In the past, it was very difficult to find a train. It was about 30 years ago, but during a visit to Hokkaido, an earthquake occurred and the train I was on was stopped at a station along the way. Unlike today, we don’t have the luxury of connecting to social networking sites on our smartphones, so I had no time to do anything but wait. So I pulled out a paper timetable that I happened to have with me and started looking for the stations with the same names as people I knew. It was interesting to see that there were more stations than I had expected, but I did it in a very analog way, by looking at the index map at the top of the book, starting from the south, with my own eyes. Now, however, you can use the search box on Google Maps and type in “XX station” to find it. However, this is only if you know the name of the place you are looking for. If your goal is to kill time, it is more interesting to look at the index map of a paper timetable. If you don’t look at the index map, you will not be surprised to find a station with such a name. Taking a detour is also fun.
For example, there are three stations with the same name in JR alone. There must be many “Okubo-san” out there. One of my business associates is also an Okubo-san. There are no Sato or Suzuki stations with major surnames, but Tanaka station is on the Shinetsu Main Line (currently on the Shinano Railway Line), and Yamamoto station is on the Hankyu Takarazuka Line and the Chikuhi Line and Karatsu Line of JR Kyushu. Inoue Station used to be on the Yashiro Line of Nagano Electric Railway, and I once went out of my way to see it. However, the Yashiro Line was discontinued in April 2012, and Inoue Station disappeared as well. What a pity. Inoue” is the name of a station on a local line, but depending on the surname, it may be the same name as a station on the Shinkansen bullet train. For example, “Fukushima-san” is a major surname, as are “Koyama-san” and “Kumagai-san. However, in recent years, there have been many cases in which the names of Shinkansen stations have been compounded by combining the names of several places or municipalities after much wrangling over how to name the stations. In such cases, it is difficult to come up with a simple station name that is the same as the family name. Since the reputation of the community is at stake, it is difficult to find a compromise.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are few cases of public facilities in Japan being named after people, but this does not mean that there are none. For example, there is Musashi Miyamoto Station on the Chizu Kyuko Line, and Hirao Station on the Hakodate Main Line is also named after a person. The Miyamoto Musashi Station is named after Musashi Miyamoto, who is believed to have been born in this area, but there is another theory. The Chizu Kyuko Line also has Ishii Station, and many people probably call it “Ishii-san. In addition, Anzen Station on the Tsurumi Line is named after Zenjiro Yasuda, who founded the Yasuda Zaibatsu. The neighboring Asano Station is also named after Soichiro Asano, who founded the Asano Zaibatsu. It is a typical line in the Keihin Industrial Zone. As a side note, there used to be a freight station called Hama-Azen Station to the south of Anzen Station. This is not surprising, but the station’s former name was Petroleum Station. Indeed, there are oil factories and oil storage facilities of the U.S. Armed Forces in Japan nearby, but the name “Petroleum Station” is still a very unusual name.
Heteronymic and Homonymic Stations Unlike names that use the alphabet, kanji involve the factor of “reading. For this reason, there are cases in the field of station names where the kanji characters are the same but read differently. For example, Kobe Station on the Tokaido Main Line is “Kobe,” but Kobe Station on the Ashio Line (now the Watarase Gorge Railway) is “Godo. To complicate matters further, Goudo Station on the Tadami Line is also “Goudo. The former is a combination of the same characters but different readings, while the latter is a combination of the same readings but different characters. Matsudai” on the Hokuetsu Kyuko Hokuhoku Line is written in kanji as “Matsushiro,” but the name was changed to hiragana because it was confusing with Matsushiro Station on the Nagano Dentetsu Yashiro Line. Since the Hokuhoku Line started operation in 1997, there was a time when both existed. Can we also include Pippu Station on the Soya Main Line, which became nationally known through the “Chairman’s CM” in the past, as an example of a station with the same pronunciation but different characters? Although not station names, the combination of “Shindenbaru for a station on the Nippo Main Line and Niutabaru for an Air Self-Defense Force base in Miyazaki Prefecture” is also well known in some circles. It would be more complicated if the locations were far apart, but they are both on the Nippo Main Line and its lines. Because of this, it is sometimes the case that people look at the kanji of a station name and think, “They’re the same! but the reading may be different. It would be interesting to find out.
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