In an outpouring of grief usually reserved for the passing of a cultural icon, thousands turned out at the weekend to bid a final farewell to a cat credited with saving an obscure Japanese railway line from financial ruin.
An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s Shinto-style funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16 – the equivalent of about 80 human years.
Tama quickly became Japan’s most famous cat after she was appointed honorary stationmaster at the unmanned Kishi station in rural Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, in 2007.
Before long, visitors flocked to the station to see the former stray – a custom-made stationmaster’s cap perched on her head – welcome and see off passengers, giving a desperately needed boost to the sleepy, and heavily indebted, Kishigawa line.
Before Tama’s appointment, the nine-mile-long (14.5km) line was losing 500m yen ($4m) a year and at one point only 5,000 passengers a day were using it.
When the station’s last employee left as part of a cost-cutting drive in 2006, Tama stayed on. In her first year on the job passenger numbers rose 10% to 2.1m. The overall “Tama effect” on the local economy has been estimated at 1.1bn yen ($8.9m).
Her dedication earned Tama the posthumous status of Shinto goddess, in keeping with the indigenous Japanese religion’s practice of honouring animal deities.
She will be enshrined at a nearby shrine for cats in August, according to Mitsunobu Kojima, president of the Wakayama Electric Railway.
Kojima said Tama had initially been appointed the world’s only feline stationmaster as a way of keeping her on after the departure of the last member of two-legged staff in 2006.
“But she really was doing her job,” Kojima said. “Tama-chan really emerged like a saviour, a goddess. It was truly an honour to have been able to work with her.”
In a message of condolence, the governor of Wakayama, Yoshinobu Nisaka, described Tama as a “superstar of tourism” who had become well known outside Japan. “I express my deep sorrow and great gratitude,” he said.
In an age of rapid change in the structure of the Japanese workforce, Tama followed a more traditional route, winning seniority-based promotions during her eight-year tenure.
After rising to the position of ultra-stationmaster, she went on to become a vice president of the rail firm. On Sunday, she was given a new title: honourable eternal stationmaster.
Yoshiko Yamaki, a spokeswoman for the rail firm, said the cat had been ill with a sinus infection and was being cared for by her owner when she purred her last breath.
“When we visited her with the company president the day before she died, she stood up and meowed as if she was begging him to hold her,” Yamaki said.
The station’s association with cats won’t end with Tama’s demise, however: the firm said it had chosen an apprentice of the same breed, named Nitama, to replace her.
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