'Why Are Japanese People So Orderly?' Since Arriving in Australia
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1 INTRODUCTION Introduction ‘Why are Japanese people so orderly?’ Since arriving in Australia, I, the author, being a Japanese national, have received this question countless times. Many people expect an easy answer, that is, ‘because they are Japanese’. However, the more one tries to provide a nuanced response to this question, the more complex the issue becomes. Is there an alternative way to respond to this question without relying on the lumpen category of the “Japanese”? This essentialist category downplays the differences and diversities enclosed within it and exaggerates a fixed cultural disposition ignoring its shifting potentials. The primary aim of this thesis is to investigate the mechanisms of modulation that intervene into, engineer, manipulate and cultivate railway passengers’ bodies and their comportments as they mediate and channel affective intensities in a certain manner. In doing so, it deconstructs the myth of “Japanese-ness” and constructs a more sociologically sound elucidation in response to the question. However, at the same time, the question itself also needs to be rephrased to critique its underlying assumption. The rephrased question then asks, ‘How are the individuals in Japan conditioned to develop orderliness?’1 The thesis is most interested in the process of becoming rather than that of being. To explore this question about becoming orderly subjects, this thesis explores urban railway spaces where individuals with a range of socio-economic backgrounds intersect. The railway is one of the most frequented public spaces, which brings together individuals with different 1 Some critics may point out that the assumption that underlies this question does not mirror the reality at all. While this is correct to some extent, the purpose of this thesis is to critically engage with the assumption. Hence, the thesis provides a way to better understand why individuals in Japan behave in the way they do. 2 occupations, age, class, gender, ethnicity, religion and so on. Once people enter into a railway station, they share the same space for the duration of their railway travel. In other words, they move with others (Adey, 2010, p. 23). An experience of moving with others may induce stress, discomfort and exhaustion but also provide comfortable, sheltered and swift travel. By way of better understanding the experience of moving with others, I spent many hours travelling around Tokyo on the railway during a ten-month period of fieldwork in 2013, which allowed me to gain a number of insights into the world of urban railway travel. This thesis is based primarily on auto- ethnographic accounts and secondarily on interviews and discursive analyses of publications made available by urban railway operators and government agencies. The main objective of this opening chapter is to identify the key research questions, and most significantly, introduce the aim of this thesis. To begin, however, it is necessary to outline the contextual background. Therefore, the first part introduces the historical context of the Japanese urban railway system and its recent development, in order to initiate the discussion. The second part then identifies the scope of discussion and sets out the research questions. Importantly, this part underscores the vantage point of this thesis. Significantly, this demonstrates that the thesis takes a discipline-based approach rather than an area-based approach. Put differently, while this thesis looks into Japanese society, its analysis is pertinent not only to the Japanese context, as its findings have relevance across a broader geographical scale. The third part then moves on to outline the process by which this thesis addresses the research questions. It offers a chapter-by- chapter overview of the thesis and explicates how the thesis as a whole approaches the subject of control and security. Railways in Japan In the Greater Tokyo Area (which includes Tokyo metropolis and three adjacent prefectures: Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa), there are sixteen private railway operators serving approximately 3 700 railway stations, connecting almost every corner of the area from 5:00am to 1:00am today.2 One of the most efficient railway systems is also one of the busiest systems in the world. For example, Shinjuku station, with more than 200 exit gates and accommodates an average of 3.64 million passengers per day is known to be the busiest terminal station in the world (Guinness World Records, 2011). Similarly, other terminal stations such as Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Shinagawa and Tokyo also deal with more than one million passengers a day, as the majority of residents in Tokyo frequently use the railway service to move across the city (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2012). Figure 1. Tokyo Metropolitan area railway and subway route map (2016). According to the 2010 census data from the Statistic Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (2012), the railway is the preferred method of commuting from home to work, to school or other destinations. In Tokyo, it is one of the vital logistical modes of transport, connecting the centre and the peripheries, or central business districts and suburbs. In fact, railway travel is almost an everyday obligation for most inhabitants of Tokyo as they commute from home 2 City buses also play an instrumental role in serving the city’s elderly population and providing access to some areas without railway stations. 