In the remote town of Engaru, Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, Kyu-Shirataki Station was about as far removed from the Tokyo stations packed with commuters as you can get. Instead, this train station stood as a testament to the nation’s commitment to education and community. In an era dominated by efficiency and cost-cutting, this nearly abandoned station remained operational solely to serve one passenger.
Opened in 1947 and operated by JR Hokkaido, Kyu-Shirataki Station was situated on the Sekihoku Main Line. By 2015, the station had become largely unused, with JR Hokkaido planning its closure due to low passenger usage. However, Kana Harada, a high school student who relied on the station for her daily commute, changed the course of action. Living in a sparsely populated area with only 36 residents, Harada was the sole student who used the station to attend the Hokkaido Engaru High School, located roughly 22 miles away. Without the train line, Kana would have faced a 73-minute walk.
When she got on the train, there were already dozens of passengers, most of them being students at her school.
Despite the Kyu-Shirataki Station’s impending closure, JR Hokkaido decided to keep it open until Harada’s graduation in March 2016. After Harada’s graduation, Kyu-Shirataki Station closed its doors for the final time, marking the end of a nearly 70-year era. The station structure and platform was demolished in the following October.
CCTV’s Facebook post, which recounted the tale in January 2016, was shared more than 5,700 times and liked by more than 22,000 people. It said: “Every day, only two trains stop at the Kami-Shirataki station with a unique timetable depending on when the girl needs to go to school and back.”
Local news site SoraNews24 was present for the station’s last train arrival. Many other people had come out as well, and a tent offered free milk and sweet potatoes to those in attendance. In reality, the station was just a worn-down wooden shed with a single, bare incandescent light bulb.
For the occasion, it had been decorated with a paper banner that read: “Kyu-shirataki Station, 69 Years, Thank You”. A bouquet of flowers was placed on the well-worn bench and a timetable hung on the wall showing the four times a day that a train stopped at Kyu-shirataki Station. A short while later, the 4:53 train bound for Ashikawa arrived on schedule, for the last time.
This story stands in stark contrast to the news that has come out of China, where the world’s new tallest bridge is open for business. Construction on the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in southwest China’s Guizhou Province began in 2022 and officially opened to the public last week, on September 28.