History
Satsuma Ohkawa Station opened on 15 December 1936 as a Japanese Government Railways stop on the Kagoshima Main Line, between Ushinohama and Nishikata. The valley site was prone to severe flooding, and from 1964 the station was rebuilt with its platforms and tracks raised; the new two-storey concrete-block station building and elevated 2-platform configuration entered service on 1 October 1965. Freight ended in 1961, the station became unstaffed in 1970, and baggage handling ceased the same year. With the 1 April 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways, the station passed to JR Kyushu, and on 13 March 2004 — with the opening of the Kyushu Shinkansen — it was transferred to the third-sector Hisatsu Orange Railway. The Kawauchi-end switch sits inside a tunnel built in 1973, an unusual layout that resulted from re-routing the line after major 1972 landslides.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Because the line was rerouted through a new tunnel after the 1972 landslides, the switch at the Kawauchi end of Satsuma Ohkawa sits inside a tunnel — the entrance is double-track and the exit is single-track.