History
Tōge Station began on 15 May 1899 as a signal stop on the Ōu South Line, opened by the imperial railways alongside the Fukushima–Yonezawa section, and was upgraded to a full passenger station on 1 August 1899. Located at 626 metres elevation in the city of Yonezawa, it was the highest station on the Ōu Main Line and originally required a switchback approach because of the steep Itaya pass. With the conversion of the line for the Yamagata Shinkansen, the switchback was abandoned on 1 September 1990 and platforms were relocated onto the main line. The 1984 destaffing made it permanently unattended. The platforms are enclosed within a snow shelter.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Vendors still walk the platform selling “toge no chikara-mochi” rice cakes to passing local trains, a hawking tradition that has all but vanished from Japanese railway stations.