{"id":224337,"date":"2026-01-09T17:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=224337"},"modified":"2026-01-09T17:50:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:50:03","slug":"cat-appointed-stationmaster-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/news\/224337\/","title":{"rendered":"Cat appointed stationmaster in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A calico cat named Yontama was appointed Wednesday the third feline stationmaster of a local Japanese railway station, continuing an almost two-decade tradition that has boosted tourism and helped rescue the line from financial difficulties while sparking similar moves by other rail operators, Kyodo News<\/a> writes.<\/p>\n

During a ceremony at Kishi Station on Wakayama Electric Railway Co.’s Kishigawa Line, the railway company also introduced its latest feline apprentice recruit, Rokutama.<\/p>\n

New stationmaster Yontama’s predecessor Nitama, also a calico cat, died in November last year and has been named honorary stationmaster.<\/p>\n

The Kishigawa Line drew nationwide attention after it named a cat, Tama, its first feline stationmaster in 2007, successfully attracting tourists from home and abroad to stay financially afloat. This sparked a trend of other struggling local railways appointing cats, dogs, rabbits and other animals as stationmasters across Japan.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A calico cat named Yontama was appointed Wednesday the third feline stationmaster of a local Japanese railway station, continuing an almost two-decade tradition that has boosted tourism and helped rescue the line from financial difficulties while sparking similar moves by other rail operators, Kyodo News writes. During a ceremony at Kishi Station on Wakayama Electric […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":224334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,43,47,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","category-society","category-social"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224338,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224337\/revisions\/224338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}