History
Ashikaga Station opened on 22 May 1888 as a station of the privately operated Ryōmō Railway, 38.2 km from Oyama on what is now the Ryōmō Line. After Japanese National Railways was privatised on 1 April 1987 it came under JR East. Suica IC-card service began on 18 November 2001. On 25 July 2008 the station building was struck by lightning, damaging its second floor. In July 2015 Ashikaga and the nearby Tōbu-operated Ashikagashi Station adopted Chisato Moritaka's 1993 song "Watarasebashi" — which references the city — as their train-departure melody. In February 2021 the platform-name signs were replaced with textile-pattern designs honouring the Ryōmō Line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Ashikaga and the Tōbu-operated Ashikagashi Station share a train-departure melody — Chisato Moritaka's 1993 hit "Watarasebashi," whose lyrics name the river through this city — adopted by both stations together in July 2015.