Strangers on a Commuter Train

Female Students and the Salaryman Who Watched Thern in Tayama Katai's Shojo byo

Abstract

There were several transformations in early twentieth century Tokyo urban space and in the lives of its inhabitants. Many social and spatial movements converged on the train. New groups, such as female students and businessmen, emerged from and often epitomized ideological, educational, and economic changes of this time and commuted together from homes in the suburbs to work and school in the center of Tokyo. Electric trains were means of mass transportation, and sexes and classes mixed in passanger cars. Such vehicles were sites of urban behaviors and of seductions and could be viewed as synecdoche for the rapidly modernizing city itself. Trains were spaces for watching and for being watched, and female passengers were often the objects of the gaze. - These trends were vividly depicted in Tayama Katai's 1907 short sory The girl watcher (Shojo byo), a tale of how a salaryman's obsessive gawking at schoolgirls during his daily commutes causes him to fall to his gory death on the train tracks. The man watches women to seek comfort from his frustrations about leading a domestic and work live he feels he cannot improve. Moreover, the figure of the Meiji female student is examined in its historical context and its perception not only as the passive object of the gaze but also as actively (mis)behaving on trains. Modem women and mass transportation often appear together in late Meiji literature, and it is necessary to investigate them together to better understand the advances and contractions of Japanese modernity.