In a remote corner of Hokkaido, Japan, a nearly deserted railway station became the centre of a story that travelled around the world. Kyu-Shirataki station, on the Sekihoku Main Line, had very few regular passengers, but one high-school student, Kana Harada, relied on the stop to travel to school. She boarded the morning train from the tiny station and returned in the afternoon, making the railway an important part of her daily education. In 2015, JR Hokkaido announced that Kyu-Shirataki and several other lightly used stations would close in March 2016 because of low passenger numbers. The closure happened around the time Harada graduated, helping fuel the widely shared story that the railway had deliberately kept the station open for her. However, as Bloomberg and subsequent reporting noted, the full story is more nuanced; the closure had already been planned as part of a broader timetable change. Even so, Kyu-Shirataki became a memorable symbol of how a remote transport link could shape one student's access to education.
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