Getting on a Train: Railway Passengers and the Growth of Train Travel in Meiji Japan

Naofumi Nakamura

Chapter 9 in The Historical Consumer, 2012, pp 207-234 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In early Meiji Japan, the railway was one of the icons of civilisation and progress. The positive image of the railway and rail travel, both as a symbol and as a ‘convenience of civilisation’, was clearly widely held in those days (Ericson, 1996, pp. 53–55). Passengers who used the railways for special and occasional purposes, such as tourism, predominated, because railway travel was expensive at that time (as will be discussed further later), and in the 1870s, when the railways were being established, most passengers belonged to the upper and middle classes. Figure 9.1, which reproduces a print by one of the most well-known ukiyo-e artists of the period, shows the waiting room at Shinbashi Station in Tokyo in 1873, full of apparently richly dressed men and women.

Keywords: Coal Mine; Railway Company; Fukuoka Prefecture; Business Trip; Passenger Traffic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-36734-0_9

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230367340_9

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