History
Wakai Station opened on 18 December 1963 as an unstaffed Japanese National Railways station on the Nakamura Line, in what is today the town of Shimanto, Takaoka District, Kōchi Prefecture. On 1 March 1974 it became a junction when the Yodo Line opened, with Wakai designated the nominal terminus of that 77.8-km line to Uwajima. After JNR's privatisation on 1 April 1987 it briefly passed to JR Shikoku, and on 1 April 1988 management of the Nakamura Line — including Wakai — was transferred to the third-sector Tosa Kuroshio Railway. The station is therefore jointly used: it carries Tosa Kuroshio number TK27 and JR Shikoku number G27, but the premises are under Tosa Kuroshio jurisdiction.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Although Wakai is officially the start of JR Shikoku's Yodo Line, the station itself sits on track owned by Tosa Kuroshio Railway, so even JR-only travel passes such as the Seishun-18 kippu do not cover the segment between Kubokawa and Wakai.