Conveners
Transitions and Transformations of Urban Mobility Infrastructures and Practices in 20th Century East Asia
- Peter Adey (Royal Holloway University of London)
This presentation examines the history of efforts to enhance passenger experience and comfort on Japan National Railway (JNR) and JR East trains in Tokyo during the second half of the 20th century. Japanese public transport professionals have long distinguished between the “hardware” (i.e., physical transport infrastructure) and “software” (i.e., passenger-staff interactions) aspects of...
When Japanese forces launched their full-scale invasion of China in 1937, they set in motion a large westward mobilisation. Not only did the Nationalist government move from Nanjing to Chongqing but immense parts of industry, universities, and expert personnel relocated to the Chinese hinterland (Huang 1994, Yan 2018). Historians have retold the subsequent reconstruction of Sichuan and its...
Deleuze and Guattari's "nomadology" has been subject to withering criticism on the grounds that it constitutes a form of primitivism. In this paper, I explore "another" set of nomadologies that arose in postwar Japan, independent of Western critical theory, at a time of infrastructural transformation. Focusing on the late-1960s encounter between Hirosue Tamotsu, a scholar of "itinerancy...
This paper traces the linkages between a system of employer-sponsored commuting allowances, company and state housing, and the normalisation of growing commuting distances in post-war Japan. Facilitated by a tax exemption system, it became common practice for employers to cover the transport costs of their workers after the Second World War. In addition to regular salaries, employers paid each...
