🕯️ LEGENDS GARDEN
🚉 Tama
Domestic cat (Japanese calico) · Kishi Station, Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan
Lives in Legends Garden
Tama was a calico who lived at Kishi Station on Wakayama Electric Railway's Kishigawa Line and was formally appointed stationmaster on 5 January 2007, complete with a peaked cap. The line was close to closure; ridership in March 2007 was about 10% up on the year before, and one study valued the publicity around her at 1.1 billion yen to the local economy. She died of heart failure on 22 June 2015 aged 16, was given a Shinto funeral attended by around 3,000 people, and is enshrined at the station as Tama Daimyojin. Her successors still work the ticket window.
What they do
Sits to attention in the ticket window under her stationmaster's cap, swivels her head to follow a train pulling in, then yawns enormously..
Punctual, patient, and fully prepared to sit through an entire shift wearing a hat.
Lore
- ★She was appointed stationmaster on 5 January 2007; ridership that March was around 10% higher than the previous financial year.
- ★A study put the publicity around her at 1.1 billion yen to the local economy, part of what Japan calls 'nekonomics'.
- ★She was promoted to 'super station master' in 2008 and made an Operating Officer in 2010, the first cat to become an executive of a railway company.
- ★She was posthumously titled Honorary Eternal Stationmaster and enshrined on the Kishi Station platform as Tama Daimyojin.
Helping the real one
Follow Wakayama Electric Railway (Tama Shop, Kishi Station) →This is a creator channel, not a donation page. Not a donation page. This is the official site of the railway that employed Tama, still runs cat stationmasters at Kishi Station, keeps her shrine on the platform and sells Tama merchandise through the Tama Shop and Tama Café. Visiting or buying from the railway is the only support route; there is no charity fund in her name.
Where this comes from
- Wikipedia Tama (cat) ↗
- Japan Today Nitama officially named successor to departed Tama stationmaster cat ↗
- Japan National Tourism Organization The cat stationmaster of Kishi Station ↗
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.