History
Chūden Station (M05) is a JR Shikoku Mugi Line stop in Nakagō-chō Nagate, Komatsushima, Tokushima. It opened on 15 December 1916 between Jizōbashi and Komatsushima on the Komatsushima Light Railway as a transfer junction for the Anan Railway (forerunner of the Mugi Line) and the Awa-Koku Kyōdō Steamship Co. (whose railway was leased to JNR and became the Komatsushima Line). The Komatsushima Light Railway was nationalized on 1 September 1917 and the Anan Railway on 1 July 1936 to form the Mugi Line. On 1 April 1961 the line start-point of the Komatsushima Line was changed to Chūden, with this station becoming the line's origin until the Komatsushima Line was abolished on 14 March 1985. With the JNR privatization on 1 April 1987 it passed to JR Shikoku. It became a JR Shikoku-staffed contracted station on 23 July 1992 (afternoons, Sundays and holidays unstaffed), fully unstaffed on 1 October 2010, lost its toilet on 13 December 2019, had its old building demolished and a temporary prefab installed in June 2022, and received a simple new station building in July 2022.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-24.
Notes
The original Komatsushima Line that branched off here at Chūden was only 1.9 km long — the shortest line in the JNR network when it was abolished on 14 March 1985. The disused right-of-way south of the station has since been converted into a pedestrian promenade, and the old Komatsushima Station site is now a park where the station building and several preserved steam locomotives are on display.