While reading the special page on the timetable that summarizes special trains for tourists, I came across a train called the limited express “Kamakura.” This limited express takes an unusual route from the JR Musashino Line to Kamakura via the freight line. Then, what caught my eye was the name of the starting station on the Musashino Line. “Yoshikawa Minami” (Yoshikawa Minami = Yoshikawa City, Saitama Prefecture). It’s just a person’s name.

Excuse me, I didn’t know this station existed. When I looked into it, it was relatively new, opening in 2012. According to the Yoshikawa City website, other options for the name of the new station were “Yoshikawa Catfish Village” and “Musashi Yoshikawa,” but “Yoshikawa Minami” was chosen because it included the name of the city’s Minami district. That’s what it means.

If you search on the timetable index map, you can find several stations that have people’s names written on them. “Nakayamaka” (Nakayamaga = Kitsuki City, Oita Prefecture) on the JR Nippo Line, “Omi Maiko” (Omi Maiko = Otsu City) on the JR Kosei Line, “Igawa Sakura” (Ikawa Sakura = Akita Prefecture) on the JR Ou Line. Igawa Town), etc. As for the name of a famous person, there is “Taketoyo” (Taketoyo = Taketoyo Town, Aichi Prefecture) on the JR Taketoyo Line. It’s the same letter as legendary jockey Yutaka Take.

In 1989, when Taketoyo jockey was still a young man, he was invited to the town for a day as mayor, and he paraded in an open car from Taketoyo Station to the town hall. Since then, he has appeared at events, and is an example of using the name of a station or town as an opportunity to generate excitement.

Railway fans have long had a game of searching for stations whose names are the same as the stations next to each other. The most famous are Shigeoka and Sotaro (Saiki City, Oita Prefecture) on the JR Nippo Line. Other trains on the same line include “Kokubu” and “Hayato” (Kijima City, Kagoshima Prefecture).

There is a station called Goro (Ozu City, Ehime Prefecture) on the JR Yosan Line. In the 1960s and 1950s, this station was said to be crowded with many young women buying admission tickets and train tickets. They were fans of Goro Noguchi, who was a popular idol singer at the time. Mr. Noguchi has a hit song called “Private Railway Lines,” but the station with the same name as his own was on the Japanese National Railways, JR. There used to be a station called “Noguchi” (Kakogawa City, Hyogo Prefecture) on the JNR Takasago Line, which was discontinued in 1959, but I wonder if this station was also busy.

Goro Station was a branch of the Uchiko Line during the JNR era, but when the line was switched to a new line in 1961, it became a regular intermediate station. Currently, it is an unmanned station with no station building, but on days when the popular sightseeing train “Iyonada Monogatari” is in operation, local volunteers wearing raccoon costumes come to see off the train, in honor of the raccoon dogs that often appear around the station.

The Chizu Express has the “Miyamoto Musashi” (Mimasaka City, Okayama Prefecture), and the Ibara Railway has the “Kibi no Makibi” (Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture). The name of the station is more closely related to the name of the person, in order to promote the station as the hometown of a great swordsman of the Edo period and a politician of the Nara period. (Keizo Samejima)