4 to work or home to school. The latest data from the 2010 National Census suggests that the population over the age of 15 years old spends an average of 66.75 minutes a day commuting (The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, 2012).3 While this may appear to be a small amount of time, it adds up to 5 hours and 34 minutes (333.75 minutes) a week, and 22 hours and 15 minutes (1,335 minutes) a month. In effect, an average passenger in Tokyo is spending almost an entire day in railway transit in the course of a month.4 Due to the central role that railway transport plays in Japan, the country is today dubbed ‘the railway capital of the world’ (Said-Moorhouse, Ines, & Knight, 2012). At this point, a brief history is required to provide some contextual information. The railway system was first introduced to Japan from England in the 1860s. Prior to this, it was most common to travel by horse (Traganou, 2004, p. 78). In 1867, an American businessperson, C. L. Westwood, who resided in the Yokohama foreign settlement, submitted a petition to the court for the right to construct a railway between Edo (today’s Tokyo) and Yokohama (Nakamura, 1998, p. 20). Subsequently, foreign settlers addressed a number of proposals for railway construction to the Japanese government, mostly for the purpose of stimulating trade activities by connecting ports and large cities, and of accumulation of capital through railway operation (Nakamura, 1998, p. 21). The Japanese government was initially approached by the U.S. envoy A. L. C. Portman regarding the construction of a railway in December, 1868 (Nakamura, 1998, p. 21). However, the government was considering building the railway by itself in order to retain a certain degree of sovereignty as it feared that it might lose large portions of land rights (Nakamura, 1998, pp. 21‒ 22). The government favoured another proposal and its terms and conditions put forward by a British government advisor, Richard Henry Brunton, promoted by the country’s envoy, Harry C. Parkes. Later, the British government and its advisors in Japan took an initiative to build railways 3 Nonetheless, this number is still a conservative estimate because it is extracted from an entire population over the age of 15, which includes elderly individuals who tend not to commute as much as others. 4 The cost of housing in inner-Tokyo and the generous commuting allowances provided by employer give enough reasons for many to endure the burden of a long-distance commute (Ohmori & Harata, 2009, p. 549). 5 and operate them in the incipient stages. The first railway was completed by May 1872, connecting Yokohama with Shinagawa, and later in September the same year, it was extended to Shimbashi (Nakamura, 1998, p. 44). The number of passengers was only 495 in the first year of operation but increased to 5,977 by 1882 as railways began operating in the western parts of Japan near Osaka and Kyoto (Nakamura, 1998, p. 44). Construction of inter-city railways started as early as the 1890s with the development of a logistical network across different regions of the country and railways being operated by the government and the private sectors (Sugiyama, 2012, pp. 218‒219). Furthermore, the Railway Construction Act, which was passed by parliament on the 21st of June 1892, solidified the development plan for expansion of the inter-city railway network across Japan (Nakamura, 1998, pp. 199, 212‒213). In the 1900s, a large proportion of the population began to settle in urban areas, and cities started to grow as the inner-city rail was built to accommodate the growing need of transportation in urban areas. Demonstrating this growth in urbanization, whereas 21% of the whole population of Japan lived in cities in 1903, the number increased to 32% in 1920 and 41% by 1930 (Kitazawa & Nakanishi, 2013, p. 223). Due to the rapid rate of urban sprawl and the population growth, these cities required public infrastructures that included inner-city transportation. As a large population flowed into cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto Yokohama and Kobe, it started to spread out. The resulting urban sprawl saw an increase in the number of residents in suburbs. Tokyo was certainly the largest city in Japan by 1903 with a population of approximately 1,819,000. The city reached a population of approximately 6,779,000 in 1940 (Kitazawa & Nakanishi, 2013, p.