KITAHAMA STATION (ABASHIRI, HOKKAIDO)

Station fuels artistic inspiration

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Yasuhiro Takami

By Shin Usami

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

A 90-second television advertisement featuring a man traveling by train, soaking in images of people working and good food, won the highest award of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters last autumn. At the end of the advertisement, a train station appears — isolated at the border of the Okhotsk Sea.

This is JR Kitahama Station.

As one of three unmanned stations along a single-track railway between Kushiro and Abashiri at the east end of Hokkaido, Kitahama Station appears to be in the middle of nowhere.

Hokkaido Broadcasting Co. producer Yuki Izumi, 37, who made the commercial, said: "I first came to the station to shoot a travel program and I remember there was a heavy snowstorm at the time. But the restaurant at Kitahama Station was warm from a gas burner and we settled in for the storm."

When Izumi, who hails from Hakodate, Hokkaido, went to university in Tokyo, the economy was at its peak. He organized events with friends and tickets sold like hotcakes. Izumi asked a range of companies to support the events, and in return he would promote their products at the events.

When Izumi visited one of the companies after calling them beforehand with his proposal, a company executive was waiting for him with 3 million yen on his desk.

Although Izumi had enjoyed raising sponsorship for the events, he felt uncomfortable when had no trouble in collecting lots of money. He felt that making money easily was not enough of a challenge and rejected an offer to join a major publishing company upon graduation. He then left Tokyo.

Izumi likens the man in the TV commercial to himself, appreciating the simple things in life, having a feeling of nostalgia and rejecting the sole aim of thriving financially.

Shusaku Suzuki, 32, from Ibaraki Prefecture, first went to Kitahama Station in the autumn of the second year after joining a software company in Tokyo.

Suzuki used to get on a sleeper train on Friday night to travel to Hokkaido, and returned to Tokyo on a sleeper train by Monday morning. He kept visiting Hokkaido every week in this manner and drew many pictures of stations and of scenery.

"I'd never had a paintbrush until then, and I just painted for relaxation in the beginning. But the more I practiced, the more serious I became about my work and I began to feel a sense of attachment to Hokkaido," Suzuki said. He moved to Sapporo two years ago after resigning from his software job.

Now working independently, Suzuki's artistic flair is evident in the postcards he produces.

Images of a tortoise-shell cat on a desolate platform bidding farewell to a train, a woman standing at the edge of an abandoned railway track gazing out toward the ocean and a moonlight-drenched station house are part of Suzuki's postcard collection that are sold at Kitahama Station — a place that has surely provided the inspiration for his new-found career.