- 352 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Increased use of mass transportation in the early twentieth century enabled men and women of different social classes to interact in ways they had not before. Using a cultural studies approach that combines historical research and literary analysis, author Alisa Freedman investigates fictional, journalistic, and popular culture depictions of how mass transportation changed prewar Tokyo's social fabric and artistic movements, giving rise to gender roles that have come to characterize modern Japan.
Freedman persuasively argues that, through descriptions of trains and buses, stations, transport workers, and passengers, Japanese authors responded to contradictions in Tokyo's urban modernity and exposed the effects of rapid change on the individual. She shines a light on how prewar transport culture anticipates what is fascinating and frustrating about Tokyo today, providing insight into how people make themselves at home in the city. An approachable and enjoyable book, Tokyo in Transit offers an exciting ride through modern Japanese literature and culture, and includes the first English translation of Kawabata Yasunari's The Corpse Introducer, a 1929 crime novella that presents an important new side of its Nobel Prizewinning author.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Eyewitness Accounts: Observations of Salarymen and Schoolgirls on Tokyo’s First Trains
- 2. Boys Who Feared Trains: University Students, Railway Trauma, and the Health of the Nation
- 3. Shinjuku Station Sketches: Constructing an Icon of Modern Daily Life
- 4. From Modern Girls in Motion to Figures of Nostalgia: “Bus Girls” in the Popular Imagination
- The Corpse Introducer by Kawabata Yasunari
- Notes
- Bibiliography
- Index