History
Ichihana Station opened on 15 December 1920 as a station of the Japanese Government Railway in Ichikai, Tochigi Prefecture, 34.3 km from the present line terminus at Shimodate. It became a contracted-management station in 1970 and was unstaffed and demoted to simplified commission in 1975 after freight handling ended. The station passed briefly to JR East at the 1 April 1987 privatisation of Japanese National Railways before being transferred to the third-sector Mooka Railway on 11 April 1988. Passing-track facilities removed in the JNR era were reinstated in December 1993, restoring its function as the line's representative stop for Ichikai town.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The walls of Ichihana's post-conversion station building are painted with musha-e — warrior figures from a Tanobe village folk tradition that is registered as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Tochigi Prefecture.