History
Musota Station opened on 16 June 1930 as a stop on the Hanwa Electric Railway when its Izumi-Fuchū to Hanwa-Higashi-Wakayama line was completed, in what is now Wakayama, Wakayama Prefecture. It was upgraded from a halt to a full station on 10 October 1931 with the addition of freight handling. Wartime consolidation absorbed the Hanwa Electric Railway into Nankai in December 1940, and the line was nationalised on 1 May 1944 as JNR's Hanwa Line. Freight handling ended on 1 February 1962. With the 1 April 1987 JNR privatisation, control passed to JR West, and ICOCA service began on 1 November 2003. Rapid-service stops were added in 1993 and made permanent in 1999. The station number JR-R52 was assigned in March 2018.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The name Musota — among Japan's commonly misread station names — was already documented in 1174 Heian-era records. One folk etymology traces it to Empress Jingū loosing an arrow on her return from the Three Korean Kingdoms campaign, with the present characters 六十谷 representing a euphemistic substitution for an earlier form meaning "valley of graves."