The is a railway line in Japan, operated by the

East Japan Railway Company The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in ...

(JR East). It connects Kogota Station in Misato,

Miyagi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Miyagi Prefecture has a population of 2,265,724 (1 August 2023) and has a geographic area of . Miyagi Prefecture borders Iwate Prefecture to the north, Akit ...

to Shinjō Station in Shinjō,

Yamagata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It has a population of 1,005,926 (1 February 2025) and an area of 9,325 Square kilometre, km2 (3,600 Square mile, sq mi). Its neighbours are Akita Prefectu ...

, acting as a connector between the

Tōhoku Main Line The Tōhoku Main Line () is a railway line in Japan operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). The line starts from Tokyo Station in Chiyoda, Tokyo and passes through such cities as Saitama, Saitama, Saitama, Utsunomiya, Tochigi, Uts ...

Ōu Main Line The is a railway line in Japan, operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). It connects Fukushima Station (Fukushima), Fukushima Station through Akita Station to Aomori Station. Since the opening of the Yamagata Shinkansen on July 1, 1 ...

, and

Tōhoku Shinkansen The is a Japanese high-speed Shinkansen rail line that runs through the more sparsely populated Tōhoku region of Japan's main island, Honshu. Operated by the East Japan Railway Company, it links Tokyo in the south to Aomori in the north, with ...

in the southern

Tōhoku region The , Northeast region, , or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains ...

, and provides access to north-western Miyagi Prefecture and north-eastern Yamagata Prefecture. Its name refers to the ancient

provinces A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...

of Mutsu (陸奥) and Dewa (出羽) (or alternatively, the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

provinces of Rikuzen (陸前) and Uzen (羽前)), which the line connects.

History

The Kogota - Naruko-Onsen section was opened in stages between 1913 and 1915, with the Shinjo - Naruko-Onsen section opened in stages between 1915 and 1917. CTC signalling was commissioned in 1983, and freight services ceased in 1987. The line celebrated its 100th anniversary on November 3, 2017, with a special train hauled by JNR Class DE10 locomotives.

Former connecting lines

* Nishi-Furukawa station - A

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

line ultimately extending to Tori-Machi, and connecting to the

Senzan Line The is a railway line in Japan. Part of the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) system, it runs from Sendai Station (Miyagi), Sendai Station in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture to Uzen-Chitose Station in Yamagata, Yamagata, Yamagata, Yamagata Prefec ...

at Toshogu station, was opened by the Sendai City Council between 1922 and 1929. It closed in sections between 1937 and 1960.

Station list

Symbols: * ｜ - Single-track * ◇ - Single-track; station where trains can pass * ∨ - Single-track section starts from this point

Rolling stock

* KiHa 110 series DMUs

Past

* Resort Minori

References

External links

Resort Minori - JR East (Wayback Machine)
Lines of East Japan Railway Company Rail transport in Yamagata Prefecture Rail transport in Miyagi Prefecture 1067 mm gauge railways in Japan Railway lines opened in 1913 1913 establishments in Japan {{Japan-rail-line-stub