Increased use of mass transportation in the early twentieth century enabled men and women of different social classes to interact in ways they had not before. Using a cultural studies approach that combines historical research and literary analysis, author Alisa Freedman investigates fictional, journalistic, and popular culture depictions of how mass transportation changed prewar Tokyo's social fabric and artistic movements, giving rise to gender roles that have come to characterize modern Japan. Freedman persuasively argues that, through descriptions of trains and buses, stations, transport workers, and passengers, Japanese authors responded to contradictions in Tokyo's urban modernity and exposed the effects of rapid change on the individual. She shines a light on how prewar transport culture anticipates what is fascinating and frustrating about Tokyo today, providing insight into how people make themselves at home in the city. An approachable and enjoyable book, Tokyo in Transit offers an exciting ride through modern Japanese literature and culture, and includes the first English translation of Kawabata Yasunari's The Corpse Introducer, a 1929 crime novella that presents an important new side of its Nobel Prizewinning author.
"Freedman weaves into her study a history of Tokyo's mass transit system and descriptions of material culture that provide readers a heightened sense of the everyday experience of urban modernity."
American Historical Review
"Tokyo in Transit deserves praise for proposing an innovative approach to the history it relates, the writing it illuminates, and the conceptual disciplinary questions about literature and history it raises. The wide range of critical theorists, Japanese scholars, and films brought to bear on the investigation are evidence enough of Freedman's thorough engagement with the subject."
Social Science Japan Journal
"A significant contribution to Japanese literary studies, Tokyo in Transit offers such a readable, compelling cultural history that anyone who has ever taken a train or waited at a bus stop will find a story here that strikes a chord."
