21 February 1897 as a station on the privately built Sanuki Railway. The Sanuki Railway was folded into the Sanyo Railway in 1904 and nationalised in 1906, the line later becoming the Yosan Line. Following JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Shikoku, and on 2 October 1987 the entire facility was moved roughly west of its 90-year-old original location and rebuilt as an elevated junction station; the new arrangement also completed electrification of the Sakaide–Tadotsu section. The Honshi-Bisan Line opened to Kojima on 10 April 1988, making Utazu a key Shikoku gateway. Through-trains to Okayama via the Seto Ōhashi now stop here, and from 2002 the Shiokaze/Ishizuchi and Nanpū/Shimanto limited-express coupling/splitting moved from Tadotsu to Utazu.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
When the station moved and the new line opened with no limited express scheduled to call, the town of Utazu was so unhappy that it boycotted the inauguration ceremony; today every Nanpū limited-express stops at Utazu, and the north plaza still has reserved land marked out for a Shikoku Shinkansen platform.