Osaka rail disaster - Harvard Universityfc84/Archives/2005... · Shibuya’s Hachiko. Disaster &...
Transcript of Osaka rail disaster - Harvard Universityfc84/Archives/2005... · Shibuya’s Hachiko. Disaster &...
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Osaka rail disaster
FC 84, April 27, 2005
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Amagasaki, west of Osaka
• Packed commuter train• Behind schedule• Derailment and crash into apartment
building• Worst train disaster in 40 years in Japan
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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)
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Tokyo subways
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Tokyo suburban railways
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Salaryman
The key social icon of postwar corporate life is the salaryman
The selfless, hardworking white-collar worker
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Salaryman
or the corporate drudge
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SalarymanCriticized in a
famous report by the EU as
“workaholics living in rabbit
hutches”
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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
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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
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Tokyo rail/subway system
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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)
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Shimbashi, 1906
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Tokyo Station, ca. 1915
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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
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Shibuya’s Hachiko
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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”)