History
The original Kawada Station (川田駅), opened by the private Tokushima Railway on 28 August 1907 at a different site, was abolished on 25 March 1914 when Japanese Government Railways extended the line westwards to Awa-Ikeda. A new station, given the present reading "Kawata" but written with the same kanji, was opened 1.3 km further west on the same day. Freight handling ended on 1 June 1970 and parcel handling on 1 October 1972, after which the station became unstaffed. With the privatisation of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987 the station came under the control of JR Shikoku, and the line was renamed the Tokushima Line on 1 June 1988.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Kawata once was famous for trackside hawking of the local sweet "Kawata-manjū"; the maker, founded in 1872, closed its shop near the station on 31 October 2023 due to staff ageing.