History
Tomiura opened on 20 December 1953 as a Japanese National Railways station handling passenger traffic only, with no staff assigned. Calls for a halt had been made since at least June 1951 by Horobetsu Town; the railway initially proposed a site about 1 km from the present location, but after negotiation a site at the residents' preferred location was authorised in April 1953. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR Hokkaido.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The locality was originally called 'Ranbokke' (蘭法華) — a Japanese rendering of the Ainu 'ranpokke' (the place below the slope), referring to an Ainu kotan at the foot of a steep slope. The kanji-difficult name was changed to 'Tomiura' (rich inlet) in 1934 as a wish for prosperous fishing; the modern town section is still called Tomiura-chō.