How did a stray calico cat, handed a stationmaster’s cap at the unstaffed end of a dying Japanese branch line, lift its ridership by 17 per cent and generate an estimated 1.1 billion yen for the local economy?

On 5 January 2007 the Wakayama Electric Railway installed her as stationmaster of Kishi Station, the unstaffed terminus of the 14.3-kilometre Kishigawa Line in Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture. When the company cleared the ground around the stations, Koyama asked the railway’s president, Mitsunobu Kojima, to let the cats live inside Kishi Station instead. On 5 January 2007 Tama was formally installed as stationmaster, or ekichō. In August 2010 Kishi Station was rebuilt in the shape of a cat’s face, with pointed ears on the roof, round windows for eyes, and a traditional cypress-bark thatch. Her funeral at Kishi Station six days later drew an estimated 3,000 people.