History
Jiyūgaoka Station opened on 28 August 1927 as Kuhombutsu Station on the Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway’s Tōyoko Line in Meguro, Tokyo. The earlier name referred to the nearby temple Kuhombutsu Jōshinji. Following the opening of the Oimachi Line in 1929, the station was renamed Jiyū-ga-oka (using the now-archaic ヶ) on 22 October 1929, and the kanji form was modernised to the present 自由が丘 on 20 January 1966. Major rebuilds widened the original 1-platform 2-track Tōyoko platforms to a 2-platform 4-track express-passing layout in November 1959, and from 2005 onward a programme of barrier-free additions and a north exit was completed. The station now functions as an interchange between Tokyu’s Tōyoko and Oimachi Lines.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.
Notes
The 1929 station name 自由ヶ丘 was lifted from a private school, Jiyūgaoka Gakuen, that had just opened nearby; locals, led by the dancer Ishii Baku, lobbied the railway to use the name, which then went on to define the surrounding district itself.