History
Tomita Station opened on 18 February 1893 as a station of the Ryōmō Railway. The company was sold to Nippon Railway on 1 January 1897, and Nippon Railway was nationalised on 1 November 1906, bringing the station under the government-run railway. The branch-line Akami Light Railway (Tomita to Izurihara) opened on 28 April 1915 and was abandoned on 20 October 1927. On 1 June 1949 the station passed to the newly created Japanese National Railways. Freight handling ended on 1 September 1961 and parcel handling on 1 February 1984; the station became unstaffed on 14 March 1985, although special ticketing staff continued to be deployed until around 1990. With JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR East. A new station building opened in March 1999, Suica IC card service began on 18 November 2001, a new toilet block integrated with the station building was completed in 2007, and a shelter was added on platform 2 in November 2013. The station became fully unstaffed on 20 March 2018, and the new Ashikaga Flower Park Station opened nearby on 1 April 2018 with the same fares as Tomita until that arrangement was withdrawn on 14 March 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Until the new Ashikaga Flower Park Station opened in April 2018, Tomita was the nearest stop for the famous flower park, so the limited-rapid 'Ashikaga Ōfuji Matsuri-gō' wisteria-festival trains stopped here; they continue to stop even after the new station opened. To distinguish tickets from another Tomita Station on the JR Kansai Main Line in Yokkaichi, Mie (which is read 'tomida'), JR East prints '(両)富田' on tickets sold to or from this station. During peak wisteria season the platform is supplemented by a temporary ticket gate adjacent to the station building.