FundamentallySound Blog

It's hard to imagine a country so right wing that trains are considered dangerously communistic and the failure to own a car a sign of potential terrorism. But here we are, we don't need to imagine...

I sometimes think that American avoidance of public transportation is tied into a deeply conservative hatred of the other in the national consciousness. Riding on public transit and seeing people who are not like you forces you to confront and possibly empathize with people who live differently. But empathy just is not part of the national vocabulary at the moment. This country is regressing into some kind of paranoid monster.

I wish I could say the Japanese were riding trains because they love the Other. But it's not the case. You don't see the Other on a Japanese train, you see Japanese. And that's one reason why public transport is so widely used in Japan: there's no threat, no danger of encountering threatening Others. Trains are popular in Japan for the same reason they aren't in the US.

That's an astute observation. It seems that the Japanese actually are incredibly diverse in the ways that they choose to live but they don't feel a need to demand public acknowledgment of that diversity unlike in the west where one's clothes, mannerisms, and such force the people around them to notice their otherness. So on the train in Japan, one is at least given the sense that they are surrounded by similarity when in fact there are many types of other all around, a kind of undercover otherness. But if diversity is hidden that deeply, can it still even be called diversity? Does a tree that falls in the forest with no one around...

janek here, getting caught up on all my rss feeds.... after a pretty crappy coupla flight experiences last weekend, i found myself yearning for an efficient system of bullet trains between, say, lafayette, indiana and NYC. considering it took me from 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. to get from brooklyn to lafayette, and the cumulative effect of all the steps (ordering the door-to-door shuttle & arguing w/the dispatcher, listening to the inane rantings of the caribbean van driver, getting on the plane & leaving, finding out the plane might be on fire & returning to LGA & an escort of blinking fire trucks & police cars, waiting around for hours for the flight i got re-booked onto, waiting in cleveland for a fresh plane since the next plane was broken, getting to indy & waiting & waiting for my GD luggage [first in, last out, right?], schlepping to the parking lot, and driving an hour to get home....) is %$#@! exhausting. a few hours on a bullet would've been a lot more humane, plus there's more to look at from the window when you're on the ground.

do the japanese even notice other people on the train? to me they seem to just get on & mind their own business (&/or fall asleep, LOL). you will see a lot of diversity on a japanese train. but in japan, it's considered impolite to notice it/point it out.

roddy, i remember your taking me to yoyogi park on a sunday--that's where young japanese demand public acknowledgment of their clothes/mannerisms/interests/etc. i think that the japanese DO desire outlets for displaying their individuality (just go work in a junior high school & you'll see the desire), but the culture still does a pretty good job of beating that out of you (witness teachers applying black hair dye to any student who felt like expressing him/herself thru his/her hair color). and by the time you're an adult, you *feel* like you don't need that anymore.