While the white, tan and black kitten purred and meowed in the arms of a visitor, one of the station workers looked on with a grin, interjecting only to gently reposition the cat’s brimmed conductor hat whenever it threatened to slip over her eyes. If you are purchasing from overseas then you need to add a postage … The Tamaden railway was born. “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’. The famous Maneki-neko cat figurines, with their beckoning left paw, are said to bring good fortune to businesses, which has led them to be placed inside storefront windows across the globe. To capitalise on the region’s Tama craze, in 2010 the railway hired award-winning industrial designer Eiji Mitooka – known for his sleek Japanese bullet trains – to completely redesign the train’s exteriors and interiors as a Tama-themed line. She just looked up and sweetly meowed.
More than 10 Japanese ‘cat islands’, where hundreds of felines roam free, have become popular tourist destinations; as have Tokyo’s many pay-to-pet cat cafes. Meet Yontama, the latest in a line of feline stationmasters that has helped save the Kishigawa railway line in Japan’s Wakayama prefecture, a largely mountainous and rural part of the country famous for temple-studded hillsides and sacred pilgrimage trails.
“The Tamaden really has become very popular with people of all ages,” Yamaki said. But fortunately, it wasn’t the end for the railway or the beloved feline’s role in it. “Having her around the station makes everyone happy,” he said, as the cat playfully swiped at a tourist’s iPhone. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. Tama was so adored by riders and railway staff that a painted portrait of her was soon commissioned, which now hangs alongside numerous glossy photos of her in Kishi Station’s souvenir shop – where visitors can buy everything from Tama badges and keyrings to Tama-branded candy. Thousands of people attended her funeral at the station, leaving piles of flower bouquets and cans of tuna outside. But also people into trains, couples and lots of overseas travellers come to ride the trains and see the stationmasters.”. The cat of the railway train. Not only did Tama’s sweet nature and photogenic features make her popular with commuters on the Kishigawa railway, but the ‘cat master’ became so famous she was knighted. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "The Essential List". Read about our approach to external linking. On a bright May morning at Japan’s Idakiso train station, a small cat basked in the sun as her photo was taken by a group of tourists before getting a tummy tickle from a toddler. “We see lots of children and families and older people bringing their grandchildren. In most productions, Skimbleshanks is portrayed as one of the older cats, similar to Jennyanydotsin age, and the two are sometimes implied to be a couple.
You might say that by and large. The ‘Honourable Eternal Station Master’, as she is now called, was then memorialised with a phone box-sized shrine on Kishi’s platform, and in the Japanese Shinto religious tradition, she was elevated to the status of a goddess of the Wakayama Electric Railway. By the time Tama passed away in 2015, she was 16 years old and had appeared in prominent TV shows, magazines and newspapers across Japan. The railway also hired Mitooka to create several other themed trains to help attract tourists, including a strawberry train (Ichigo Densha) and a pickled plum train (Umeboshi Densha) – both fruits that Wakayama is well known for. Both work 10:00 to 16:00 with two days off a week: Monday and Friday for Yontama; Wednesday and Thursday for Nitama. In the process, she received a dark blue ceremonial gown with white lace neck ruffles, and thousands of tourists began coming to the small, single-platform station to see her. “I sometimes forget that she is my boss.”. In fact, according to a 2008 study by Katsuhiro Miyamoto, professor at Kansai University's School of Accountancy, Tama’s purring presence at the station is estimated to have attracted 55,000 more riders on the Kishigawa Line than were expected in 2007, and during her full reign as stationmaster from 2007 until 2015, she contributed upwards of 1.1bn yen (£7.85m) to the local economy. 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.
As stationmaster, one of Tama’s duties was to be the face of the railway and appear in promotional material and media coverage.
As a finishing touch, when the doors open at each station, a few meows purr through the PA system – an actual recording of Tama.
In lieu of a ‘salary’, Tama got all the cat food she needed. And four years after her death, her Twitter account has more than 80,000 followers and is still growing. Maybe the station does.”. Skimbleshanks, the railway cat. She also got paws-on at the station, sometimes greeting passengers from atop a table set up by the ticket gates or from the behind the glass window of her ‘office’ – a converted ticket booth equipped with a litter tray and bed. Nowadays, one of Tama’s former apprentices, eight-year-old Nitama (literally: ‘Tama Two’), serves as the Kishi stationmaster, with four-year-old Yontama (‘Tama Four’) functioning as her feline assistant five stations away in Idakiso. Meet Yontama, the latest in a line of feline stationmasters that has helped save the Kishigawa railway line in Japan’s Wakayama prefecture, a … It was me who was in charge. Some productions however, portray him … View image of Yontama is the latest calico to serve as stationmaster of the Wakayama Electric Railway and works at the Idakiso station (Credit: Credit: Rob Goss), View image of The carriages on the Tamaden railway are adorned with whiskers, paw prints and images of Tama (Credit: Credit: Rob Goss), View image of When Tama passed away, she was elevated to the status of a goddess of the Wakayama Electric Railway (Credit: Credit: Rob Goss), View image of When Tama passed away, adoring fans left bouquets of flowers and cans of tuna, and now she has a shrine outside Kishi station (Credit: Credit. 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’. She received a promotion, too: in 2008, she became a ‘super station manager’ and was even knighted by the prefecture’s governor. This story began in the late 1990s with a young calico cat called Tama. The range of Railwaycat prints and cards can be purchased online (other work will be available soon), but if you want to place an order the old fashioned way and pay by cheque (UK only), then please use the contact button on the menu bar and I will email you my address for you to send an order by post (postage is currently £2 per order). Little ears stick up from the roof, the entrance serves as a mouth and two oval windows rising from the slanted roof resemble eyes – each glowing yellow when the lights are on in the evenings. From the driver and the guards.
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