Osaka rail disaster - Harvard Universityfc84/Archives/2005... · Shibuya’s Hachiko. Disaster & reaction • Intense criticism • Taking responsibility • Blaming the system (note

Osaka rail disaster

FC 84, April 27, 2005

Amagasaki, west of Osaka

• Packed commuter train• Behind schedule• Derailment and crash into apartment

building• Worst train disaster in 40 years in Japan

Trains and subjectivity

• “railroad urbanism” – Japanese urban life is built around rail

• Trains are incredibly popular hobby in Japan

• Rail travel is daily experience for tens of millions of Japanese (of all ages, including young children)

• Vulnerability of urban society (resonances of Aum Shinrikyo)

Tokyo subways

Tokyo suburban railways

Salaryman

The key social icon of postwar corporate life is the salaryman

The selfless, hardworking white-collar worker

Salaryman

or the corporate drudge

SalarymanCriticized in a

famous report by the EU as

“workaholics living in rabbit

hutches”

Railroad urbanism

• Integration of commuter railways• Department stores at terminals – urban

nodes• Real estate developments along the rail

right of way – extremely dense housing• Amusement parks, sports teams, other

attractions at the distant end of the rail lines

Railroad urbanism

Fundamentally shaped the character of urban experience in Osaka and Tokyo from the 1920s to the present-day

Tokyo – Tokyu line, Keio line, Odakyu line, Seibu line, Tobu line, each “controlling”development in particular sectors of Tokyo suburbs

Tokyo rail/subway system

Railroad urbanism

The creation of the “ekimae” – the station plaza

Sites of civic grandeur; sites of entertainment and consumption

sakariba – entertainment districts (in Edo, these were at bridges and along canals; Tokyo, around stations)

Shimbashi, 1906

Tokyo Station, ca. 1915

Shinjuku & Shibuya

• the archetypical “new urban center” of the 1920s

• commuting terminal for western suburbs• “modern popular culture”• department stores, bars, clubs, music

halls• salarymen and flappers in the 1920s,

general public culture today

Shibuya’s Hachiko

Disaster & reaction

• Intense criticism • Taking responsibility• Blaming the system (note criticism of

punctualism)

• Since 1990s, any disaster has been source of critique of the failures of Japanese society as a whole

• (intense perception of “imagined community”)