Mito Station (水戸駅) is in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture. East Japan Railway Company, Japan Freight Railway Company and Kashima Rinkai Railway are its operators. The station opened on 16 January 1889 as the terminus of the Mito Railway.
History
The Mito Railway opened on 16 January 1889, and the station was its terminus for passengers only. On 26 November 1890, the line was extended to a freight station at Nakagawa, which later became Nakagawa Station (那珂川駅). The Mito Railway was transferred to the Japan Railway on 1 March 1892. On 16 November 1897, a station on the Ōta Railway line opened, now the Suigun Line. On 21 October 1901, the Ōta Railway was transferred to a second Mito Railway. The station building was rebuilt in 1903. The Japan Railway was nationalised on 1 November 1906, and on 12 October 1909 the station was assigned to the Jōban Line. A fire destroyed the station building on 20 May 1914. A third station building came into use in 1916.
A tram line from Suihama opened to a stop on the north side of the station on 22 July 1924. The Mito Railway was nationalised again on 1 December 1927. In November 1929, Army maneuvers were held in Ibaraki, and the Emperor's special train ran in and out of Mito during them. An air raid destroyed the station building on 2 August 1945. A fourth station building opened in 1946. Japanese National Railways was formed on 1 June 1949. The station building was rebuilt as a two-storey reinforced concrete building on 15 July 1956. The Suihama line was abolished in full on 1 June 1966. A south exit opened on 1 September 1974.
The Naka-gawa freight branch was abolished on 1 February 1984. The elevated station building opened on 1 July 1984, after a ceremony on 30 June 1984. Kashima Rinkai Railway's Ōarai Kashima line opened on 14 March 1985. The first Mito station mall, EXCEL, opened at the north exit on 24 March 1985. Luggage handling ended on 1 November 1986. On 1 April 1987, the station passed to JR East and JR Freight. Departure melodies began on 15 January 1990, and automatic gates opened on 19 October 1995.
Escalators were added to every platform in December 1998. Suica became usable on the Jōban Line on 18 November 2001. The station and EXCEL were expanded on 3 March 2005. The Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011 warped the track and damaged part of the platform. Services resumed on 31 March 2011. Regular freight stops were ended on 17 March 2012. The Mito Off-Rail Station opened then, and container transport was changed to trucks. Suica became usable on the Suigun Line, except at some stations, on 1 April 2014.
Shops and services changed in the 2020s. The Bieu Plaza travel centre closed on 31 March 2020, and the company left Ibaraki. The STATION BOOTH workspace opened on 29 March 2021. In autumn 2023, the station's signs and the station mall were decorated with motifs from Kairakuen garden and plum blossoms for the Ibaraki Destination Campaign. The south exit building, Excel Minami, partly opened on 25 May 2023 and fully opened soon after. On 19 September 2025, all platform departure melodies changed to the JR East-owned JRE-IKST series.
See all 40 dated events in the Data view →
Written by an AI from this station's own sourced facts (the dated events in the Data view), nothing else, and checked by a program for dates and numbers that are not in those facts. It can still be wrong. Found a mistake? . Adapted from Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0; this text is shared under the same licence.