SL Banetsu Monogatari Head Marks

The Banetsu Monogatari is a heritage train operated by JR East on the line between Niigata on the west coast of Honshu, through the Iide mountains and the Bandai Asahi National Park to Aizu-Wakamatsu, about 150km north of Tokyo.

Having recently acquired the 2009 C57 180 Steam Locomotive Basic Set, which contains SL Banetsu Monogatari (C57 180, obviously), I wondered about the meaning of the head-mark carried on the drumhead on the front of the loco.

  

There seems to be an almost infinite variety of Banetsu Monogatari headmarks out there, the explanation being that in 2003 they made the decision to change it every single month during the operational year.  I haven't managed to find a picture of the actual one shown on this Plarail C57180 (there are two, the other came in the 2005 C57 SL Banetsu Monogatari Set, which carries the original bright red headmark - bottom right in the image further down this post).

The Japanese characters on the headmark spell out the words Banetsu Monogatari, ばんえつ物語 though in a somewhat stylised font, but what about that mouse, which seems to be wearing a yellow hat and a backpack against a background of cherry blossom?

After a considerable amount of digging I eventually asked the right question and discovered that it's not a mouse at all, but a stoat called 'Okojiro' who was adopted as the line's mascot on the 5th anniversary of Banetsu Monogatari operations, on 29th April 2004. Apparently the stoat (aka ermine) was chosen because it lives in the Iide mountains, though I imagine that the fact that no-one else had already bagged it as their mascot had something to do with it. The idea of making a ruthless little predator into a cuddly mascot might seem curious to some, but it clearly doesn't worry the Japanese!

Since then they haven't looked back, inventing 'Okomi' as Okojiro's girlfriend and building a stoat-themed waiting room on Tsugawa station, outside which Okomi and Okojiro became engaged. They were then officially married at the Railway Museum in 2014. 

You really couldn't make it up.

  

EDIT - one last search and I've discovered an image on a blog written in August 2007 which shows that the headmark in question was used in the month of April 2007. Result!

[Super]

Interesting...Not a Mouse? haha