The Road to Modernity: “Railway Texts” of the Meiji and Taishō Eras

Abstract

Abstract While the railway played a critical role in contributing to the industrial capitalism of almost every modern nation, it was particularly crucial to Japan’s experience of modernity. With their astonishing speed and power, trains not only altered the physical landscape but also created novel spaces within them, fostering new sensibilities at both the individual and national levels. “Railway texts” – literature featuring representations of trains – can thus demonstrate how rail transport took part in everything from transforming quotidian life to nation building. Touching on selected “railway texts” by Meiji and Taishō era authors Natsume Sōseki, Tayama Katai, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, this paper illustrates how trains provided a means to reflect on Japan’s cultural, social, and political contexts, serving as a space for imagining modernity.