History
Ōtani Station is a JR West Wakayama Line stop in Ōtani, Katsuragi, Itō District, Wakayama. It opened on 1 October 1952 as a new Japanese National Railways Wakayama Line station between Myōji and Kaseda. With the privatization of JNR on 1 April 1987 it passed to JR West, and ICOCA became usable on 14 March 2020. The station consists of a single side platform on the right side facing Wakayama, with no station building beyond direct platform access; because it is a single 'stick' track, both Wakayama-bound and Gojō-bound trains share the platform. Managed remotely from Hashimoto Station as an unstaffed stop, it has an automated ticket machine but no toilets.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
Tickets issued at Ōtani once carried the prefix '(和)' — short for Wakayama — giving '(和)大谷' on the printout, to distinguish it from the same-kanji Ōtani Station on the Kesennuma Line in Miyagi.