{"id":874,"date":"2023-01-21T15:44:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T15:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/?p=874"},"modified":"2023-03-17T12:08:13","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T12:08:13","slug":"protests-against-modernisation-how-japanese-authors-document-transportation-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/2023\/01\/protests-against-modernisation-how-japanese-authors-document-transportation-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Protests Against Modernisation: How Japanese Authors Document Transportation Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trains and rail lines feature prominently in Japanese literature on modernization and growth, but writers are often critical of the ways in which new modes of transportation transform the areas around them.\u00a0 In Murakami Haruki\u2019s introduction to <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i> by Natsume Soseki, he describes the parallels between his life and the novel\u2019s namesake, sixty years apart.\u00a0 In 1908, Sanshiro travels for two days to reach Tokyo by steam train, while Murakami makes a similar trip in under four hours on the bullet train.1<\/a><\/sup> Despite the difference in time and circumstances, their reactions to trains and descriptions of them in literature are strikingly similar.\u00a0 Both Soseki and Murakami associate trains with the perils and confusion of modernity and the challenges posed by rapid technological change.\u00a0 These literary depictions are not only allegorical, but reflect the reality of political protest against the consequences of modernizing transportation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Murakami\u2019s 2014 novel, <\/span>Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage<\/span><\/i>, the train-obsessed Tsukuru sees trains and stations as spaces of possibility, beginnings, and endings, but the theme of transport is also associated with the character\u2019s personal trauma and struggles with living in a modern world.\u00a0 In the novel, trains provide snapshots of \u201cmodern\u201d life and the struggles which come with it: \u201cThere was still some time before the train opened its doors for boarding, yet passengers were hurriedly buying boxed dinners, snacks, cans of beer, and magazines at the kiosk. Some had white iPod headphones in their ears, already off in their own little worlds. Others palmed smartphones, thumbing out texts, some talking so loudly into their phones that their voices rose above the blaring PA announcements\u2026 Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> While trains symbolize the character Tsukuru\u2019s internal turmoil, Murakami also uses physical proximity to trains to describes his own personal experiences of living in poverty.\u00a0 He remembers that \u201c the National Railways\u2019 Ch\u016b\u014d Line ran by just below the window, which made it horribly noisy\u2026 We used to have long freight trains running by until the sun came up.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> Not only do trains represent inner emptiness in his novel, but in his own life they are a physical manifestation of his financial circumstances in the 1970s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the separation between Murakami and Soseki, both authors associate the noise of trains with modernity, and characterize it as an unwanted inconvenience.\u00a0 In contrast to Murakami\u2019s noisy home, Sanshiro describes his University campus as being \u201cextraordinarily quiet. Not even the noise of the streetcars penetrated this far.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> While the expansion of transportation is often presented as a symbol of progress in historical<\/span> accounts, Murakami and Soseki question whether the benefits of modernized transportation are truly positive for all.\u00a0 In <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i>, a member of the University faculty exclaims, \u201cThey\u2019ve built so damned many lines the past few years, the more \u2018convenient\u2019 it gets, the more confused I get.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> His comment reveals the conflict between the convenience of modernization and the disorientation it generates.<\/span><\/p>\n

The metaphorical associations between new modes of transportation and \u201cconfusion\u201d in literature not only reflect the attitudes of certain communities towards government efforts of modernization, but are also effective forms of political protest.\u00a0 In Nishiguchi Katsumi\u2019s semi fictional account of the Japanese National Railway\u2019s proposal of a new line connecting Tokyo and Kyoto, he describes the reactions of Kyoto residents who \u201care drawn in at first but gradually realize that they are about to lose their homes.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> This is a process that repeats throughout history from the introduction of steam trains in 1872, street cars in 1903, and bullet trains in 1964, all of which rapidly changed the areas they connected and crossed.7<\/a><\/sup> These continuous efforts to modernize transportation heavily impacted communities, but often their negative effects are overlooked in official discourse and historical narratives.8<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Literary representations of transportation not only demonstrate its symbolic power, but they also document the impact on communities and the attitudes of citizens, serving as a form of protest.\u00a0 In <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i>, \u201cOne streetcar line was to have run past the Red Gate, but the University had protested and it had gone through Koishikawa instead.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> The University\u2019s ability to lobby the government into redirecting the train line demonstrates the influence of powerful organizations to shape infrastructure, while also revealing the places which are powerless to avoid the disruption of their communities.\u00a0 While the University remains quiet and undisturbed, other communities will be transformed and perhaps destroyed by the \u201cnoise\u201d of modernization.\u00a0 Nishiguchi\u2019s account provides a case study of this situation fifty years later in 1958.\u00a0 JNR\u2019s plan for the proposed the line connecting Tokyo and Kyoto overlooked those \u201cfor whom the personal costs would be highest: people evicted from their homes and workplaces or condemned to life under the shadow of busy elevated tracks.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While literature often seems detached from reality, the views of Soseki, Murakami, and Nishiguchi reveal that negative attitudes towards modern transportation networks existed for more than a century.\u00a0 Rather than criticizing \u201cmodernisation\u201d itself, their works address the human costs which exist in any fast-paced movement of modernisation. They provide insight into the effects of rapid technological advancement on communities with little political power and document the perspectives of those who don\u2019t feature in historical narratives.<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. Natsume Soseki, Introduction to <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i> (United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2009). [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Haruki Murakami, <\/span>Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage<\/span><\/i> (London: Random House, 2014), 285. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Soseki, Introduction to <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i>. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Soseki, <\/span>Sanshiro<\/span><\/i>, Chapter 2. [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Ibid.<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Jessamyn Abel, \u201cInvisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,\u201d in <\/span>Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train<\/span><\/i> (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2022), 20. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Ailsa Freedman, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d in <\/span>Tokyo in Transit : Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road<\/span><\/i> (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 5-6; Abel, \u201cInvisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,\u201d <\/span>34. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Abel, \u201cInvisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,\u201d 20-21. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Abel, \u201cInvisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,\u201d<\/span>\u00a039. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Trains and rail lines feature prominently in Japanese literature on modernization and growth, but writers are often critical of the ways in which new modes of transportation transform the areas around them.\u00a0 In Murakami Haruki\u2019s introduction to Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki, he describes the parallels between his life and the novel\u2019s namesake, sixty years apart.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,98,97],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-japan","tag-literature","tag-transportation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}