In 1870, Paul Brunat, who worked in a French trading company in Yokohama, researched suitable locations for a silk mill in the Kanto region and selected the site in Tomioka City from among the candidates.
It has a friendship agreement with Auckland, New Zealand, and a New Zealand teacher was sent to Tomioka each year to teach at the Junior and Elementary schools.
Eijiro Tono, a well-known actor starring as Mito Kōmon in a show of the same name, was from Tomioka.
In 1897, a railroad was constructed for the transport of coal between northern mines and Tomioka Bay now Reihoku, Kumamoto by Dainippon Rentan Company.
Major cities and villages it passes through include: Kashiwa, Toride, Tsuchiura, Ishioka, Mito, Hitachi, Iwaki, Tomioka, Ōkuma, Sōma, Watari, Iwanuma
In his later years, Tomioka assisted in editing a Japanese history of the Pacific War and, in 1951, he served on a 12-man commission to assist the Japanese government in the establishment of the present day Japan Self-Defense Forces.