The cats that help keep a Japanese rail line in business
Visitors who come to Japan’s Kishigawa line today may see the railway’s unique themed trains and adorable cats as the station masters.
What they may not know is the cats’ predecessor saved the rail line from being shut down less than 15 years ago.
The Kishigawa Line of the Wakayama Electric Railway runs from JR Wakayama Station through 12 stops over 14.3 kilometres before reaching its final terminus of Kishi Station.
It was at Kishi Station that a calico cat named Tama lived. Thanks to her photogenic looks and sweet personality, Tama became popular among commuters, who began championing her as Kishi’s “stationmaster”.
The rural rail line began experiencing problems in mid-2000s as the number of passengers were declining. In 2006, the Kishigawa line’s fourteen stations were unstaffed.
Fortunately, it didn’t spell an end to the railway. “In 2006, the current president of the Wakayama Electric Railway, Mitsunobu Kojima, was asked by residents to revive the Kishigawa line after the previous owner had announced it was to be abolished,” Keiko Yamaki, executive at the Wakayama Electric Railway’s owner Ryobi told BBC.
That was when Kojima met Tama. “Our president has always been a dog person, but when he met Tama that was it … he fell for her.”
In January 2007, Kojima officially named Tama as the “Stationmaster of Kishi Station”, anointing her as Japan’s first feline stationmaster. Tourists soon came in waves to see the special representative of the line, who would often greet customers from atop a table by the ticket gates. Reports said during her time as the stationmaster from 2007 to 2015, Tama brought in 1.1 billion yen (about AU$14 million) to the local economy. The Railway said the annual number of passengers have grown by nearly 300,000 since 2006.
Tama also became a trademark for the Kishi station. Tama-chan’s merchandise could be found in the station shop. Drawings of the cat could be found on every surface of the building, which has also been rebuilt in the shape of a cat’s head. The whiskered feline also inspired Tama Densha, the now-representative train of the Kishigawa line. The train’s design and interior is based on Tama and her three colours, complete with 101 different drawings of the furry stationmaster with a variety of facial expressions.
When Tama passed away at 16 years old in 2015, thousands of people attended her funeral at the station.
But her legacy doesn’t end there – her successor Nitama (meaning “Tama two” in Japanese) has taken the role of Kishi stationmaster, while another apprentice Yontama (“Tama four”) is assigned in Idakiso.