2010-12-07
post/2133601053
photo 16:53:00
This photo is from Tokyo Compression, a new book by Michael Wolf. I became aware of it from an article in the Guardian, but the photo above is from a German article (via). As Justin McCurry writes,
it is the ability to tolerate an elbow in the back and a cheek unceremoniously pasted against a window that sets Tokyo’s commuters apart. There are few arguments, and fights are almost unheard of; it’s as if the powerless, massed ranks of the travelling public have entered into a non-aggression pact – and one that is observed, for the most part, in near silence.
Winding up next to the Guardian article in Instapaper was a great post by 3 Quarks Daily entitled Tokyo, Almost-encouters, and “Passing by”:
Everyday, 3.55 million passengers are sent round and round Tokyo in a dizzying twenty-one mile subway loop called the Yamanote Line. The entire New York City Subway System, by comparison, spreads its 5.5 million daily riders out over thirty-two times as much track.
At each of its twenty-six stops, passengers don’t exactly pass-through the ticket-gates, instead, they are pressed-out in batches, like loaves of bread through a bread-slicer. When you step onto this thronged train-line in the morning, it’s safe to assume that by day’s end, dozens upon dozens of friends, colleagues, past lovers, and future muses, will have passed through the same small square inches of this immense city.
