History
Asunarō Yokkaichi Station traces its origin to the Mie Light Railway's Suwa-mae Station, which opened on 16 May 1913 on the line that is today's Yokkaichi Asunarō Railway Utsube Line. The station went through a long sequence of owners — Mie Railway (1916), Mie Kōtsū (1944), Mie Electric Railway (1964), and Kinki Nippon Railway (Kintetsu) (1965) — and was relocated and renamed Kintetsu Yokkaichi when the Kintetsu Nagoya Line was rebuilt on its present alignment on 23 September 1956. The current name dates from 1 April 2015, when Kintetsu transferred its narrow-gauge Utsube Line to the newly created Yokkaichi Asunarō Railway; the station was split off from Kintetsu Yokkaichi as a separate, physically distinct station bearing the new operator's name. ICOCA was introduced to the Utsube and Hachiōji lines on 21 August 2021.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
Although Asunarō Yokkaichi and Kintetsu Yokkaichi share a name across the street from each other, they are operationally separate stations: a passenger transferring between the Kintetsu Nagoya Line and the Utsube Line has to exit one gate-line entirely, cross Chūō-dōri on a pedestrian bridge, and re-enter the other side. Until the Yunoyama Line was re-gauged to 1,435 mm at Mie Electric Railway, the narrow-gauge Utsube/Hachiōji lines were physically connected to the Yunoyama Line via the station, and through-running through Yokkaichi was possible. The Utsube Line is also one of the very few remaining 762 mm narrow-gauge passenger railways in Japan.