Higashi-Odate

Departure data for this station is not available on this site.

Higashi-Ōdate Station opened on 1 July 1914 on the privately built Akita Railway, serving the town of Ōdate in Akita Prefecture. The Akita Railway was nationalised on 1 June 1934, bringing the station into the Japanese Government Railways system (later the Japan National Railways after the Second World War). Following the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 it joined JR East as a station on the Hanawa Line. The Midori no Madoguchi ticket office closed on 13 March 2020 and the station became fully unattended from 14 March 2020. From 2021 onwards local civic groups have campaigned to preserve and refurbish rather than rebuild the historic station building.

The "east" in the station name does not point a direction — it preserves the name of the former town of Higashi-Ōdate. The station's Tokiwagi-chō neighbourhood lay geographically in the merchants' outer town, but because ashigaru retainers were quartered there to guard the Ushū Kaidō highway it was classified administratively as part of the samurai "inner town", and when the districts were renamed the inner town became Higashi-Ōdate and the outer town Nishi-Ōdate.