Yontama ('Tama Four') is the latest calico to serve as stationmaster of the Wakayama Electric Railway and works at the Idakiso station (Credit: Rob Goss)
This story began in the late 1990s with a young calico cat called Tama. The kitten lived near Kishi Station – the final of 14 stops on a 14.3km line that connects small communities to Wakayama City, the region’s hub – and would frequently hang out by the railway, soaking up affection from commuters.
Over the years, Tama’s sweet nature and photogenic features made her popular with the commuters, and adoring onlookers affectionately began referring to her as Kishi’s ‘stationmaster’. But by the mid-2000s, a combination of low ridership and financial problems threatened to close down the rural rail line, and the line’s 14 stations were finally unstaffed in 2006.
But fortunately, it wasn’t the end for the railway or the beloved feline’s role in it. “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,” said Keiko Yamaki, an executive for Ryobi, the company that owns the Wakayama Electric Railway. Yamaki explained that the owner of a local convenience store near Kishi Station, who had become Tama’s guardian, had also decided to move on, but before leaving he requested that the railway look after Tama. “Our president has always been a dog person, but when he met Tama that was it,” Yamaki said, while swiping through images on her phone of Kojima happily cuddling the station’s ‘cat master’. “He fell for her.”
In a big way. Soon after adopting Tama, Kojima ordered a customised stationmaster’s hat for his little cat, and in January 2007 he officially named Tama the ‘Stationmaster of Kishi Station’ – the first feline stationmaster in Japan.
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